ARTICLES and letters dedicated to the shortcomings of the National Health Service continue with a dreary monotony in your otherwise mostly tolerable newspaper.

Many of your letter writers, in one breath, demand a better service, and in the next make it clear that they do not wish to pay for it.

The vast improvement in the health of the nation over the last 50 years has not been achieved by the discovery of wonder drugs or the development of intricate surgical procedures assisted by equally intricate and vastly expensive equipment, but by a huge rise in the standard of living.

The Health Service was established to provide cradle to the grave care and has become a victim of its own success in that it is now a widespread if unspoken expectation that care will be provided from conception to postponement of the grave for as long as humanly possible.

It now seems politically incorrect to die of anything at all, so much so that, as a lifelong heavy smoker, devoted to the enjoyment of life rather than the postponement of death, I fear that should I succumb to a smoking-related illness, I shall be laid to rest in unconsecrated ground.

The question seems to be: Do we want an all singing, all dancing health service, employing half the healthy population to keep the marginally alive breathing, at vast expense, or do we have a basic, no frills service which will keep the majority alive, productive and kicking?

Finally, having been a fairly persistent customer of the NHS, and grateful with it, I do wish people would stop whingeing about and criticising doctors, surgeons, and nurses not to mention the executives. It becomes dreary and monotonous.

R J HARVEY

Pound Close, Lyneham