Welcome to my blog

Hi there and welcome to my blog. I'm one of many people fighting the A&E closures that are happening across Scotland just now, and I'm standing as an independent health candidate in Coatbridge, where our erstwhile government is trying to convince us that it's good for our health to shut Monklands Hospital in the area that has the highest rate of heart disease in Europe. (Doh, wake up and smell the coffee, dude!)

So how did I get here? Well, one day my mum started to show signs of Alzheimers. I became her carer and came in direct contact with the care system. What an eye opener that was.

About four years ago our council started shutting nursing homes in our area. I went along to a carers conference organised by a local carers group and asked, 'Why are you shutting nursing homes when we have a growing elderly population, and where are all those people going to go?' I got no answer. The closures continued and I waited for the local politicians to protest. It didn't happen. I joined a carers lobbying group, (North Lanarkshire Carers Together) to try and do something about this.

In October 2005 our group was invited as 'stakeholders' to one of the consultations regarding Monklands hospital. I became suspicious when I spotted Black Forest Gateau on the menu. (For those of you who haven't attended conferences before, this is what they give you before they announce cuts and closures; it produces a soporific effect on the eater, and reduces resistance to unpopular decisions). Sure enough, after the Black Forest Gateau we were invited to play a game of 'Which Hospital Shall We Downgrade?' or as they called it, preference scoring. I went home in a daze and after the gateau had worn off, I was raging. When the announcement came in February, that they were going to downgrade Monklands, I joined the campaign to save Monklands and the other hospitals in our area as well.

At this point I came into contact with the Scottish Health Campaign Network, whose members opposed the closure of Stobhill. Dr Jean Turner is on the group(she's a health independent and defeated Labour at the last elections in Strathkelvin and Bearsden and she is standing again. Vote for Jean, because she's lovely). I worked with them for the next few months and was involved in discussions regarding the future of Monklands and the other hospitals facing closure. It very quickly became obvious that there was no future for Monklands; not unless something drastic was done. So I declared as an independent candidate in September. From mild mannered carer to fully fledged rebel. Warning; it could happen to you.

To those of you who have not rebelled yet, two words ; why not? This is the health service for pete's sake. It is being taken over by American health companies and PFI. If you don't stand up and be counted now, it will be too late later. We have got to kick this into touch now. (Duh, what's PFI). It's not a rude word, but it should be, and it usually has several expletives attached to it by those who know what it is. It stands for Private Finance Initiative and is basically bankrupting the NHS who are using it to build hospitals, and is going to bankrupt our local authorities, because they're using it to borrow money to build schools. Read all about it in my guide PFI for Dummies.