Face the facts: Ayrshire cannot support two acute general hospitals

The looming danger is that medical services in Ayr will fail, like a bankrupt, slowly then suddenly. The consolidation of services at Crosshouse is inevitable as medical and nursing staff will avoid Ayr, as a failing hospital with no future.

The question which must be asked is how will Crosshouse survive when it is allegedly riddled with failing RACC concrete which may require £80 million of redial work just to stay up? Past capital spending on additional buildings on both sites has been wasted, with no observable benefits.

The only solution for Ayrshire is the proposed new district general hospital at Monkton, with all acute services on a single site. Are the plans for that proceeding? The Ayr situation makes progress urgent. The Ayrshire public,150,00 of whom will be future patients annually, must lobby their local politicians regularly to take health care provision in Ayrshire seriously. So far there is little evidence they do.

The Ayr Hospital building, which is relatively new, can be repurposed as a long-term care facility and-or a day care unit. New long-term care beds would overcome the bed blocking in an acute unit and might help to reduce waiting times for surgery, which approach several years for hip and knee replacements.

As has been said many times before, the status quo ante is unsustainable, but heads, public, political and medical, have been in the sand for far too long.

Gavin R Tait FRCSEd, East Kilbride.

Torness nuclear power station (Image: PA)

We do need nuclear

OU published two letters (November 30) claiming that Scotland does not need nuclear power since, it is claimed, it is self-sufficient in renewables. A few facts illustrate the lack of depth to this argument.

While reading the letters, 31% of Scotland’s electricity was being generated at Torness Nuclear Power Station with a further 19% generated by gas turbines. That is, half of Scotland’s electricity was being generated by power stations which it is intended to shut down.

To give some idea of the importance of nuclear and gas generation, Torness can supply 1,190MW while gas-fuelled Peterhead Power Station can supply 1,180MW.

In contrast, the Whitelees wind farm, the UK’s largest onshore wind farm, has an installed capacity of 539MW but it is dependent upon wind conditions. When I most recently visited it (on October 14), it was displaying the figure of 3793MWh as the average daily output over the preceding three months. Dividing this figure by the 24 hours in a day gives an average output of 158MW.

This morning, rather than being generated in Scotland, 3% of Scotland’s electricity was imported. When Torness closes, rather than Scotland being self-sufficient in energy, we can expect to see the proportion of electricity imported across the border significantly increasing.

Virtue-signalling and political rhetoric will not keep the lights on.

George Rennie, Inverness.

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• I NOTE the two letters today against nuclear power which are interesting and understandable given the poor press of nuclear waste.

In my view, however, nuclear power is like the space race of the 1960s. Here are the dangerous problems: how do we fix them?

The danger with nuclear power is not really how it is used; it is what you end up with. A pile of dangerous material that no one wants nor knows how to deal with it.

How about instead, we said "OK, you want to build a nuclear power station, then we want 10% of the cost up front (probably about £200 million) put into a research and development facility with one, and only one, remit: how to safely neutralise the waste"? Three power stations and £600 million would be a self-sustaining research hub which I have no doubt would find the solution to the problem possibly by the time the power stations were built.

Like the space race I believe there would be fantastic-side benefits of miniaturisation, not to mention education and world-leading research.

Ken Mackay, Glasgow.

Say no to reparations

WESTERN politicians are descending on COP28 in Dubai knowing full well that the developing nations are sitting like vultures ready to pick at the carcass of the proposed $100 billion a year Loss and Damage Fund paid by the developed countries which are alleged to have caused climate damage to these developing countries. The next demand will be for reparations for past "climate-related disasters".

A recent paper by two British environmentalists in the journal Nature Sustainability claimed that Britain owed £6.2 trillion. Time for politicians to grow a backbone and learn to say "No, no, no" in various languages.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow.

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Common sense is out the window

LIKE David J Crawford (Letters, November 30), I am "an old git" but recall a time when, in particular, discipline was uppermost in the home, at school and in employment. What I can add to this was a spell of National Service. Ten weeks' hard training at Stirling Castle brought obedience and discipline to new heights.

Niall Young's mention (Letters, November 30) of inadvertent carriage door opening highlights another present day failing in that common sense is now a rare facet of behaviour, with instruction having to be given not to do so or take care in doing whatever it may be.

John Macnab, Falkirk.

A man's game? Not really

W MACINTYRE'S contribution (Letters, November 30) to the debate on VAR (video assistant referees) accords with my views. Perhaps the whole business was set up because of VARs (very average referees).

I was pleased last night to see that a lady refereeing a European men's game did not have her head turned by the VAR. Perhaps, however, I am entering dangerous waters here; will a lady ever referee an Old Firm game?

One to ponder.

David Miller, Milngavie.