Secular dating is anti-Christ

While visiting St John’s Co-Cathedral, I was interested in the educational video about the great Caravaggio and his paintings there.

However, I was offended that dates used in the video referred to “CE” - the common era. This offensive secular means of referring to dates seeks to supplant Christianity from our common shared experience.

Are non-believers really so disturbed by the use of BC and AD? I would suggest they have no right to be. And in the house of God! I don’t blame the non-believers but the Church authorities who, presumably, oversaw this abomination.

Peter Anderson – Kettering, England

Interest on ARMS billing

I have recently noticed that I am being charged amounts of interest on my bills.

I have always paid well within the 45 days grace afforded by the company as per the directives on the reverse side of the bill.

Either somebody doesn’t know what somebody is doing or else this could be a subtle way of taxing the consumer

Reason please, ARMS.

Anthony Girard – Sliema

Nurses are not alone

In the departments of health and that for the care of the elderly, nurse staffing is in crisis. Five hundred have left the profession in a year. Their union complains that understaffing breeds impossible expectations, dangers and unfair blaming.

Nurses at St Vincent de Paul Residence were up in arms against regulations that would turn this home for the golden years into something like a prison.

In reaction to the unfortunate disappearance of a resident, regulations wanted to lock ward doors and keep seniors inside unless accompanied.

In the mental health services, a similar problem is encountered. The health department has been very slow in recruiting and retaining its social workers.

It not only imitated the British error of not recruiting enough social workers for its community teams but it has surpassed them in that error. In fact, there are local teams that do not even have a single social worker, whereas social workers are in high proportions in the US and internationally. It is now an open secret that a Maltese mental health nurse trainer even asked for nurses to be trained in social work to fill the gap.

One logical thing to do in the present recruitment situation is to make a solid drive to recruit health department social workers and to retain them through genuinely improved working conditions and prospects. Good recruitment can bring back into social work the hundreds who are warranted yet seek better conditions in other jobs.

The intrepid and dedicated social workers in the health department deserve to be rescued from decades of absent-minded neglect.

This would also make for more all-round care by health teams and help reduce the pressure on nurses.

Charles Pace – Birkirkara

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