More cleaners in our hospitals

THANK the Lord someone has finally seen sense over the ludicrous banning of visitors taking flowers into hospitals or sitting on their relatives’ beds.

It is obvious that these things are not the cause of hospital superbugs like MRSA. All they are is a knee-jerk reaction from Trusts wanting to look like they are doing something to combat infection when what they should actually be doing is paying more cleaners to keep hospitals clean.

And anyway, if we are going to ban anything to do with hospitals, surely we should look at banning nurses from leaving the hospital wearing their uniforms.

That must be the single biggest gatherer of germs.

Mrs J North, Allerton

PM caught out

SO OUR Prime Minister has been caught out at Chilcot – saying that there had been real term increases year on year in defence spending under Labour – when in fact in some years there had been cuts. Shamelessly, rather than just admitting it, he tried to equivocate the fact arguing differences in "cash" and "resource" budgets.

Brownites may try and argue that this was not a lie but a genuine error – however this rather contradicts their other assertion that he is a master of financial matters.

In other areas of finance we can equally be sceptical of the PM's integrity – for example he argues that the budget deficit will be halved in four years – he's been saying this for a year already and Labour have continually underestimated the budget deficit – each time providing a plethora of reasons why it's not their fault they fail to reach "their" predicted figure.

On the latest unemployment figures – behind Labour's spin and manipulation – the number of people of working age in employment was down to 72.2%; there was also a reduction in the number working full time.

Mark Bill, via email

Bring it on

THE correspondent who wrote: "Nobody wants to see a return to the fuel protests of a decade ago," (Letters March 17) doesn't speak for me.

I remember that summer with affection. Cars were tanked up and left at home. We managed without. The streets were safe, quiet and peaceful. The air was clean and breathable and folks stopped to chat in the street. Bring it on again, I say.

Alex Black, Chester

Give us a break

I TOTALLY agree with your letter writer on the subject of soaring petrol costs (Letters, March 17). It is about time the Government got some sort of grip on this matter. Here in the UK we pay a ludicrous amount for the same fuel that our European neighbours and American cousins get for a fraction of the price.

When we are being squeezed financially on all side, the least the Government could do is give us a break on fuel tax.

A Howard, Wallasey

Move forward

I FELT compelled to write in after reading your review of the film Green Zone (Daily Post). March 12).

Don’t get me wrong, you rightly highlight Paul Greengrass’s "tour-de-force direction." Add to this, cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s startling vistas of Baghdad under fire which take you closer to the action than anything previously captured in a fiction film and what you have is a blockbuster sure to break the commercial jinx of Iraq War stories.

However, to say that "the lasting legacy won’t be peace and democracy" demonstrates a reluctance to move forward as Iraq does today. Only members of the anti-war brigade too blinded by prejudice remain stuck in the fictional world where Freddy shouts "It’s not your place to decide what happens here." Those of us in the real world, though, saw relatively peaceful elections put Iraq’s Freddys in charge of their own future without any interference from the United States.

Lee P Ruddin, Moreton