Letters: Scotland urgently needs a professional body to oversee care

Councils can talk a good game about keeping care local but as users can attest they have done a worse than awful job managing the control of the care service with little or no accountability.

Read more:

• SNP mothballs flagship National Care Service
• More than £28 million spent on National Care Service work
• Council leaders withdraw support for National Care Service Bill

What we need is a more professional organisation with overall oversight and control. The reality of current care amounts to abuse of the elderly and vulnerable; it is imperative that there is a body that sets, controls and oversees the standards similar to the NHS.

A more professional organisation can set the standards which will improve working condition, training and pay for staff. Currently, council carers are more professional but because of shortages, casual private carers are often used who offer a very different, unreliable service and frequently fail to turn up when scheduled. People are abandoned with no medication or personal care and all that entails. 

To make it more personal, think if you are a patient in hospital and the nurses fail to turn up for shift. No trained replacement is provided to change dressings, give medication, provide bedpans, change drips or soiled beds. Would you think the hospital was doing a professional job maintaining life-giving care and that that standard was acceptable and did not need to change? The same applies to care of the elderly and vulnerable at home. 
Christine Smith, Troon.

Keeping kids on the straight and narrow
THE news cycle has already moved on, but I remain dismayed to have witnessed once again the wanton violence and vandalism on the streets of many of our towns and cities last week. Sadly it was an exact repetition of the events at the same time last year. This has nothing to do with fireworks per se but an indication of the unrest bubbling under our society.

Last year Kevin McKenna and Neil Mackay each wrote excellent articles addressing the underlying issues.

Kevin McKenna’s piece on the events in Kirkton in Dundee particularly resonated with me as a Dundonian who was born and raised there in the Sixties and Seventies (“A warm welcome in Scotland’s most notorious neighbourhood”, November 23, 2023).

My dad was a policeman, and Kirkton was part of his beat along with Douglas and Beechwood (Dundonians amongst your readers will recognise this as a”tough gig”). On his promotion to sergeant in the mid-Seventies he was asked to lead a team of himself and three constables and form a Community Involvement Branch as a pilot for an initiative of the City of Dundee Police.

The team was to be embedded in the respective communities, focusing on crime prevention and early detection so, along with “normal” police work, he and the team would visit schools, local businesses, pubs and community centres.

In this way after a time they gained a degree of trust and respect from the youths and perhaps more importantly their parents as well as teachers and local businessmen and landlords.

Physical presence on the streets was the key to their success. Quiet words could be had and potential flare-ups could be avoided or contained before they gained any momentum.

The world has changed in the intervening fifty years. Drugs were not yet the problem they have become in Dundee, but a gang culture existed and alcohol was readily available to fuel what we now call anti-social behaviour.

My dad passed away some years ago, but my mum told me that this was one of the most enjoyable periods of his career and he got immense satisfaction getting or keeping “the kids” on the straight and narrow.

I may be a bit naive or sound like I am yearning for the return of a golden age but I genuinely believe that a similar scheme (updated for the digital age!) would at least help in addressing the sense of futility and deprivation pervading society today.
Keith Swinley, Ayr.

Labour’s record with finance
THE financial markets prick up their ears, as Chancellor Rachel Reeves unfolds her plan for combining 86 local authority pension funds into several larger megafunds, in order to maximise investment returns in new areas, such as energy.

Labour’s record with financial matters is not encouraging. Back in 1976, Chancellor James Callaghan had Britain in debt to the IMF to the tune of £3.9 billion, about £24 billion in today’s money, while Tony Blair and George Brown, between 1997 and 2010, managed to treble the national debt, while letting the banks run themselves, thus contributing to the global financial  crisis of 2008, when it came as a surprise to the then Chancellor Alistair Darling, that the Royal Bank of Scotland was insolvent. But all that is in the past, and one must encourage new ways of managing money to assist our return to prosperity.
Malcolm Parkin, Kinross

SNP hopefuls are hedging their bets
IT is quite amusing to watch SNP politicians backtracking on their opinions now that it is some of their own that wish to behave a certain way. There are currently three MPs who wish to put themselves forward as candidates for the 2026 Scottish election and all of a sudden, it is deemed to be acceptable, yet when Joanna Cherry wished to do so, every obstacle was put in her way, including changing their internal rules.  It looks as if the rule will be removed to allow this dual mandate.

Not only that, but back in 2021, when Douglas Ross decided to be the MSP and MP, an SNP spokesperson said: “Douglas Ross clearly has no confidence he will win in Moray, which is why he’s hedging his bets by keeping his job as an MP and standing to be an MSP”. Indeed, the SNP spoke of a bill they wanted to put forward at Westminster to prevent dual-mandating.

One has to question why the SNP are so keen now to have MPs standing in these constituencies. Could it be that they fear for their positions at Westminster and are hedging their bets or could it be that the talent puddle has completely dried up?  Or in my opinion, could it be a bit of both?
Jane Lax, Aberlour.

Crippling impact of wind turbines 
A BATTLE to preserve some Scotland’s most scenic areas is underway and we echo many of the sentiments shared by Highlands and Islands MSP, Edward Mountain, in his article “Highlands being sacrificed on the altar of net zero” (Agenda, The Herald, November 6).

Located in Speyside, The Cabrach is one of the communities that is besieged by an unparalleled concentration of onshore wind farm developments.

We are a tiny, but resilient, community which plays host to 77 turbines across two operating wind farms (Dorenell and Clashindarroch). There is a second wave of consented wind farms, Garbet Hill and Clashindarroch II, which will take our turbine count up to 98.

We face the prospect of a third wave – Craig Watch and Clashindarroch Extension – which if consented would take us to 132 turbines, forming the largest onshore wind array in the UK. On top of that, Dorenell Extension (74 turbines), has been submitted for scoping.

This is threatening the ability of individuals and families to live in the area and the impact could be crippling.

The Cabrach Trust is doing everything it can to safeguard the community.

The Cabrach is a birthplace of Scotch Whisky and we recently opened the doors to The Cabrach Distillery, our one-of-a-kind social enterprise, which will become the economic lungs of our rural regeneration mission. Our project has created jobs and will attract thousands of visitors.

Our first spirit ceremony was attended by Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes who described it “to be a leading example of community-led, rural regeneration”.

We fully respect that renewable energy forms a key part of the Cabrach’s regeneration, but The Cabrach Trust is seeking balance and fairness.

We have tried to engage with decision makers on every level, but we feel increasingly ignored.
If we want to attract people to live, work and visit these remote areas of Scotland, and fulfil the Scottish Government’s aspirations for thriving rural communities, we need to work together.
The people of the Cabrach – one of the most beautiful areas in the country – are now fighting to protect the Cabrach’s future viability as a community. Are you with us?
Jonathan Christie, Chief Executive of The Cabrach Trust, Huntly.

Complexity of climate change
INVARIABLY, media coverage would have us believe that the primary driver of climate change are human sourced emissions of carbon dioxide and that they are solely responsible for a perceived increase in extreme weather. 

It is seldom brought to our attention that it is human activity of a different kind that is all too often the cause of such devastating events.

Deforestation is the elephant in the room that is being driven by a burgeoning population growth and resultant commercial and agricultural demands which have resulted in the loss of nearly two-thirds of Earth’s tree cover.

The ecological destruction is bad enough but it also goes hand-in-hand with dramatically increased risks of polar opposites, floods and droughts.

A  classic case in point was the catastrophic Pakistan flooding in 2022 where vast swaths of watershed forests had been clear felled leaving the unprotected soils exposed to the intense monsoon rains which, unimpeded, swept millions of tonnes of sediment into the Indus river. A combination of corruption and ineptitude relating to riverine maintenance compounded the disaster.Removal of forest cover also completely disrupts the water cycle which results in less rainfall and the failure to replenish underground aquifers thus creating water shortages and drought. 

Examples of such extremes abound, from Africa to India, Guinea, Haiti and even the United States, where studies have shown that there is a high likelihood that the continuing loss of Amazonian forests has resulted in drought cycles in Texas and New Mexico and potentially extending to the ‘breadbasket of the world’ in California.

It’s time we recognized that the causes of climate change are far more complex and diverse that the trace gas CO2 which, vital though it is, constitutes just 0.04% of the atmosphere, 
Neil J Bryce, Kelso.

* FOR years the West has railed against China’s rise to dominance and the country’s often pernicious effect on world affairs. Now  the UN climate chief warns that China may need to take the lead in the fight against climate change now that the erratic, impulsive Donald Trump is returning to the White House. Might we one day  have cause to be grateful to the Chinese after all?
D. Clark, Glasgow.