I DON’T think there is any room for complacency regarding NHS Scotland (Letters, January 16).

Of course it would be great to get one over on England by showing our NHS can meet its targets, but I had an admission date for a major operation at the beginning of January postponed one week, only six days before I was due to go in to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (ARI). Then the second date was postponed, only five days before admission.

I have been given another date in another week’s time – third time lucky?

I’m told that dates cannot be guaranteed due to shortage of staff. Shortage of beds does not seem to be the problem. There is a shortage of staff causing many operations throughout ARI to be cancelled, and I doubt that ARI is the only hospital suffering from this shortage.

This might be because many of the staff have colds and possibly many of the available staff have been sent to A&E so that targets can be met, and we can pretend we have no problems in Scotland’s NHS.

A little realism would not go amiss. We need to solve these issues, not hide them.
Sheila Ritchie
Buckie

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is time to adopt the euro in parallel with the pound

THE May Brexit Plan appears to firstly target a fall in the value of the Great Brexit Pound, for the UK to reduce its national debt, to make exports equivalently priced to tariff-free trade with the EU, and to make its infrastructure internationally cheap to invest in.

And secondly, in parallel, to reduce corporation tax, negating both the lower value of assets being used for tax avoidance, and international money-laundering investment currency depreciations. To this end, Brexit, hard Brexit and clean Brexit announcements are seemingly issued, as and when required, to deliver the above.

The question Scotland faces, therefore, is whether to tie a Scottish currency to the Great Brexit Pound (GBP), or even use the GBP, or to another major currency such as the euro, or even use the euro.

Any new Scottish currency will be spurned by rUK, so we need a major international legal tender currency. I do not see any practical alternative but to start using the euro in parallel to the GBP as soon, and as widely, as possible. We need the EU to be investing and spending in Scotland free of currency transaction fees, and we need the developing single energy market within the EU to be euro-based.

Scotland using the euro would be relatively stable, in comparison to rUK with its lower taxes, lower value Great Brexit Pound, and compensatory austerity max plus, needed to balance the books.

So the currency argument comes back again to essentially an argument over tax and spend.

Low tax on the rich and low spend on the poor is the Tory way, and we cannot tie ourselves to this, so it’s the euro. The time for Scotland to start laying the groundwork for sidestepping the May plan is now.
Stephen Tingle
Greater Glasgow

I WAS a little sceptical to say the least about Susan Grant’s assertion that UK workers had no legal entitlement to holidays before the EU (Letters, January 11). Really? Employers must have been uncommonly generous, then, as I remember my parents and other older relatives getting paid holidays before we joined the (then) EEC.

I am sorry Susan is tired of hearing the EU described as being run by a “cabal of bankers and multinationals”. Lovina Roe (Letters, January 10) is not alone in believing that the EU definitely works on their behalf, or why are we being lumbered with TTIP and CETA, which potentially run a coach and horses through workers’ rights and environmental and consumer law? Also, the comment conflating Poland, Finland and Latvia joining the EU to escape Russian domination sounds dangerously like Scotland trying to escape from the United Kingdom by running to the EU – that is, from domination by one union to domination by another – as I fear smaller countries are swamped within the EU. Finland and Poland, I would suggest, were a different case from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. For one thing, although Russia tried to invade Finland, it failed.

The “socialist idea of people being stronger together” sounds suspiciously like we are “better together”, and I am afraid she totally lost me by describing the EU as having socialist principles. I can only conclude that the definition of “socialist principles” must have changed.
Julia Pannell
Friockheim

I WAS struck by figures that came out last week from the Department of Health, obtained through Freedom of Information.

These indicate that many more expat UK pensioners rely on European health care under reciprocal health care agreements, than UK-based European pensioners rely on the NHS.

So, when individuals naively comment on the supposed burden of other EU nationals on the NHS, it should be noted that this is more than outweighed by the impact of UK nationals on the health systems of other EU states.

When Britain leaves the EU, these arrangements would cease to apply if it also left the EEA, as looks to be the case, and would need to be renegotiated as part of any exit deal.

If the terms are not as good as the current ones, pensioners may no longer get the same access to public healthcare in these countries.

Of course it then becomes expensive for older people to get health insurance, and so it may be they feel obliged to return to the UK.

The Government needs to tell us urgently if it is its intention to maintain those reciprocal healthcare arrangements after Brexit.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh

THE German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag has reacted with insight to Philip Hammond’s threats. A heading refers to his threats as Ausdruck Britischer Ratlosigkeit – “expression of British cluelessness”.

Commentators in the paper point out that a “trade war” is the last thing the UK needs.

The horrendous trade imbalance and the growing budget deficit put the UK in a weak position.

A failing pound has lost value since the Brexit vote.

Hammond’s trump card is to create a new tax haven in the UK. But it was pointed out that the UK is member of OECD and G7, and there are guidelines for members on taxation of companies.

So, the much trumpeted global Britain and messianic free trade is bound by agreements within the existing global network.

Issuing threats does not win hearts and minds and is not a good opening gambit.
John Edgar
Blackford