Today I have had to visit Harrogate Borough Council offices and was pleased to see in this cold weather that their employees were sitting at their desks working away in shirt sleeve order and that the temperature within the building was a pleasant high teens centigrade.

I actually felt the radiator, which was boiling hot and radiating some heat. No wonder our council tax bills keep leaping up to make us older people poorer so that they can burn the money keeping the working temperature so high in their offices for people half my age who cannot even be bothered to put a jacket on.

No wonder their staff keep going off sick with colds and flu in that heat.

It would be far healthier to reduce the temperature in the place and get the staff to wear a jacket at work, as we used to do in the old days. It lets bodies function properly.

Also I have recently visited Harrogate Hospital mired in C difficile and MRSA bugs. I am not surprised as the temperature in there must have been 25C, just right to let these bugs manifest themselves.

It's beyond time to be sensible and reduced this temperature to 18C and put more bedding on the beds and the patients would be a lot more healthy as would our purses. Not to mention our carbon footprint.

Cliff Johns, email