Letters: Good home care costs money

The call to improve home-based care by the Equality and Human Rights Commission is commendable, but more time, staff, training and money are as desperately needed as noble sentiments.

For example, it is common for a home-carer to be given a ridiculous 20-minute slot to wash and change a person, and prepare their breakfast. Anyone who has tried to perform this task for someone suffering dementia and mobility problems will understand that it cannot be done properly in the time, no matter how good their intentions and care skills. These time slots are dictated by private care companies to cram in as many clients per day as possible.

These same care companies will pay care assistants only absolute minimum wage and most of them do not pay any wages for time in transit between visits. Such appalling working conditions lead to high staff turnover, which then prevents long-term care relationships being built.

The UK home-care industry is a cruel joke to everyone but those at the top of the food chain.

P Parfitt

Birmingham

For the first time in my life – I am aged 75 – I have been moved to write to a newspaper.

My husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's 11 years ago. For the past four years we have had carers coming to our home.

This band of ladies, possibly about a dozen over the past four years, have been dedicated, caring, helpful and indeed loving towards my husband. They are cheerful and willing to help with anything and have become my friends, and often my only contact with the outside world. They arrive in all weathers and all bank holidays including Christmas Day for very little money.

I know there are people out there who have a different story to tell, but please don't forget about all the carers who really do care.

Maureen Davis

Cambridge

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission report on home care is right to point out that a task-oriented system results in "alarming" care, that the delivery of home care services is difficult to police effectively and that many of the problems reported are exacerbated by chronic underfunding.

It is extremely difficult to provide high-quality care at the unrealistic rates set by councils, as the recent ruling against Sefton Council's unfair fees for residential care highlighted. Taken with yesterday's report, the ruling suggests the basis for a long-overdue attack on unacceptable services for vulnerable older people, who have earned greater respect.

Mike Parsons

Chief Executive, Barchester Healthcare, London SW10

Reform of the jobs market will benefit workers

The employment law debate risks being falsely characterised as a struggle between employees and employers ("Eroding employee rights will not fix Britain's problems", 23 November). Radical reform of our dismissal system will benefit not only businesses but also individuals, particularly the unemployed.

Taking on new employees is inevitably risky. At this point in the economic cycle, where unemployment is rising, it is young people and those with challenging employment needs who find themselves excluded from the labour market. Employment law, in particular the dismissal process, is part of the reason.

There are many graduates who lack work experience but want to prove themselves in the workplace. No matter how promising they seem, any prospective employer will need to feel confident about options should things not work out. Excessive barriers to dismissal mean that businesses are missing out on talented staff, while individuals are robbed of the opportunity to gain experience and develop themselves.

Like marriages, employment relationships sometimes just don't work out. When this happens, a fair and speedy resolution will help both sides to move on.

In a survey of over 1,000 business leaders, half stated that the burden of employment law had stopped them taking on additional staff. Just imagine the jobs they could create if Britain's businesses knew that, if they behaved responsibly, they would have nothing to fear from the dismissal process.

The announcement by Vince Cable that the Government would be seeking evidence on the case for "compensated no-fault dismissal" is a welcome invitation for the business community. If Adrian Beecroft's proposal does not command sufficient political support, then there are other models for no-fault dismissal which should be considered, including the IoD's suggestion for a system of enhanced compensation with the agreement of both employer and employee.

Simon Walker

Director General, Institute of Directors, London SW1

In troubled times it's reassuring that some things remain the same, and that David Cameron and Adrian Beecroft can take us back to the halcyon days of the 1980s, when we knew what the Tories stood for.

Apparently it's the workers who are to blame for the country's woes and making our jobs even less secure would somehow spur us on to greater productivity. As for the chief executives and banking bosses with their hyper-inflated pay rises, well, you have to pay the high wages to attract the best people. Judging by the parlous state of the country's economy, the "best people" have yet to arrive.

The whole principle of "increasing flexibility in the workforce" is a euphemism for exploiting workers.

Andy Booker

Selston, Nottinghamshire

Stop this futile climate squabble

People who should have more sense appear to be having another petty squabble regarding who said what about global warming, and with how much justification ("Climategate erupts again ahead of key summit", 23 November).

The world does seem to be getting warmer, and I'm quite prepared to believe that mankind's activities are contributing to that. But the extent of our contribution is surely an irrelevance.

Whether or not we are causing global warming we need to clean up our act because we are making a terrible mess. We continue to take natural resources in massive quantities and use energy to make goods we could manage without. We do this partly because of the growing human population, which needs to be curbed. But we do it primarily because our politicians still fear to tell us that economic growth is unsustainable and irrational.

Susan Alexander

Frampton Cotterell, Gloucestershire

Two separate arguments about global warming are getting mixed up. One is whether it is happening; the other is what are the causes.

The weight of evidence that it is happening is now incontrovertible. We don't need to agree about the cause. That simply doesn't matter. What matters is that it is happening. We must do anything we can to stop it. If we can control the causes, fine. If we can stop it by other means, fine.

The question that must be asked is whose interests are so threatened by possible remedies that it might pay them to let it go on. This can only be major industries; let them have the guts to come out of their murky hiding places and make their case, if they have one, honestly and openly.

Kenneth J Moss

Norwich

It's very easy to reduce our "carbon footprint", which the UN says reached record levels last year. A UN report in 2006 found that meat, dairy and egg production result in 18 per cent of our global greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, however, the green group WorldWatch Institute says the figure is actually 51 per cent. Switching to a vegan diet not only saves the planet, but also our health and the lives of other animals.

Mark Richards

Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire

Spending too long in the shower

Your article "Now baths are green option as eco-groups go cold on showers" (22 November) suggested that some power-showers use more water than running a bath.

Being an Independent subscriber and therefore both sceptical and inquisitive, I put the plug in the bath this morning when I took my daily power-shower. Granted my ablutions lasted only five minutes compared to the quite frankly outrageous eight reported in your article, but by the time I had lathered, rinsed and spent a short while planning my day, the water had only come up to my ankles.

When I told my wife that she could now take a bath in the collected water she took one look and treated the suggestion with the disdain it deserved.

Steve Johnson

Burpham, Surrey

Your article did not take any account of the frequency with which baths and showers are taken. People take many more showers than they would baths simply because it's "quick". The mantra that a shower uses less water encourages people to jump into the shower more often. I believe that it may have led to increased water usage.

Yvette Raikes

Camberley, Surrey

A sleazy story of self-regulation

Your calls for moderation in the aftermath of Leveson (leading article, 22 November) might have been heeded if you and other serious newspapers had spent the last 10 years doing what one of your competitors has belatedly done – and routinely and regularly exposed the vile and often criminal behaviour of your tabloid rivals.

As it was, you mostly preferred to look for a high-minded take on their sleazy stories. You had your chance at effective self-regulation but were too cowardly to take it – whatever comes after is wholly your fault, so stop whining about it.

R S Foster

Sheffield

We all get ill and die

Peter Erridge (letters, 22 November) asserts that "if more of us adopted a healthier lifestyle... there would be fewer patients to treat. As a consequence there could be serious cuts to NHS budgets". He is seemingly unaware that we're all going to get ill and die in the end; in fact, the healthier and longer I live, the more I am going to cost the health service, beset as I will be by non-fatal ailments in my later years.

John Riches

Brighton

Quantitative forgeries

Dominic Lawson (Opinion, 22 November) suggests that just as counterfeiters are prosecuted for printing money purporting to be issued on the authority of the Bank of England, so too the Bank of England ought to be prosecuted for issuing new money purporting to come from the Bank of England. Next thing he will be telling us that Rolex should be prosecuted for selling Rolexes.

Alan Weir

Belfast