A reader breaks down the result of 14 years of Tory ideology on our NHS

Have your say on these MetroTalk topics and more in the comments.

Should the prime minister love the history of this country?

Otto Inglis (MetroTalk, Wed) claims 
that Sir Keir Starmer ‘dislikes Britain 
and hates our history’ which ‘can only end in disaster’.

No one is required to love our history in order to become prime minister.

Politicians need only concern themselves with the economy – either destroying it (for example, Liz Truss), growing it (Harold Macmillan) or managing stagnation and decline (Margaret Thatcher). Robert Bucknor, Tunbridge Wells

Now the facts about Chris Kaba – the unarmed man shot dead by a firearms officer when trying to flee a police stop – being a dangerous villain have been clearly established, may I hope that the Villains Appreciation Society of the left will get it into their thick skulls that the police are not always wrong and that the working people the left claim to care about are the main victims of crime. Mark Taha, London

Why can’t we take the water companies into public ownership again?

It’s ridiculous of environment secretary Steve Reed to claim nationalising the water companies would cost £100billion (Metro, Thu).

When they were privatised, the sale raised £7.5billion. But loans of £5billion were written off by the government to make the companies attractive to buyers.

They also received a ‘green dowry’ of £1.5billion. So the net gain to the treasury was £1billion. And yet, since privatisation, water firms have paid £72billion in bonuses and dividends, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay told the House 
of Commons.

So why can’t the assets simply be taken back into public ownership without compensating the owners? They have had their money back many times over. Barry Cash, Bristol

Addressing the home-school critics

I’ve seen a couple of comments in MetroTalk on home-schooling – or home education, as we call it.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on it even when they have no experience of it nor have done any research on it to have an informed opinion.

So as a home educator I would like to reply to some of the comments.

Why do home educators put their kids through exams early? Mainly so they don’t have to sit so many at once. Why do that if you don’t have to? There is no right time to sit exams. If your child is ready for them, they can sit them whenever.

The whole point of home education is to tailor it to your children. There is no one right way to do it.

Secondly, we do not home educate our children to ‘shield them from real life’. In fact, mine experience real-life ups and downs as they are not in the artificial environment of school.

And we don’t sit at home all day! We have a large community of people we interact with regularly, both schooled and home-educated. There is no need to feel negativity to home-educators. We’re just choosing to do it a different way to you. We all have a choice.

And to those who say that home education contributed to the tragic death of ten-year-old Sara Sharif because she had been taken out of school and teachers could not see her injuries, I disagree. Social services were alerted to her case long before.

There are horrible people in all walks of life – and there are many, many children who are in school but are being abused undetected at home. Tanya East, Sheffield

10 years for throwing a milkshake – but what about instigating racism?

I am writing in response to Nick Smith (MetroTalk, Wed) saying that Victoria Thomas Bowen should be jailed for ten years for throwing a milkshake over
Nigel Farage.

I would be interested to know what he thinks a just punishment would be for someone who helped instigate race riots that resulted in racist thugs trying to burn refugees and Muslims alive. Nadeem Khalid, London

Praise for Tony Blackburn and what do you call your lounge?

Thank you for a wonderful 60 Seconds with Tony Blackburn (Metro, Wed). It really cheered me up and I can only say I wish we had a lot more Tony Blackburns around as it would make this world a better and brighter place. Patrick Neville, via email

Is it old-fashioned to say ‘sitting room’ these days? I just heard someone in the street refer to it as the ‘lounge’. Being born in the 1970s, I always heard my parents call it the ‘sitting room’. Holly, London

And a plea for courtesy…

Could I please ask that people stop crossing over in front of others when getting off a bus/escalator as this could cause the other person to lose balance or fall.
I’m not steady on my legs at the best of times and when people are getting off, they seem to want to shortcut across in front of the other person as they want to go in the opposite direction of where they are alighting from.

This makes me feel unbalanced and quite often I feel like I could fall.

It takes no more than a nanosecond to just get off in the direction you are in and then turn to the direction you want to go. Please be more considerate of others. Sheree, Walthamstow