Sir, A strange paradox was recently revealed in two articles in this newspaper on October 10 Paramedic delayed urgent call, and Importance of having a good voice in print.
In her article (Importance of having a good voice in print), Lorraine Wilson described her misfortune in suffering from a depression, but her good fortune in having her condition treated promptly and effectively.
She writes; “Not everyone is as fortunate and there’s little doubt that mental health services need to be better resourced. Sometimes, if they have to wait, it can be too late.” From my family’s own experience, with the avoidable suicide of a daughter, amen to that!
The report headed Paramedic delayed urgent call told how a paramedic, answering a doctor’s urgent call to take a depressed and suicidal woman to hospital, had deviated from her route for seven minutes to undertake some personal shopping.
What caught my attention was that the “urgent” call was placed on the second lowest level of priority for the ambulance service with a response window of one to four hours!
The ambulance control room received the call at 11.41 am and it was not allocated to the paramedic team until 3.35pm.
That was treating the call as urgent? Nearly four hours’ delay for somebody in danger of committing suicide?
The paramedic’s sin of adding another seven minutes pales by comparison! When are our authorities going to apply common sense to their procedures?
When one sees ambulances racing through the streets, lights flashing and sirens blaring, it’s a safe bet they are rushing to save somebody suffering from serious physical injuries.
Is there not as much danger of loss of life in a potential suicide alerted by a doctor as in a road accident with a victim suffering serious physical injury?
The NHS and other agencies need to get their act together and soon!
There has been too much tragic and unnecessary loss of life due to their failings.
George K McMillan. 5 Mount Tabor Avenue, Perth.
Forget speed bumps repair the potholes
Sir, So Fife has received the dubious distinction of being the recipient of the title of being the centre of the greatest number of claims in Scotland on account of the appalling number of potholes and the damage to vehicles therein.
Perhaps a proportion of the blame must be due to the fact that in common with other local authorities they appear divorced from the ability to prioritise.
The ever increasing expensive production of speed bumps, which cause immeasurable damage to vehicles and which display little obvious effective reduction in speeding, take greater precedence over that of addressing the filling of potholes.
Surely, given this current national disgrace, the money directed towards the former could be better channelled into necessary repair work and thus reduce the incidence of claim payments and the drain on taxpayers’ monies.
David L Thomson 24 Laurence Park, Kinglassie.
Coming home to roost . . .
Sir, The sound of chickens coming home to roost is heard throughout the land as the major energy suppliers pass consumers the latest tranche of costs from green initiatives.
Ed Miliband, energy secretary in the Brown government, was the architect of these costs in his pernicious Climate Change Act and aware his policy would ramp up bills.
Of course in the halcyon days before the revelations of the Climategate whistleblower and the end of “catastrophic” global warming he argued it was “a price worth paying”.
Today he blames everyone but himself and demands a price freeze as if the new power stations and network upgrades required by his act can be funded for free.
But fuel poverty is already endemic and any further decommissioning of nuclear and coal-fired power plants will put us at risk of the winter blackouts we last saw in the 1970s.
Dr John Cameron. 10 Howard Place, St Andrews.
The Festival of Remembrance
Sir, May I draw your readers’ attention to The Royal British Legion Scotland’s Angus and Perthshire Area Festival of Remembrance in the Caird Hall, Dundee, on Saturday November 2?
To help us remember and celebrate, we have the Central Band of The Royal British Legion Scotland, The Dundee-based and award-winning 6/8th Company Boys’ Brigade Pipe Band, plus traditional community singing and an ecumenical Act of Remembrance, with the Last
Post and Reveille played by Sea Cadet Buglers from Dundee and Arbroath.
Tickets are £7, available from the City Box Office, Dundee, by phone on 01382 434940, or online at www.dundeebox.co.uk
Any profits from the evening go to Poppyscotland, or as older readers may recall it, the Earl Haig Fund Scotland.
Col ADF Maclean TD. Festival Publicity Officer.