Readers' Letters: Scottish Government must clear 'back door' of hospitals

Any hope of resolution was dashed by the Scottish Government spokesperson who comments that the SG continues to promote additional staff for the Scottish Ambulance Service, which will only lead to more ambulances parked outside A&E Departments. Please, please put the money into clearing the back door!

(Dr) Roger Smith, Edinburgh

Broken promises

I have been very lucky up until now never to have been admitted to hospital but it makes me so angry to hear that corridor care has become an everyday reality in hospitals. The Royal College of Nursing in Scotland concluded that 1 in 5 nursing staff is providing care to patients in corridors, waiting rooms and cupboards on a daily basis. A further 13 per cent of staff said they did it weekly.

Apart from the obvious practical matters such as not being able to access cardiac monitors etc, there is the lack of privacy and dignity that being treated in a corridor entails.

The current Health Secretary, Neil Gray, just like all his SNP predecessors, doesn’t have the foggiest how to solve this issue, merely throwing more money at the NHS. On 27 March this year, John Swinney at FMQs said: “Let me make it clear to the Parliament that I do not accept that – rather, I will not tolerate it. I will not normalise corridor care.” Broken promises yet again, Mr Swinney. At what cost to the dignity and safety of Scotland’s citizens?

Jane Lax, Aberlour, Moray

Flag fouled

Whatever happened to Scotland as an inclusive country? The pro-Palestinian brigade are taking huge liberties.

The war is over but suddenly certain areas of Glasgow are bedecked with Saltires coupled with the Palestinian flag, half of each on the one flag. This is a desecration of the Saltire and cannot be assumed to represent Scots. The pro-Palestinian supporters appear to think they can take over Scotland and dictate to Scots how they should think. It is also a very large slap in the face to Scotland's Jewish community.

John Swinney must act immediately, have these flags removed and allow the police to investigate who is putting these offensive items up. No government can let a few people dictate to the majority in this way.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Partial truths

Christine Jardine rightly praises Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin for their handshake and reconciliation at their meeting with President Clinton in 1993, but attributes the failure of building on that diplomatic progress at Camp David in 2000 to Rabin’s assassination in 1995 (Perspective, 20 October).

That failure surely lay far more with Arafat. Despite his team having negotiated a reasonable settlement, he rejected it – to the disbelief of those like Bill Clinton and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, ambassador to the USA 1983-2005 and then head of its National Security Council, who also criticised the Palestinian leaders for decades of failing their people.

As Clinton said “Arafat walked away from a Palestinian state, with a capital in East Jerusalem, 96 per cent of the West Bank, and 4 per cent of Israel” (which was to offset the 4 per cent of the West Bank retained by Israel). Ms Jardine talks of Arafat’s “vision”, but his vision seemed to mean total capitulation and acceptance by Israel of all of his demands.

Israel then withdrew all its troops from Gaza in 2005, to be rewarded by Hamas building miles of tunnels and misusing its massive funds of international aid; and made further proposals both in 2005 and 2008, building on Camp David, but Mahmoud Abbas rejected them too. It is clearly not possible in a letter to cover all the negotiating history ins-and-outs; but certain facts should not be ignored, by either side as partial truths can be misleading.

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

Odd silence

I am the sort of voter the SNP must win over if it is to achieve its objectives for the 2026 election. I have noticed that most SNP / independence apologists amongst regular Scotsman correspondents have fallen silent in recent months.

I am disappointed that nobody has challenged Ian Moir’s regular letters about the frightening realities of the economics of wind farm electricity generation under independence. And Richard Marsh summarises some of the broader unanswered economic issues (Letters, 18 October).

I challenge any pro-SNP/independence correspondent still out there to answer the points raised by Ian Moir and Richard Marsh. Maybe there are indeed other pro-independence correspondents who will also provide concrete responses. Their success could win my vote, but silence or wishful thinking will lose it.

Hamish Johnston, Balloch, Inverness

Waste of trees

The greatest outrage from Lenny Henry's book The Big Payback is that perfectly good trees died for it. It is celebrity offal at its worst – riddled with half truths and historical inaccuracies in order to appeal to its target market's worst instincts. For example, contrary to Henry's narrative, Jamaica was booming after independence and for long after – it was only its 1978-80 near civil war between its two left wing factions,the People's National Party and the Labour Party, that destroyed it beyond repair as thereafter no serious investor would touch it. Oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago to the south is one of the world's ten leading economies, yet Henry thinks they need “reparations”! In these incendiary times, irresponsible publishers put a match to petrol by giving platforms to celebrity hucksters knowing full well the discord they will inflame will happen in neighbourhoods far away from their own on Millionaires Row.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

​Plan pension

James MacIntyre (Letters, 18 October) correctly draws attention to the preference given to public sector pensions, paid from GDP regardless of cost, with no need for funding. The calculation in my day was one eightieth of salary a year up to a maximum of 40 years, which would yield half pay on retirement. Plus index linking thereafter, of course.

Meanwhile we private sector slaves who actually make the money for that munificence are regulated, and have to make provision for our own pensions in an ever-increasing plethora of legislation – most of which is punitive. Former Chancellor Gordon Brown’s abolition of corporation tax relief on that part of business profits used for pensions being a good example. I recall a kindly consultant at Sun Life of Canada who told me – in 1959 – that nobody would provide for me at retirement, and he meant “nobody” to include the government, so to make my own arrangements, which thankfully I did.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Perth and Kinross

Build houses

I've been impressed by Kemi Badenoch in the past few months, she seems to be rational, determined and persuasive… but I fear she'll be undermined and ditched by the Boris Johnson-Liz Truss zealots who should be joining Reform.

But she's wrong to propose abolishing stamp duty. This will artificially stoke up house prices. She should keep the tax and use the £9 billion annual revenue to build 90,000 sorely needed council houses (costing £100,000) per year . The increased supply would also bring down private sector prices.

Margaret Thatcher killed council housing in 1979 and no party, including, to their faux-socialist shame, Labour and the SNP, wants it.

It would be a huge vote winner with young families for the party that was in power for 16 of the 33 years between 1946 and 1979 when 5,804,150 council houses were built, including my childhood home, built in 1953 when Churchill was PM.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Get smart

Scotland has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe yet a Chinese company wants to create a huge industrial site in the North of Scotland to build wind turbines, well away from any meaningful road links, major airports or sea lanes (your report, 20 October).

In spite of what Ming Yang Smart Energy might tell us there is going to be a massive influx of Chinese workers if the proposal goes ahead. Are the local hospitals and schools equipped to deal with that influx.Is there sufficient housing capacity and recreational facilities for all the workers? Does anyone in Holyrood or Westminster ever think about that or are they simply going to give China an “Overseas Territory” in Europe?

Bruce Proctor, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Decadence

The end of the western Roman Empire can be understood not only from the fact that they spent all their gold reserves.

Thereafter, Roman governments continued their prolific overspending until total economic collapse and loss ensued.

Fast forward to present decades, beginning when Chancellor Gordon Brown spent/sold off the UK's gold reserves. Since then, UK governments have continued to overspend and run up huge debts regardless of the consequences-just as did the Romans on their road to perdition.

Have our governments learnt nothing from the lessons of history?

Elizabeth Marshall, Edinburgh

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