Coughs and Sneezes Cause Diseases

This is an example of why primary care amongst infants is essential - well, that and we just thought it was cute.

Disunity in the Community

Have been browsing through NHS Lanarkshires latest offering; their board meeting from 27th June. After telling us solemnly for a year and a half, that the proposed downgrade of Monklands was nothing to do with money, it seems like they've changed their mind and have taken a hissy fit. So they have decreed that the following will be under review;

Airdrie Resource Centre
Hamilton Resource Centre

Cancer Centre

Cumbernauld Community Casualty unit
Lanark Community Casualty Unit
Clydesdale Community Hospital

Kilsyth Health Centre
Wishaw Health Centre
East Kilbride Civic Development

Monklands Acute Mental Health Unit
Hairmyres Acute Mental Health unit

Oh yes and

Acute redevelopment, Hairmyres, Monklands and Wishaw.

Now, what is the purpose of this big long list? The purpose of this big long list, dear reader, is to make campaigners like myself feel guilty about campaigning for retaining all our A&Es in Lanarkshire. SO! Sacrifices will have to be made, thanks to those do-gooders who don't know the agonies we go through to make these decisions, who have no knowledge of the financial and logistical implications, and they smell as well..'

But do I feel guilty? Should I feel guilty? Lets take a closer look at this list.

First up; cancer centre. Oh yes. That cancer centre, that was going to work along with the Maggie Centre in Wishaw, then was going to be on the same site as Maggies, then was going to be placed at Monklands along with Maggies. Monklands is the only hospital in Lanarkshire that doesn't have an MRI scanner; the lab services that a cancer centre would need, were going to be up at Wishaw. Hmm. Was it ever going to happen, boys? I don't think so. I think it was just going to be Maggies. It shure ain't going to be the Beatson.

Community Casualty Units.

For those of you who don't understand NHS gobbledegook, a Community Casualty unit is a minor injuries unit, or a wee diddy casualty unit when they've taken the real service away. Note the areas they were going to be in; Cumbernauld, Lanark and Clydesdale. These were planned because the downgrade of Monklands would have meant that those areas were not covered either by NHS Lanarkshire or the neighbouring health boards. Now that Monklands retains its A&E, we should not need these units.

Monklands Acute Mental Health Unit
Hairmyres Acute Mental Health Unit

Oops- NHS Lanarkshire's favourite game; spot the mental health unit. Easy target, cos it's a cinderella service anyway and nobody cares about mental health except those who have to deal with it.
These proposals started off like this;

Two 112 bed stand alone units at Hairmyres and Monklands;

then

One 112 bed new build at Monklands and use ward in Hairmyres;

then

One 112 bed new build at Hairmyres; refurbishment of wards in Monklands (how on earth that was ever going to pass muster with health, safety and dignity regulations for mental health, I don't know)

now

Both units 'under review'. So what's new?

However, as foundations have already been laid at Hairmyres, I would say the smart money would be on option 3.

Oh yes, and not a pipsqueak about Kilbride hospice and the provision of hospice beds. NHS Lanarkshire was originally going to give the Kilbride Hospice Trust, land to build their hospice at Hairmyres, then reneged on it, tried to take the £1.4 million that people had saved up over 5 years for the hospice, and then made a vague promise about 'provision' of hospice beds somewhere else. Where, exactly?

So what does that leave? The health centres. Will these happen? My guess is yes. It brings all those pesky independent GP practices under one roof that belongs to the health board (or the PFI consortium that's building it) then reduce the number of GPs in the health centre and use nurse practitioners to plug the gaps, maybe bring in some private companies to run the health centre with salaried GPs and use it as a shop window for big bucks from the pharmaceutical companies and get rid of all those sick people that clog up the files and cost lots of money.

So, do I feel guilty? Do I ****. Oops, a good act of sorrow for swearing...

He Just Doesn't Cut It..

Do you remember this guy? The one that promised four days ago that the NHS would be his priority?

Well, it has been his priority- for a whacking great cut. Gordon Brown's bum has barely warmed the seat of number 10, and he has just cut the English NHS buildings and equipment budget by £2 billion- just over a third of the total budget, the Financial Times reported. Not only that, but the Times is getting rather heated over at Roy Liddles, because Scotland and Wales' budgets have not been cut in the same fashion. This is because health is a devolved issue, and Gordon Brown doesn't have direct control of health, of course, but you can't blame them for being hacked off about it.

I told you I didn't like Gordon Brown. Now you know why. Grr..

It All Makes Sense

Last night, after musing on the naffness of Kirkcaldy High's school motto, a verse from my childhood floated into view.

'I promise that I will do my best;
To do my duty to God;
To serve the Queen and help other people;
To keep the Brownie Guide Law.'(Brownie Guide Promise)

Does that mean that Gordon is a secret Brownie?

Kirkcaldy High Needs a New Motto

Gordon Brown gave his inaugural speech today as Prime Minister. He talked about his willingness to serve and how he had been at Kirkcaldy High and had taken their motto to heart. We waited with bated breath. The motto? 'I will try my utmost'. Gee whizz.

It brought to mind the 'There's a lot Glasgowing on' that died a death approximately a week after it was launched; 'What's it called? Cumbernauld' and my personal favourite, the 'Cote-du-Bridge' campaign for Coatbridge, that was accompanied by a picture of the canal with a swan on it. (They just managed to keep the shopping trollies out of sight.)

Whatever happened to arrogance? Insouciance? Confiance? My old schools' (and no, i'm not going to tell you what one I went to) mottos were the thoughtful 'Not for school, but for life we learn'; the magnificently arrogant 'I was born for greater things' and Coatbridge itself has the very Calvinist motto, 'Laborare est orare' ,'To work is to pray'.
C'mon Kirkcaldy, you can do better than that. Get some fire in your belly. Send your suggestions in here.

The Poisoned Chalice - the NHS

Ok, I have finally succumbed to vulgar popularism, to add my thoughts on Gordon Brown's appointment as Prime Minister. What is it going to mean for the country and the NHS?

I am afraid that I do not like Gordon Brown. I do not like him, because in 1997, he introduced double taxation on company pension shcemes; that is, taxing pension contributions as they were paid, and then taxing them again on maturity. He removed at a stroke, £5 billion per year from pension funds and overnight, people were left with pensions that were not worth the paper they were written on. Some of the Clyde workers found their pensions reduced by 80%.What was this money used for? Tax cuts and our membership of the EU.

I also do not like him, because he is holding onto National Insurance contributions, while the NHS is crashing down about our ears through PFI debt. At the moment there is a £37billion surplus in NI. That surplus is not static; it has increased year on year by £4-6 billion.

Having said that, I do not envy him. Brown has been handed a poisoned chalice, both in terms of Iraq and the NHS. It is interesting that he has singled out the NHS as one of his priorities for government. But it leaves him in a uniquely difficult position.

At the moment, every member of the Cabinet has a hospital cutback or closure happening in their constituency. Four of them are Scots; Gordon Brown, Alasdair Darling, Des Browne and John Reid. Labour has just been thrashed at the polls in Scotland and Remedy UK, the new junior doctors protest group, is gathering momentum, as a possible threat and source of political challenge. If he does not address the closures in these constituencies, Labour could lose very badly. But the only way that the situation is going to be remedied, is if Brown grasps the PFI thistle, and makes central government take over the funding for PFI projects. That is going to cost a lot of money. So what will he do?

Well, the answer's right here. Use the £37billion NI surplus. Use the £50 billion from pensions and give us a decent health service. And do it before PFI spirals out of control. Never mind tax cuts at election time Gordon; give us a decent NHS with some decent spending on it. And please lose your friends from the private health sector like Chai Patel, who have not done you or your party any favours. Who knows, you might win the next election on it, if you're lucky.

The Crime with No Name

Hi there,

Back after a few days away from the blog. I was looking at NHS Blog Doctor and the latest post is on Madeleine McCann. Or rather, some of the blog posts that have been left about Madeleine McCann. Some people are getting bored with the story. Some think her parents should give up and go home. Some think it was the parents' fault anyway for leaving her alone, so why bother us with it? You should just accept just punishment and not bother the rest of us with your grief. Blog Doctor thinks this is attitude stinks and so do I.

We in Coatbridge know only too well the price of complacency with regard to child abduction. 40 years ago, Moira Anderson, a wee 11 year old girl disappeared in a snowstorm. She had gone to buy a Christmas present for a relative at Woolworths and she took a Baxter's bus for this journey. She was never seen again and her body was never found.

At the time it was put about that it was a stranger abduction. Motor cars were becoming popular and it was generally thought that some paedophile toff had whisked her away. Life moved on and the Andersons were left alone in their grief, not knowing what had happened. It looked like Moira would be forgotten, until in 1992, Sandra Brown, a woman who had grown up in Coatbridge at the same time as Moira, went to a family funeral. A chance remark about her father, Alexander Gartshore and that he had been a suspect in the Moira Anderson case, led her to investigate and reopen the whole issue.

The trouble was people didn't want it. When a friend of Gartshore's, Gallogley, died in jail in 2003 and left behind a detailed dossier saying that Gartshore had murdered Moira as part of a paedophile ring operation, the police wouldn't release it. Apparently some of the people named included figures in the police and the Crown office and they wouldn't have it. Gallogley named a burn called the Tarry Burn, as the place where Moira's body had been dumped. The police made a half hearted attempt to drag it over two days, and then gave up on the excuse that it would take a month to drag the burn properly and they might not find anything. Moira had been missing for 36 years at this point, and they couldn't take a month to check out a fresh lead. Now there are calls again for the dossier and the case notes to be made public; it's high time they were.

As it was with Moira, so it is with Madeleine. This is quite obviously an abduction; the window of the room that she was sleeping in was forced open. It has obvious that this was an organised operation; the McCanns were checking on their children every half hour; someone must have been watching and waiting for a while, before they moved. And yet we have people who say that we should all give up, that it happens, what's the point, I'm bored with this story and that wee girl's face. This, despite the evidence that this is an organised ring that struck.

But there is something deeper at the bottom of this laissez faire attitude to child abduction.Child abduction and paedophilia is the crime with no name. Up until the 1960's, it was only hinted at in fairy tales about changelings and wicked stepfathers. As we progressed, we first blamed strangers, then people at one remove such as teachers, clergy and social workers. We still have not admitted that the abuse and murder of children is usually visited upon them by someone they know. And that is why we don't like to talk about it. You can warn a child about stranger danger, but how do you warn them against danger from a relative or friend? How do we cope with this kind of evil within? It is 2007 and we still have not faced up to this; we have not looked this evil squarely in the eye.

Moira Anderson was let down by by our town and I am ashamed of it. The same will happen to Madeleine McCann if we do not keep her in the public eye and insist on answers. I am going to add my own poor effort to the search by posting her picture on this blog, and it will stay there until she is found. I am also adding the Moira Anderson website to my blogroll. Maybe, at the last, justice will be done.