It’s crucial to get facts right on who runs the NHS

Thankfully not in Scotland, by design not by accident (sorry, unfortunate play on words).

In last Wednesday’s Budget, Jeremy Hunt eased these highly paid and stressed medics’ pension contributions. The annual limit to pension contributions will move from £40,000 per year to £60,000 per year and the £1 million maximum limit on a pension pot that can be amassed has been scrapped.

These are all big numbers well above which us ordinary mortals could achieve, so why should we all be interested?

Reports in several news outlets advise that doctors have left and more are considering leaving the health services when around the age of 60 as they are facing huge tax bills. As I understand i  they will have used up their £40,000 pension allowance and the residue will become taxed, probably at the highest rate.

The result will increase waiting times for your knee or hip operations which again are apparently driving increases in “going private”. This is not junior doctors.

Again, the frequent reports in the news that we have a Scottish Health Service that is crumbling and about to collapse, hyperbole is rife. It is suffering from shortages of staff, doctors and consultants being a key delivery resource.

By all accounts, NHS England, NHS Wales and NHS Northern Ireland are all suffering more from the same causes that affect the Scottish Health Service.

In summary, we all are aware that nursing staff and carers from EU countries who vacated the UK due to Brexit and are now brought into focus in this Budget are the senior members of health staff.

Both of these functions are under the control of the UK Government – not the devolved governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

So misinformation abounds, in that the devolved governments have “total control of health in their country”. Now it’s clear they don’t.
Alistair Ballantyne
Birkhill, Angus

WHAT an excellent article by Roger Mullin and how pertinent it is to the present situation (Forbes won my admiration amid a time of intolerance, Mar 15). The new SNP leader, whoever it is, will need to address this question of democracy in the SNP and getting the “leadership” to accept and implement the policies decided on by the members at conference.

We will never “dream our way into independence” – as Roger says, we need to prepare for independence now in order to make it attainable, we can’t sit and wait for someone to give it to us. There are a lot of steps the Scottish Government should have taken by now, and must start taking without further delay, to prepare the ground for independence.

If we are doing nothing to set up a Scottish DATA Agency to collect important statistics required to run the economy, if we do nothing to prepare for a Scottish Central Bank, if we do nothing to develop an alternative fiscal policy such as looking carefully at a Land Tax then we will show the UK Government that we are not serious about independence and they will continue to treat our ‘demand’ for a referendum with the same contempt they have shown it before, because they know our Government is not serious.

I hope the new SNP leader adopts a new approach to the independence issue and that must begin by building the infrastructure we will need for an independent country.
Andy Anderson
Ardrossan

THE way in which the SNP payroll faction has run the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon is farcical beyond parody. It’s more ludicrous than a Carry On movie. It would not be fit for the local allotment committee never mind the next first minister.

The blame for this shambles lies squarely at the door of Sturgeon, Murrell and their hangers-on. For eight years, internal democracy has been non-existent. Any dissent against Sturgeon has been ruthlessly eliminated.

Poisoned ID politics proponents and other shakedown artists have weaponised victimhood.

Sanctimonious woke cretins were wheeled out to loudly smear opponents as “bigots”, “racists” and fascists.

Nicola Sturgeon is like a televangelist. With her ascent, evidence-based analysis went out the window. She achieved nothing on independence. Conceding to Westminster a veto on independence. Yet followers ignore this preferring faith and emotion over reason.

Like all good preachers, Sturgeon and her cronies have enjoyed lavish lifestyles funded by the Westminster cesspit.

Sturgeon’s legacy is one of failure and division. She has split the independence movement to an extent the Unionists could only dream of. It will take decades to rebuild if ever. Sturgeon is a liar, a coward, an autocrat and a con artist.

The very worst and most unforgivable blunder is the confidence that utterly stupid Unionists now get to smugly prognosticate and dismiss any prospect of Scottish decolonisation.

The payroll faction are now trying to use Nixonian dirty tricks to ensure the machine candidate Humza Yousaf wins. They first tried to exclude the public from the hustings. They then tried to hide the fact 30,000 members have left since January. Then conducted a smear campaign against the other candidates.

This strategy will backfire. The payroll faction are trying to abandon independence for further devolved powers. Without the carrot of independence, the SNP are indistinguishable from Labour. As such, many supporters will simply drift away and the gravy train will come to an end.
Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

I BLAME the Sturgeon/Murrell partnership entirely for the leadership problems. Sturgeon/Murrell have done their damnedest to suppress enthusiasm for independence.

She left in a hurry hoping their man would be a shoo-in and when that didn’t happen, they’ve done their best to frighten the members into voting for him. Well there are a lot of members, me included, who will not tolerate more dilly-dallying from the Yousaf/Murrell partnership. There is Alba now to vote for.

I am sick and tired of watching SNP interviewees being silenced by commentators and Unionists, and not once do they stick up for themselves or independence. The only bullets we have are verbal and if we don’t use them we haven’t a hope of winning any battles.

“Don’t rock the boat, be nice to everyone”, are the instructions coming down from headquarters. No wonder Yousaf and the same-again policy is so popular with the Unionists.

Once again we need to enthuse the public, this time with action and not useless words. Set up our own ports to export Scottish goods. Apart from Rosyth, much goes to English ports (I understand that goods that go through English ports are classed as UK exports and not Scottish – is that right?) We have to get rid of this constant rubbishing of Scotland’s economy through the annual GERS fiasco. Where’re our own gas and electric distributors? For a country that is energy-rich to pay so much for the energy we use is a disgraceful legacy of the Sturgeon/Murrell partnership and only goes to prove that we can’t run our own country.

Much time and money have been wasted on policies to placate minorities and not enough spent on persuading the Scots that our country can be independent. I don’t want Sturgeon to be an ambassador for independence. She has done so much to kill enthusiasm for independence in our own country; we don’t want her telling other countries that we don’t want independence for 30 years. Get rid of her.
Wendy Parsons
via email

ALL Quiet On The Western Front did really well at the Oscars. Something else has gone all quiet, though. I can’t see much debate about the despicable way some have treated the trans community recently, particularly since Viceroy Jack has, no doubt in his and some others’ eyes, put them well and truly back in their box! Something this week reminded me of this.

I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. So it’s downstairs to watch telly until I get tired again. The programme on was “HARDtalk” presented by the excellent Stephen Sackur. It’s a current affairs interview programme that’s very much a throwback to similar programmes in the 1960’s and 70’s whereby the tone is serious, some might say pretty intellectual and the viewers are treated like proper adults, in contrast to much of the dumbed-down fare nowadays.

Stephen was interviewing Roxane Gay. She is a black American writer, a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, a professor, an editor and social commentator. She is a feminist and is bisexual. After listening to her it was clear she was a very intelligent, fascinating, formidable woman.

The discussion got round to the divide within feminism about transgender rights. Stephen put to Roxane the view of some that when it comes to safe spaces for women, biology should trump gender self-identification. She didn’t agree. She stated, “I think that trans women are women. This obsession with biology, I think we are spending a disproportionate amount of time on things that aren’t necessarily even happening and all of the dangerous men that I’ve known don’t dress up as women to be dangerous, they just do it in plain sight, as men.

“I think that any time you try to control gender unilaterally and dictate what gender is there is a problem and I don’t see why there’s a problem with inclusion, I really don’t. I always think of course we should try to build bridges with people with whom we disagree otherwise progress is going to be even more challenging and elusive but how do you build bridges when we have this fundamental disagreement? One side is saying we want to be inclusive, we want to err on the side of generosity and empathy and the other side is saying we are trying to eradicate womanhood which is certainly not what is happening.”

It was interesting to hear what such a respected woman from across the pond had to say on the matter after all the toxic furore over here recently. Clearly there are those that fundamentally disagree with Roxane but the three most important words she used, in my opinion, were “inclusive”, “generosity” and “empathy” (I would add respect). She exuded all three and that surely has to be a good thing. Just saying...
Ivor Telfer
Dalgety Bay, Fife

SO the Right Honourable Sir Keir Starmer thinks the country that gave the world anaesthesia, the saline drip, inoculation against smallpox and typhoid, penicillin, the hypodermic syringe, and led in developments of modern diagnostic technologies can become a “world leader” in medical technology.

Let me say to this man: you have not been paying attention; the complete list of Scottish advancements is far longer than those I have highlighted above. Scotland needs no help from him nor the government in England to become something we already are. All we need from London is the removal of the shackles that keep us tied into his toxic union that holds us back.
Ni Holmes
St Andrews