True honours

Honours for the privileged and gifted make no sense. The people who deserve honours are the doctors and nurses who treated my 80-year old mum last week and stabilised her after a nasty broken shoulder.

Step forward, Fife NHS, who immobilised her arm after rescuing her from a pavement in Leven; the local GPs in Queensferry who visited her and helped get her medication right; the on-call A&E doctors who admitted her to the Western General for tests when she wasn’t getting better, and the orthopaedic staff at the Royal Infirmary who admitted her for surgery next week.

She’s not out of the woods yet, but I would give every accolade there is to the teams of kind, hard-working and decent people who staff our NHS.

There’s none like them in the world, and our politicians, media and business leaders should hang their heads in shame at the mediocre and greedy behaviour for which they reap the lion’s share of the Queen’s so-called honours.

Bruce Whitehead

Hillwood Place

Edinburgh