SIR - I wrote on this page recently praising the care I received following a heart scare. Parliament has been dissolved with the Conservative-led coalition clearly leaving the clinical side of the NHS in pretty fine fettle, even if Gordon Brown’s 2000-2008 PFI hospital building binge has left it up an increasingly sticky financial gum tree.

I learned yesterday that Labour is proposing to ‘save’ the NHS by creating an additional 1000 nurse training positions. This will clearly make all the difference.

With a population of some 520,000, Bradford district’s pro rata share of that ambitious Socialist programme will amount to eight extra nurses. Assuming they work a 42-hour week each, with a spot of holiday entitlement, they will be able to cover rather fewer than two posts. Let’s be generous and round up to two – that’s one for BRI, with St Luke’s and Airedale sharing the other.

Unless of course he or she moonlights at the Yorkshire Clinic, where, with a bit of intelligent commissioning by the NHS, many of the district’s veteran Socialists are happy to get their knee replacements done.

Alan Chapman, Beck Lane, Bingley