13 February 2021 • 12:02am
More than one in three ambulance staff have had Covid-19, most of them catching it while at work
Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA
SIR – I admire the attempts by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, to reform the NHS to make it more responsive to the risk of future pandemics. He seems, however, to have rejected the Tories’ 1944 mixed private-state plan, flagged up by Allister Heath (Comment, February 11).
This may be because we already have such an organisation. Local private hospitals have, for the second time in under a year, been taken over by the NHS, meaning that patients who have paid large premiums for private health cover cannot access what they have paid for.
A PASSIONATE plea has been made for Dorset Council to think again after it rejected a plan for new housing for vulnerable people at a redundant building in Bridport. Daniel Taylor Almshouses (DanTay), which has been providing houses for the poor for hundreds of years, applied to convert the former Chancery House day centre into ten flats. The centre has been standing empty for two years and had been running at a loss for some time before its closure. DanTay says its plan would provide a genuinely affordable housing solution for people who have got into difficulty for whatever reason and may now be sleeping on friends sofas in tents or even shop doorways.
BBC News
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image captionMonty Python, left to right: Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin
The dead parrot went live 50 years ago on Sunday when Monty Python made the leap from TV to public performance.
Until 31 January 1971, when the comedy troupe appeared in Coventry, people had only been able to watch on screen.
But the stage show meant that for the first time, silly walks, nudge-nudges and wink-winks could be enjoyed in the flesh - or in the case of a Norwegian blue, the feathers.
And that s not to mention John Cleese selling ice cream in the interval.