Readers' Letters: Look to our past to ensure future of the NHS

Before the last major review of the National Health Service in 1974 hospitals and groups of hospitals were run reasonably successfully by a triumvirate of Medical Superintendent (a doctor), Matron and a Secretary and Treasurer.

Since then we have seen change after change – Trusts. Foundation Hospitals etc – which has led to a proliferation of administrators. Another review is required urgently. I suspect a whole layer of middle management could be stripped out.

Other suggestions that should certainly be considered are a return to Hospital Schools of Nursing where student nurses spent most of their training in the wards (and were paid for it!) rather than all nurses carrying out a university degree. This would help with staffing levels in the wards.

Medical students paid for by the Scottish Government should be required to spend the first five years of their career in the Scottish NHS or repay their fees.

Student nurses in 1968 spent little time in the classroom compared to today's entrants (Picture: Fox Photos/Getty Images)

With the increasing number of General Practitioners choosing part-time contracts and not wishing to be partners, General Practice should be a salaried service. A similar proposal could be made for NHS dentists.

Without an in-depth review our NHS (and those working in it) will struggle.

(Dr) R Smith, Edinburgh

England prevails

Elizabeth Scott (Letters, 29 December) rehearses the usual list of “free” benefits that the munificent Scottish administration provides, as if they are under threat.

Well, of course they would be under threat if Scotland left the UK. Apart from anything else, it would lose the extra £12 billion that we currently receive every year from HM Treasury. A separate Scotland without that would not be able to afford the freebies.

Ms Scott’s list implies that Scotland alone has a range of benefits not available elsewhere in the UK. So, we have "free prescriptions”. But she neglects to mention that, in England, 89 per cent of prescriptions are dispensed without charge. We have “free” bus passes. In England, you can check your date of eligibility for free bus travel on a government website – enter your date of birth, and it will tell you that date is your 60th birthday. In London, the Freedom Pass includes free bus and Tube travel for all over-60s. We have “free eye tests”. In England, the NHS website tells us, tests are free for under-16s (under-18s in full-time education), over-60s, those with diabetes or an eye condition, or who belong to a family at risk of glaucoma, those on a range of benefits such as Universal Credit, Income Support or Jobseekers' allowance. I’m afraid that Ms Scott’s list is becoming increasingly threadbare, but it is one that is routinely circulated on social media by Scottish nationalists.

Ms Scott tells us, without a shred of evidence, that we will go to hell in a handcart if we remain in the UK. It is all based on unwarranted assumption and on a touching belief that, if we leave the UK, we can always count on there being forests of Magic Money Trees to support us.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

It doesn’t add up

A lot of academics are getting cross about the aim of certain groups to “decolonise” maths at British universities. One might ask how this can be done?

Apparently, the aim is to view this subject as having been tainted by association with the “imperial” period in British history. No doubt it also relates to other nations' history too, but Britain is the main target for these people.

It needs to be remembered that mathematics is a subject with a history which predates the British Empire by thousands of years. It was studied in China, India, Arabia and the Americas. How would the amazing pyramids of Egypt and the Americas have been created without a knowledge of that subject? Our very numbering system comes from India via Arabia, as does the zero, an Arab word.

Should we reject maths because it came to us from slave-owning societies with a history of brutality which lasted up until the 20th century, if not the 21st? Of course not.

We have not rejected maths because of its baggage of slavery and it would be ridiculous for the nation that led the world in freeing slaves and banning the slave trade to be blamed for something that every nation on earth was involved in, as if we alone were sinners.

Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh

Back and forth

Rev Dr Donald MacDonald writes that the Gender Recognition Reform Bill will remove a barrier for the very small number of trans people who decide to “detransition” or go back to living in their original birth certificate gender (Letters, 30 December).Far from being criminalised, as Rev MacDonald suggests, they will be able to use the new administrative process to change their birth certificate accordingly, if they so wish. That is something that is very difficult to do under the current system.The Scottish Parliament did not pass this Bill because the First Minister told them to. Four of the five parties committed to reform in their 2016 and 2021 manifestos. The Parliament spent nine months considering the bill, and the facts and evidence, and after debate of record length, voted for it by a large margin.

Tim Hopkins, Equality Network, Edinburgh

Blame game

Whenever I listen to or read any statement by an SNP cabinet secretary I am always struck by the caveat which concludes it.

No matter how badly Health, Education, Policing, Justice, Transport or the Economy, to name a few, are performing, Scotland is always doing better than England and Holyrood’s failure is Westminster's fault. John Swinney's budget statement was a perfect example.

Is that the measure of SNP success, to be the best of a bad bunch? Should Scotland ever become independent and join the EU, I expect Sturgeon and the SNP will heap their opprobrium on to the EU and blame Europe for their incompetence and failure. Will the EU become the SNP’s scapegoat of choice?

Robin Linton, Dumfries

Those were the days

The Swinging Sixties have morphed into the Slipping Sixties as the death on the same day of iconic figures Pele and Vivienne Westwood reminds us.

We thought they'd never end.

Stewart Sweeney, Adelaide, South Australia

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