Re Polly Toynbee on private sector offers to help the NHS (Let’s get this straight: private healthcare will and must work for the NHS – not the other way around, 15 October), in around 2000, a similar proposal was made to the then health secretary, Alan Milburn, who commended it to NHS bodies. I remember Geoff Scaife, then chief executive of Birmingham Health Authority, describing it as “one for the price of two”. We can perhaps hope, with Polly, that Wes Streeting will be more sceptical.
Alan Wenban-Smith
Former chair, BHA
• Mothers! Be not of faint heart! Use that rage and frustration! With three children and a full-time job, I started art in earnest at 45 (The Guardian view on female artists: a force to be reckoned with, 18 October). This year, aged 75, I exhibited alongside Tracey Emin, 61, at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Marion Kuit
Kendal, Cumbria
• I’m an accordion owner, but I still like jokes that deride them (Letters, 15 October). For example: what’s the difference between an accordion and an onion? Nobody cries when you chop up an accordion.
Peter Ayton
London
• Isn’t it time to retire the oxymoronic term “scientific racism” (‘Race science’ group say they accessed sensitive UK health data, 17 October)? If anything, it is pseudoscientific racism.
James Fanning
Greifswald, Germany
• If Tesco’s so keen on green energy, couldn’t it start with solar panels on the roofs of all of its supermarkets (Tesco signs deal to buy enough solar energy to power 144 large stores, 17 October)?
Ralph Jones
Rochester, Kent
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