Dear All
It seems that with Cop26 still running, SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon has abandoned her responsibilities as First Minister to continue her networking scheme in the hope that this may lead to a job offer. On social media, you can see Nicola Sturgeon zip about the place getting countless 'selfies' with anyone remotely famous. It is truly a bizarre sight to behold, you get someone who turns up at an event with no role whatsoever at it, then spends the time hawking herself around the venue seeking opportunities for future employment. The price of a ticket has no monetary value but there is a cost to Nicola Sturgeon abandoning ship, that price is people dying. During Covid, Nicola Sturgeon said allowed that 'I am in charge', that she is making the decisions, well we saw how bad her decision making actually is, infected patients transferred into sterile care homes, allowing Drs to try and get patients to sign DNR so they don't have to try and save their lives.
As the Scottish Conservatives are making an impact now, it seems dealing with problems and handling the heat isn't Sturgeon's forte at present. There is plenty of questions to ask Nicola Sturgeon, some historic and some present, Sturgeon has ducked out of First Minister Questions. In doing this, she is leaving the disgraced Deputy First Minister John Swinney to fill in for her again. Let's be clear, she isn't doing her job as FM at Cop26 because there is no official role for her. In my opinion, this is someone who has 'gate crashed' an event for personal advancement using her position of authority. When there is bad news, it seems Nicola Sturgeon sloops off and gets her main Holyrood stooge to take the flak. John Swinney has apologized to the family of Richard Brown who died on the stairs outside his home after waiting five hours for an ambulance. Let's remember the key point through-out this post, he was waiting five hours for an ambulance. Before, I moved to Pollok in 1972, I previously lived in Maryhill, in two places, Oran Street, and Gairbraid Place, so I know the area well despite its partial regen. As a kid during the coal shortage in the 1970's, I used to do hunt for coal on the slagheap on the site of the JD Gym just across from Tesco. Mr. Brown didn't live that far away from where I used to live, he stayed in Hathaway Lane, again close to Tesco. The distance to the Royal Infirmary was more or less a straight road, it takes about 10 minutes to get from Hathaway Lane to the Royal Infirmary. The distance is only 3.2 miles, but for Richard Brown, that hospital may have been a million miles away for all the good it could do him. The police station on Maryhill Road is literally a few minutes walk from his home, if he had been put in the back of a police vehicle, he would have been in hospital in under 10 minutes with the police doing what is called a 'blue light' run.
Richard Brown was only 55 years old when he died in the tenement stairs in Hathaway Lane, in Maryhill, last Saturday. A neighbour who found him said he was struggling to breath and called the ambulance several times. One can only wonder the pain and suffering that was caused to Mr. Brown during those long hours last Saturday evening as he awaited the arrival of paramedics. John Swinney's few seconds of 'sorry' certainly will not be any comfort for the family. Everyone knows the SNP are clueless when it comes to running the country, we have one of the worst incompetent Health Secretaries ever in the history of devolution, Humza Yousaf. A man who is so overwhelmed by the job, that he cannot do the job, a man who has time for twitter but not time to organised a Health Service to save lives. A man who has time for playing the race card, but no time to ensure sick people are transported to hospitals. Just as Nicola Sturgeon was wrong to promote Shona Robison as Health Sec, Sturgeon as no problem doubling down appointing Humza Yousaf as her support an position in the SNP starts to ebb away.
John
Swinney apparently thinks it is okay to 'talk away' the death of Richard Brown
by using standard platitudes such as saying, Mr Brown "should not
have had the experience he had" and said he was “sorry his family are
enduring added agony”. Is John Swinney 'sorry'? No, I am sorry but I am not
buying he is sorry at all, and I hope that the guilt he should be feeling over
the death of Richard Brown and the countless others who have died will haunt
him and Nicola Sturgeon for the rest of their lives. Humza Yousaf, too stupid
to feel regret for what he has failed to do. Nicola Sturgeon appointed an
idiot, and the idiot was happy to fulfil a role. To clarify, that 'role' isn't
Health Sec, that is just a vehicle to concentrate power around Sturgeon, his
role is to shield any potential threat to Sturgeon's leadership from the bottom.
As per usual, Swinney is trying to deflect and pass the blame to Scottish ambulance service into what happened. The SNP cut funding, the SNP allowed the service to be run down, the SNP allowed the cutting of staff numbers by failing to ensure staff were replaced.
Political choices by Nicola Sturgeon directly relate to the death of Richard Brown.
One trick the SNP like to use in deflection tactics is say part of the explanation for his death was there were massive pressures on the Scottish Ambulance Service as well as the wider NHS. That answer is not acceptable, it is a ploy to attempt Sturgeon, Swinney and Yousaf as somehow 'defenders' of the Scottish Ambulance Service and the wider NHS, they're not. They spent millions on a temp hospital, but they didn't use it, they spent more money tearing it down, saying they were 'coping' and the temp hospital wasn't needed. Millions, and millions of pounds wasted yet again. In another ploy, John Swinney started to waffle on about since 2018 the ambulance service responded to 5788 life threatening incidents and by October 2021 that has almost doubled to 10,733. This only shows that the SNP failed to recognise that preventative health measures were needed in each successive year since 2018. They knew that there was a problem, so didn't put in multiple measures to try and break the cycle or at least mitigated the impact by slowing it down?
Why did the SNP do nothing?
Douglas Ross, Conservative leader said:
“The Scottish Government isn’t doing enough to support emergency health service in its time of need.”
In fact, he could have said more, he could have mentioned that the SNP election bribes which siphoned off much need cash for core services, was a bad political decision, just like the recent decision to provide free bus travel for the under 22's is wrong. What is more important in society, a proper functioning health service or a free hurl on a bus? Swinney responses that the SNP government has put in place increased investment £20m and is recruiting 356 new ambulance staff by the spring may sound good, but the reality is no one or few are asking the right questions. Where did this £20 million come from, which budget was it moved from, and question should be centred around the number 356. How many of the 356 are to replace retiring or staff that have left? How many are genuinely additional staff? One trick use by the SNP is when they give back money around taken from budgets, and then claim that the budget has risen under this SNP government.
Here is an example, if I take your wallet and take £100 out of it, then later I give you back £40, can I say that I have increased your budget? Technically the answer is yes, but what the calculation doesn't take into account that £60 that you previously had is now gone, and you have had indeed a £40 increase from your current position of zero funds. It is political party nonsense, a mixture of deception and falsehood. The SNP aren't the good guys, they never were, they are destroying Scotland, Sturgeon has seen the writing on the wall, she wants to get off the merry go round because having put in her 'shift', she thinks she has earned the 'quiet life' where she can zip about like a former Statesman who gets senior positions in big business.
Finally,
the lack of action by Nicola Sturgeon shows how she is a cold and callous
individual, people like Richard Brown could possibly have been saved if an
ambulance had turned up in time. Instead Richard spent his last five hours
struggling to breath, in immense pain and suffering, lying on a stair case,
waiting for help that came too late. How many other people like Richard have to
die before Nicola Sturgeon appoints a proper Health Sec, how many people have
to die before the necessary provisions are put in place to transport the sick?
How many people have to die before the SNP restores proper funding, and uses
public funding properly? You cannot help but feel sorry for the family of
Richard Brown, he is another casualty of the systematic neglect that Nicola
Sturgeon and the SNP have shown towards public services and governance in this
country.
Yours sincerely
George Laird The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
1 comment:
Absolutely brilliant read
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