Now it looks like we are - at last - coming out of the pandemic, we need to think about what kind of London and what kind of economy we want post-pandemic.

It seems to me that blaming individuals for our problems either at local or national level is both divisive and counter-productive.

What we have learned is that hundreds of thousands of unnamed individuals in the health service and in scientific research, backed up by millions of us who did the right thing, rose up to the challenge of Covid-19 and achieved magnificent results.

We, the people of this country, did this against all the odds. Now, we must learn the lessons of this.

We need to strengthen our National Health Service by investing in training of nurses, doctors, and ancillary staff on a massive scale. We must stop poaching health professionals from other countries and concentrate on recruiting from within our country.

We need to invest in indigenous, basic industries to meet the needs of our people for the important things in life - education, housing, food, transport, culture, textiles etc.

We need to develop an economic system whose priority is production for use not profit.

This may sound overly ambitious but if we can defeat Covid, with thoughtful, forward planning we can do it.

Will Podmore

Clavering Road, Wanstead