NHS dentistry: we must crack down on the private sector

Since then the types and the complexity of the forms of treatment available and especially the costs they incur have changed dramatically. Today an increasing number of Scottish dental practices are owned by four corporations, which necessitates that income from the treatments provided covers not only the operating costs and staff wages but needs to service loans and provide a return for the owners/shareholders in the corporations. Corporate practices especially find it difficult to be financially viable from NHS fees based on the budget that Holyrood has available. Hence an increasing number of practices will not provide NHS treatment.

The current situation in NHS dentistry highlights what is happening to healthcare in general where the private sector is having a negative effect on the NHS. What to do? We need to review what treatments are available via the NHS in all sectors. We have to prevent NHS staff “moonlighting” in the private sector. The private sector either must be compelled to train its own staff or contribute substantially financially to NHS training schemes. It is patently ridiculous that you may wait months for treatment in the NHS but be seen by the exact same person in a private clinic in a few days' time if your wallet is fat enough.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

Smokers: think of the children

PAUL McPhail (Letters, April 18) refers to proposed anti-tobacco legislation and suggests that politicians should focus on what they are paid to do and not interfere with the individuals’ rights to choose. Thus, we are to be allowed to choose whether we damage ourselves by breathing something other than wholesome air into our lungs. After all, if we choose to shorten our own lives, it is our own lives we shorten.

Haud on a wee minute: the Department of Health and Social Care informs us that children whose parents smoke are four times more likely to take up smoking. So, for many, their choice to smoke is affected by the example set by their parents, a direct interference on the child’s freedom to choose.

We owe it to our children, who have had absolutely no choice whatsoever about what their parents will encourage them to do, that they have their lives saved or lengthened by legislation.

Steve Gilchrist, Troon.

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High cost of a cooked breakfast

ALAN Simpson extols the virtues of the full cooked breakfast and the mac and cheese served up on the Calmac ferries ("CalMac should be trusted to run ferries", The Herald, April 20).

However, my understanding is that it is providing the facilities and staff to produce this catering that is a part of the reason why these ferries are larger and carry more crew than other ferry operations with the associated increase in capital and operational costs. Also that the larger accommodation increases the windage and thus can negatively affect the weather sensitivity of the vessels with disruption and delays to schedules.

Mr Simpson concludes by stating that islanders may wish to reassess their expectations of what the ferry service’s role actually is. May I suggest to Mr Simpson that he too should reassess whether it is the role of a lifeline communication ferry service to provide him with a full Scottish breakfast?

John Reid, Dunblane.

This complaint what I have

I BLAME Ernie Wise. I really do.

There, I've said it. And already I am bracing myself for the onslaught of abuse from fans of Britain's greatest ever comedy double act (Ooh no, I've done it again. No doubt my windaes will get panned in tonight by a heated hybrid horde of fans of the Two Ronnies, Little and Large and the Chuckle Brothers).

But, let's be quite clear, only one comic has been responsible for agitating adverbs, garrotting grammar, persecuting pronouns, pronouncing death to determiners: the one with the short, fat, hairy legs.

For our younger readers, Morecambe and Wise were essential viewing in the 1970s and they had a segment in their shows where they would ask an entertainment legend to help them perform a drama penned by Little Ern, or as he preferred to call it: "A play what I wrote."

Oh, how we howled with hilarity as he lashed the language, but we all knew it was for comedic effect.

But now? This side-splitting "syntaxident" seems to have surreptitiously slunk into our everyday speech.

As I write this, I am in one of Glasgow's famous hostelries and have just overheard one of our city's working-class comedy double acts discussing the CalMac debacle. One of them - tall, wearing glasses - bemoaned the fact that two ferries were still in the shipyard waiting to be launched. The other one - I'm sure the bespectacled one called him Ernie - nodded sagely and said: "Yes, those are the ones what should be serving Arran."

But it's not just normal blokes in pubs. Last week, I tuned in to another well-known British comedian who has a morning show on the telly: Jeremy Vine. He was covering a story of elderly people getting body ink and he asked a caller, "You mean like the tattoos what we seen earlier?"

Even our illustrious former leader, now (unelected) Defence Secretary, David Cameron, showed that his parents' money wasn't wasted sending their son off to Eton; he recently commented on Radio 4 on the ongoing Middle East situation, saying that the proposed ceasefire and humanitarian aid offered was not "that what we wanted".

I tell you, if Eric Morecambe ever comes back from the grave and asks me: "What do you think of the language so far?" I will have nothing to say except "What RUBBISH!"

Gordon Fisher, Stewarton.

Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, right (Image: BBC)

Bird of praise

THERE seems little to smile about these days, but the name of the bird in today’s Picture of the Day (The Herald, April 22) made me smile: a “yellow-rumped myrtle warbler”.

Wow, who knew?

Eric Macdonald, Paisley.