Readers Letters: Oh, it's not so bad being given corridor care by NHS

My personal experience last November, when an infection had caused me to collapse and be admitted to hospital, allows me to give some positive tips to John Swinney when explaining corridor care, its benefits, and its long-standing continuation, despite his apologies.

First, the trolley on which one lies is much more comfortable than the one in an ambulance.

Second, any feeling of loneliness is mitigated by the unending backwards and forwards stream of passing hospital and ambulance staff, and if one stays long enough, as happened to me, friendly faces begin to be recognised.

Third, corridors don't have clocks, assuaging worries about the passage of time.

And fourth, comfort is brought by the notion that the journey to a ward has begun. After a long spell in an ambulance my night-time journey had started by being parked in an empty room in a clinic that only operated 9 till 5; far better was the feeling of being in transit brought on by being in a corridor.

Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen

Spending choices

How has it come to the point where a doctor (I am making the assumption of a medical doctor here) can be so disingenuous as to say that Scotland needs to be independent to “heal this nation” (“Transform the NHS”, Letters, 10 January).

Dr Andrew Docherty raises the issue of Scotland’s inability to manage the care of our sick and disabled, among other wellbeing issues. As he stated, Audit Scotland have reported that almost £0.5 billion was spent on bed-blocking costs last year. He goes on to speak of overpaid NHS directors, civil servants, quangos and big pharma. All of which I could agree with, yet somehow Dr Docherty links all of this with Westminster and believes that if Scotland were independent, they could deal with these issues differently.

The Scottish NHS has been fully devolved since 1999. The SNP have been in power for 18 years and have been responsible for all decisions and deterioration in this time. They could have made any number of changes in those 18 years but all they have ever done is throw more money at any issues rather than the “transformation” Dr Docherty desires.

At some point those who seek to lay the blame for all Scottish issues at Westminster need to start looking closer to home. The SNP could have improved our lives to show us what was possible. They chose not to.

Jane Lax, Aberlour

Ferry advice

The recent news that the MV Glen Rosa handover has been pushed back to late 2026 due to stern tube corrosion and hull coating failure is a bitter pill for Port Glasgow. As a deep-sea mariner with 50 years of experience, including managing the Ferguson-built Stirling Jura, I find the current “technical complexity” excuses increasingly difficult to stomach.

In 2002, the yard delivered the Stirling Jura, a high-spec offshore vessel. Today, 24 years later, that ship is still a pride of the Caspian Sea fleet for BP and SOCAR. It didn’t require a blank cheque or a decade of rework; it was a proven design built with commercial discipline.

The tragedy of the current ferry fiasco isn’t just about cables or plumbing; it’s about a broken financing model. While Turkish and Polish yards win contracts because they offer state-backed finance packages, our government relies on direct handouts that turn every weld into a political football.

If Ferguson Marine is to survive, we must stop building bespoke “first-in-class” experiments and return to the standardised, repeatable “Jura Standard”. Most importantly, Scotland needs its own version of Norway’s Eksfin to provide the refund guarantees and low-cost loans that allow the private sector to invest in the Clyde again.

We have the skill in Port Glasgow to build world-class ships – the Jura proves it. What we lack is a government with the industrial foresight to fund them like a business rather than a crisis.

Roy Donaldson, Glasgow

Gloomy future

Surely most sensible people must recognise that it’s far-fetched to believe a party with increasing numbers of Tory has-beens as members, run by three stooges Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice, and furtively sponsored by the super-rich, is going to work for ordinary people.

It is ordinary people, not the super-rich, who are suffering the cost-of-living consequences of Brexit, along with deteriorating public services across the UK, as unlike UKIP’s sponsors they were not able to leave the UK or move their savings/funds to other countries.

The only “reform” of which we can be certain should Farage become Prime Minister, especially in pro-EU multi-lingual Scotland, is that the rich will become even richer while ordinary people will be cynically exploited by the big corporates (many run from the US) and will struggle to improve their lives.

George Orwell’s 1984 delivers a stark warning of the broken society Big Brother Trump and his devoted acolyte Farage are intent on delivering – all who have read the book know we must not look away but speak out to stop them taking the UK and the rest of the world into a dystopian future.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Price to pay

There was a deafening silence in the Business article of 13 January over the cost to the consumer of the contract for difference price awarded to the output from floating wind turbines.

The figure is £271 per MWhour which is a fourfold increase over the current price set in 2024 of £73 per MWhour.

There has never been any explanation for such a massive cost increase being imposed on electricity consumers but, to enlighten Scotsman readers, it is likely to be due to a fourfold increase in capital costs to £12 billion per GW compacted to the £3 billion per GW for the recently commissioned Seagreen project. Readers should note this adds 20p/unit to electricity bills!

May I also point out that the claim “critics will point to the hidden costs of grid storage and wasted wind” is incorrect. Wind output drops to zero under dunkelflaute conditions so it is obviously correct to claim that such back-up costs should be included when pricing the unit price of wind energy. A technology that is so inefficient and unreliable that it cannot do what it claims on the tin by delivering energy whenever it is required by the consumer is not fit for purpose in a 21st-century economy and explains why energy prices in Scotland are double those of France. Germany or Spain. Adding 20p per unit to the cost can only increase the differential, leading to the demise of energy Intensive business projects in Scotland yet will never receive a mention in any manifesto produced for the May election!

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway

Battery charge

We are all complaining about higher taxes and being told that everything is fine. I have just paid the Government £12 VAT for the fitting of a battery that cost 45p to the transponder on my central heating oil tank. That would have purchased about 20 litres of heating oil! Why can we not have a lower tax level on repairs/servicing of essential heating repair bills?

Just a case of grin and bear it, I suppose!

James A Mackie, Garmouth, Moray

Turn-off

Last month’s discussion of the changes to BBC Radio Scotland’s evening schedule – including Jane Bradley’s feature – highlighted a letter calling for a halt to what has been described as “cultural vandalism”. The letter, signed by more than 300 well-known figures from Scotland’s culture sector, asked the BBC to pause and consult with both listeners and the music industry. BBC Radio Scotland did neither.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but through our taxes and licence fees we pay for the public service broadcaster to provide a service. The BBC charter sets out the terms of that service.

But here, readers N Elson pointed out on the Letters page (1 January) we have a senior executive, just a few months into role, ignoring both the pleas of listeners – there are literally thousands of posts on the subject all over social media – and significant cultural figures such as Ian Rankin and Jim Kerr. Responses to MSPs appear to simply dismiss concerns out of hand.

But after the first week of the new schedule (suspiciously timed to coincide with the launch of STV Radio) the picture is worse than any of us imagined.

The new four-nights-a-week show presented by Lynne Hoggan appears simply to ape exactly what hundreds of commercial radio stations already do.

And, it has to be said, but the weekend shows presented by Roddy Hart (replacing veteran broadcasters Billy Sloan and Iain Anderson) are pretty thin gruel compared to their predecessors. The fact that space during the “new music show” was given over to yet another Beatles re-release shows how little BBC Radio Scotland understood the magic of Sloan and Anderson.

Meanwhile, what is Scotland’s Culture Secretary Angus Robertson doing about this? He has remained silent while other MSPs have been vocal in demanding answers. If 300 of the nation’s most significant cultural figures have spoken out, that would suggest this issue is exactly at the heart of the Culture Secretary’s remit would it not?

Let’s see if he steps in to demand a rethink.

Kate Gordon, Clydebank

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