Better to be online than on hold for a GP | GPs

As a single parent of two disabled children who have many medical needs, I have found the new online booking system for GPs a huge improvement (Letters of December 12). It’s effective and much less stressful for me. My downtown office responds quickly. It was in the streets in front of the old system that I called the number 26 at 9 am.
Anne McLaughlin
Manchester

Politicians across the spectrum have condemned resident doctors for striking for significant progress to bring their pay back to parity in real terms with that before the 2008 crash (officials fear the NHS could be hit hard after resident doctors’ latest offer was rejected on December 15). Perhaps these same politicians would like to tell us how their own salaries have evolved over the same period.
Tony Fletcher
Bryncoch, Neath Port Talbot

Your correspondent writes: “A few scales and arpeggios don’t hurt anyone” (Letters, December 15). As someone who endured excruciating carpal tunnel syndrome while practicing scales and arpeggios for an 8th grade piano, I disagree.
Édouard Collier
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

At the end of HS2, Patrick Barkham was told that “it will start with a ‘4’ when you can take a train” (“We hate that. It’s desecration”: the true cost of HS2, December 16). Certainly, two more millennia before its completion are pessimistic, even for this project.
David Griffiths
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

A close friend of my late father said that there were three ages in man: youth, middle age and “my God, you look good” (Letters, December 16).
Chris Southey
Durham