Sir, – Last February, while swimming off the shore of Sanibel Island, Florida, I saw two jackdaws descend on my beach towel. One aggressively kept guard while the other casually tossed aside my hat and picked up my little bottle of glyceryl-nitrate spray. Mission accomplished, they both flew away inland. The bottle had cost me £3.50 in England; in Ireland the price is around €17. But a replacement in America, quoted by several pharmacies, was $196 – for a generic medicine in use for more than a century!
The most common surgical operation in America is a walletectomy. – Yours, etc,
MALCOLM MacDONALD,
Birr,
READ MORE
Co Offaly.