A new prescription is needed for Dunbar
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I WANT to share with you, readers, my misgivings about the west Caithness health services review conducted by the North Highland Community Health Partnership.
I hear that the meetings it holds in public do not allow the public, be they doctors or others, to speak. Tellingly, I don’t believe that staff at the Dunbar Hospital are ever asked their opinions.
Yet the October Briefing Note announces that “some of the buildings in Caithness are outdated, don’t meet the safety standards and are beyond economic repair”.
How can these buildings be in use and the management not notice something so fundamental before this?
The contradictions in the briefing crystallise around a plan to invest £300,000 to improve community-based services, cutting emergency services to daytime and use Caithness General Hospital for any emergency admission in west Caithness.
In addition to delivering end-of-life care at home wherever possible and moving staff from the health centre into the Dunbar, there would be no need for inpatient beds there, the report says.
It concludes that the redesigned service will be a move towards improving anticipatory care, self care and support more people to be independent in their own home. As a consequence of this fewer inpatient beds will be required.
What we are not told is the costs of keeping some inpatient beds in the Dunbar, saving the 24
An expanding Caithness economy and confidence in our future demands a new prescription for the Dunbar at the centre of in and outpatient needs in west Caithness.
MY constituency consultation Small Works has been attracting much interest as we see decisions in the Highland Council being taken more and more in Inverness. We only have to look at how successful small nations such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark build in much more democratic local control of local services.
I’ve been asked on November 24 to lead a discussion entitled “Is local government in Scotland fit for purpose?”. It takes place in the University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Governance in collaboration with the University of Tubingen, Germany.
With next year’s council elections looming we need to look seriously at reversing centralisation. Remember that before 1975 we had town councils, small rural districts and so on. So much was lost when the Highland Region was set up and later when the district councils were abolished in 1996.
The future can’t be dictated by cuts in services. We must plan ahead and I believe that as Scotland emerges from the shadows of recession our area needs new powers to take more decisions as locally as possible. In Europe they call it subsidiarity, I call it common sense.
I ACCOMPANIED the First Minister, Alex Salmond, on his recent visits to Nigg last April and last month. We backed Global Energy to help deliver the Scottish renewables revolution, in particular the production of offshore wind towers which could number 400 in the Moray Firth. Easter Ross must regain full employment as jobs develop at Nigg.
I also welcome the eventual decision of the UK Government to allow Scotland to access the Fossil Fuel Levy (FFL). That money belongs to us but had been kept by successive UK governments in a Treasury bank account.
The UK Government has finally accepted an SNP proposal to release half of the cash after a previous proposal from the Tories and Lib Dems was rejected by the Scottish Parliament last October.
The proposal to release the money was put to the chancellor by Alex Salmond and John Swinney immediately after May’s election.
When the UK chancellor, George Osborne, and his sidekick, Danny Alexander, came to Nigg last week they showed some understanding of the part this area should play in building a sustainable new economy.
Returning the FFL won widespread public support for the SNP and eventually the penny dropped that it was simply impossible for the Tories and Lib Dems to continue to hoard Scotland’s cash at a time when investment in our renewable future is a key part of delivering economic growth.
This repayment of the first £100 million makes it a good day for Scotland’s renewable industry which is set to invest across the country in our infrastructure to deliver Scotland’s renewables revolution.
Even more, it’s a success for all those who have campaigned against the ridiculous proposals from the Tories and Lib Dems which stopped this money being released for spending in Scotland.
The SNP has also welcomed reports that Ofgem is considering plans which would reform the transmission charging regime for renewable energy connecting to the national grid.
It is understood that the move could see the connection charge fall by 80 per cent.
I’d say that enough is enough of the current discriminatory regime that works against the development of clean, renewable energy in Scotland by forcing generators to pay millions of pounds more to use the grid.
Scotland has overwhelming energy potential but our future wealth is being sabotaged by these unfair charges which discriminate against us.
The transmission-charging regime has already cost the country dear by slowing up renewable energy projects and Ofgem must act on the findings of this study to bring forward reforms.
www.robgibson.org
