IT appears as though the future of the NHS will be pivotal in the election battle. Ed Miliband wants to “weaponise” it. David Cameron wants to turn it into a seven day a week service. How on earth did it come to this? Why have we allowed the pathetic so called “management”, which receives £2bn a week to look after us, to effectively take the weekend off and only provide a skeleton service?

Can you image the wonderful people who run our privatised power, gas and water industries deciding that we can’t benefit from their products at the weekend?

Sorry folks, but there’s no electricity or gas for lighting, heating or cooking because it is Friday and at 5pm we are all going home. We won’t turn them back on until 9am on Monday. And, by the way, don’t use the toilet – it won’t flush.

A privatised NHS – still free at the point of use and run by private sector professionals –would have to adopt a customer-focused attitude or get dumped. We are the customers and for some bizarre reason we rejoice in the third class NHS we’ve got instead of demanding the 24/7 totally reliable service we get from utility providers.

DW Lacey, Durham.