We must now take radical steps to reform our ailing NHS

Yet, how can we ensure a healthy community if our health services risk being diminished due to chronic underfunding and mismanagement? It is imperative that our leaders prioritise rational, effective approaches to NHS reform that do not penalise taxpayers with high taxes and sweeping cuts.

Rather than increasing taxes on struggling families and businesses, we should look towards fostering an environment that encourages efficiency and innovation within our healthcare system. Bridging the gap between devolved powers at Holyrood and the financial oversight of Westminster can yield solutions that benefit patients and our dedicated NHS staff alike.

It is also essential for the public to engage in this conversation. By holding our elected representatives accountable and advocating for practical reforms, we can ensure that our NHS not only survives but thrives. The voices of ordinary Scots should be amplified to guarantee that health services remain accessible and effective for all.

Let this be a call to action for Scottish politicians to collaborate on a comprehensive strategy that secures the future of our NHS, ensuring that we don’t sacrifice essential services for budgetary convenience.

Alastair George Majury, Dunblane.

Is Neil Gray on top of his brief?

STEPHEN Boyle, the Auditor General of Audit Scotland, has released the latest update on the NHS in Scotland, looking at both finance and performance. It makes for grim reading.

The SNP Government will no doubt state that funding and staffing has increased but what it won’t mention is the increase in pay and inflation. The SNP may as well be sitting in a leaking boat trying to empty out the water with a bucket. No amount of additional funding will work without restructuring and difficult choices.

If only we had a Health Secretary who was on top of his brief rather than Neil Gray, who seems more interested in trying to buy Oasis concert tickets, watching Aberdeen FC, attending film premieres and The Open golf.

Jane Lax, Aberlour.

Read more letters

SNP must use this Budget to fund real action on homelessness

We must act to end unfair treatment of the Highlands

Means-test the wealthy

FRASER Nelson, former editor of the Spectator, writing about deprivation, talks of the Glasgow effect (“We are not getting any nearer to solving poverty that is blight on Glasgow”, The Herald, December 2).

A more persuasive analysis is outlined in Professor Danny Dorling’s Shattered Nation. In it he tracks the UK data on inequality from the 1940s to today.

Peak equality was the 1970s when the Nordics came, studied the phenomenon, then went home and implemented it.

Many Herald readers will recall themselves, or friends, at that time leaving one job on the Friday and finding a new job within a week or two. Thanks to a Tory Prime Minister (yes, a Tory Prime Minister) that followed six years of higher education with no fees and a student grant to boot.

By 1982 the Thatcher effect was biting. She was subsequently canonised by the magazine Mr Nelson edited.

The inequality gap has widened ever since. It has been an inexorable slow gradient of decline (an inverted graph of growing inequality if you will). True, it plateaued a bit, during the Blair and Brown years, though not, according to Dorling, for the very poorest.

George Osborne then arrived with measures like his two-child benefit cap. I suppose he is an unintentional eugenicist; after all how could Chancellor Brown’s right-hand man Ed Balls do a podcast with him if he really believed in eugenics?

According to Dorling the inequality gradient has in recent years become much steeper, an acceleration to the bottom of the European equality league, with Great Britain joining Bulgaria at the bottom.

I see this inequality in spades in Glasgow if I get the bus in Victoria Road, a bit less so if I use a Pollokshaws Road stop.

The steepness of the decline acts as an accelerant now manifest in our new political paradigm, that my party, the SNP, has still to get a grip of. Written this side of the Budget, we will see if my party is getting the message.

Dorling does point out that successive Scottish Governments have introduced some mitigations and they are measurable. However given the new political paradigm underpinned by the UK sector-leading position on inequality, I fear those past successes may have only marginal electoral salience.

It’s time for the centre left of politics, pro-independence and otherwise, to pick some fights. Sure, “means-test” away, but on wealth and particularly on assets. The wealthy actually don’t leave, and even if they did they cannot take with them the assets that make them really wealthy.

Bill Ramsay, Glasgow.

How did it get to this?

JILL Stephenson (Letters, December 3) laments at some length that those who wish for an independent Scotland prefer to portray the UK and Westminster government as villains rather than the SNP. The dramatic reduction in SNP membership and election votes suggest otherwise.

Rachel Reeves, desperate for funds, seeks to deny our pensioners their winter fuel allowance and has had to change the fiscal rules to accommodate more borrowing.

The UK is broke and as part of it, despite having been an oil-rich nation, so are we.

As Ms Stephenson concludes, “how did formerly canny, intelligent and self-respecting Scots come to this pass?”

Alan Carmichael, Glasgow.

• JILL Stephenson completely misses the point of correspondents who respond to her letters.

It's not the experts we are necessarily taking issue with, it's her interpretation of what they are saying that we are arguing with.

For example, one cannot jump to the conclusion that the NHS is performing less well overall in Scotland compared to England from the one fact that it is recovering more slowly from Covid. Of course, it may be worse or better, but that one statistic alone does not prove it.

Iain Cope, Glasgow.

A prescient warning

NEIL Mackay is, as usual, absolutely correct when he says we must vote for independence or get Nigel Farage as PM ("Yes movement must portray Farage as the bogeyman he is", The Herald, December 3). Before the 2014 poll I warned we had to vote for independence or get Boris Johnson as PM and be dragged out of Europe. How did that work out, I wonder?

Steve Brennan, Coatbridge.

Branchform concern

DOROTHY Bain is surely failing in her duty as Scotland's Lord Advocate in ensuring fairness and competence in the prosecution system if there is not early action in the Branchform case. She has rightly excused herself from the case because of any possible conflict of interest. She should certainly not be involved in the decision as to whether charges are prosecuted or not. She should not be involved in the substance of any prosecution.

However she cannot excuse herself from responsibility for the fair and competent operation of the Crown Office. There is no conflict of interest in that. Police Scotland have made it clear that they completed their job a considerable time ago so the delay in making any decision rests with the Crown Office.

If no decision whether to proceed or not proceed is made early in the new year then the case will drag on into the Holyrood election period and that would surely raise issues of prejudice. So it is surely time for MSPs to question the Lord Advocate on this case.

Isobel Lindsay, Biggar.

Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain (Image: PA)

Disrespectful coverage

I AGREE with James Scott’s disgust at the BBC’s treatment of the Alex Salmond memorial service (Letters, December 3). However, as well as being relegated to its website and iPlayer, the filming of the guests arriving was a disgrace. We were subjected to stuttery, shaky, poor-quality filming and on several occasions, the camera ended up pointing straight down to the ground. My four-year old grandson could have done a better job.

Then we had a moment when a view into the cathedral showing the congregation all seated, mysteriously changed to rows of empty pews. This was a shocking and disrespectful introduction to such an important memorial service. I’m sure I won’t be the only one who logged a complaint.

Brian Watt, Edinburgh.