Please may we have no more of this sycophantic correspondence about the health service (Judi Lonsdale, Letters, January 2).

Time and again, very serious issues concerning local hospitals are raised in The Argus - not all of them in the letters page - and I honestly cannot recall a single one that has been critical of the actual front-line staff.

Over the past few years, I have endured a number of operations and procedures under the Brighton Health Care NHS Trust and can testify only too well what a constant battle with bureaucracy it has been to get anything done.

For example, my knee operation was on April 5, 2001, the first follow-up physiotherapy on January 7, 2002.

The decline of the NHS began in 1974 (when I was one of its local employees) with Sir Keith Joseph's abolition of matrons in favour of a proliferation of over-paid "managers".

Continuous Tory government - both blue and pink versions - from 1979 to the present day has reduced it to its current, parlous state.

The only way we can bring about the sort of health service we, as taxpayers, are entitled to is to complain and keep complaining.

Maybe then our local MPs might persuade the Chancellor to pay NHS workers a proper wage. That would end the staff shortages overnight.

-Nigel Furness, Cambridge Road, Hove