May 26, 2006

I was given an appointment for May 4, which I refused when informed by the consultant's secretary that even if I was an urgent case I would have to wait four months for a hip replacement. The pain was unbearable.

Private hospitals in the UK quoted £7,800 to £10,000 for the operation. People Logistics, a company specialising in joint replacement surgery abroad for self-paying patients, offered a fully inclusive, minimal invasive, no-MRSA operation for £6,300 in France. Most importantly, there was no waiting list. I chose to go between the Easter and Whit holidays while my son was in school.

We cashed an endowment policy to pay for it.

A friend asked me if this was the best option. For me, it was the only one.

My ten-year-old, who has ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) can now look forward to school holidays with a fully functioning mother and my daughter can resume her wedding plans without the possibility of mum being in a wheelchair.

I will try to get the costs back under the new ruling by European Court judges that patients must be reimbursed for treatment abroad if they face an "undue delay" for surgery at home (Echo, May 17), but I suspect I will have a fight on my hands. - Julie Turley, Thornaby.

FIRE BRIGADE JOBS

ON the same day that Durham and Darlington Fire Brigade announced the redundancies of catering staff (Echo, May 24), Cleveland Fire Brigade advertised in the same issue for human resource assistants to work at its headquarters.

This highlights the fact that any cutbacks in the fire brigade directly affect the frontline service - Durham and Darlington have also lost 40 firefighters in recent times, while the number of administrative staff has increased over the same period.

This proves that the fire brigade is heading in the same direction as the NHS where there seems to be more "chiefs than Indians".

I, for one, will be keeping an eye on the Situations Vacant column, where I'm sure adverts will be appearing for personal administrative assistants which will be deemed necessary and at a greater cost than that of employing station cooks who were made redundant due to budgetary constraints.

- Serving firefighter, name and address supplied.

ROLE EXPLAINED

YOUR correspondent J Routledge (HAS, May 22) is repeating his claim that elected councillors have no right to sit on other bodies. If so, councillors would have no right to sit on police and fire authorities, for example, denying people any democratic representation on these bodies.

Councillors provide links between communities and large numbers of organisations acting in the public interest. My own district council, Wear Valley, elects members to more than 70 local, regional and national bodies.

I gave evidence to a government committee as a concerned individual, exercising my democratic right. However, I am one of the three North-East representatives on the EU Committee of the Regions, and am a vice-chairman of the North East Assembly. It is in those capacities that I am an elected "official representative".

Most regional matters are determined by the North-East's 100-plus government quangos which spend billions of our money annually. The 1,500 or so quango board members, many highly paid, are appointed by government ministers.

All 73 assembly members are voluntary, unpaid and elected by local people. The region's 25 local authorities elect members to the assembly, as do business organisations, trades unions, churches and voluntary bodies, including town and parish councils.

The assembly is the only organisation representing all the region's communities. It is the North-East's democratic voice. - Councillor Chris Foote Wood, North East Assembly Vice-Chairman and LibDem Group Leader.

THANK goodness we have politicians like Chris Foote Wood beavering away cementing us into the EU.

Regarding the rag-bag of quangos set up in the last decade, it requires a regional government to protect them from people who would like to see them dismantled. But regional government is also for the police, health, etc - matters that will eventually be run from Strasbourg.

Also, each English region will compete with the others (and the Celtic regions) to get back a small fraction of our money that is handed to the EU every year. What could be fairer than that?

The only question we need answering is what will the Palace of Westminster be used for?

Go to it, Chris. All of us who support remote government, run by rich foreign bureaucrats, are right behind you. - Frank Evans, Sunderland.

IT appears Chris Foote Wood in his letter to Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, (HAS, May 17) is not up to date with his own Liberal Democrat party.

On April 21, the party said it was "to end decades of support for regional devolution, including elected regional assemblies. Senior figures in a party working group on devolution and local governance have conceded that the policy is outdated. This follows voters' rejection of a North East Assembly in 2004".

Party home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said: "It was unrealistic to continue backing such an unpopular concept." LibDem senior figures did say this would cause a rift among members. Chris Foote Wood must be the rift.

- K Young, Darlington.

ID CARDS

SINCE the Identity Cards Act was introduced it is legal in this country to carry a forged passport. The Act scrapped numerous old laws, without putting new ones in their place. In particular, the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which covered forged passports, was removed from the statute book.

The same Home Office that has lost control of immigration, allows forged passports to circulate legally and approves the early release of murderers and rapists is supposed to be managing the introduction of ID cards, one of the most ambitious and expensive schemes ever proposed by a British government.

The UK Independence Party opposes over-regulation and considers ID cards an expensive white elephant that will be a bureaucrats' paradise, a nightmare for law-abiding citizens and which will do nothing to stop terrorism or organised crime.

Until this New Labour Government is removed from office all we have to look forward to are more unworkable ideas introduced for sound bite potential.

The last Tory government was seen as sleazy and corrupt. This New Labour Government appears no less so, but is also proving totally incompetent.

- Stephen Allison, UKIP councillor, St Hilda ward, Hartlepool Borough Council.

IF anyone has any doubt of the dangers to innocent people from the State running an ID system and demanding fingerprints of every honest citizen, then I hope they consider the news that 1,500 ordinary honest people were falsely catalogued as criminals by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Will any of us be able to check the database behind the government ID system? Of course not. For residents who resent having to pay extra for passports so they can be fingerprinted like criminals, please obtain them before October. To see how the State wishes to enforce ID cards by stealth visit the website www.No2ID.org.uk - Councillor Steve Radford, President of The Liberal Party, Liverpool.