This morning’s correspondents discuss stress in the NHS, the money supply, a threat to motorcyclists, police numbers, and the Gaza flotilla.
Bureaucrats responsible for NHS stress levels Sir,-Staff sickness is costing NHS Tayside more than £260,000 a week in wages and salaries alone, with stress the most common reason for sickness absences, according to a report submitted to NHS Tayside’s staff governance committee last Tuesday.
I am not at all surprised. Constant changes requiring more and more frequent conferences, training sessions and courses, with an accompanying increase in demands for reports and form-filling, are driving medical staff to distraction.
The situation is being made worse now by the need for cuts in expenditure.
Wards, services, medical staff and facilities are going, while the NHS bureaucrats and managers responsible for the mess not only remain in their overpaid posts but expand their empires to cause more mayhem and stress for doctors and nurses.
I know of several doctors driven frantic with worry over their heavy workload, the proliferation of forms, the constant changes imposed by managers, many of whom have no medical training, and the now ever-present threat of losing their jobs or being transferred to posts not suited to their training or experience. One consultant told me the managers keep switching from one cost-cutting project to another, blowing hot and cold over which cuts they favour, leaving the medical staff in a constant state of anxiety.
No wonder there are stress-related absences. The sooner we cut bureaucracy to a minimum and return to the old NHS set-up of hospital superintendents and matrons running the show, with office managers just that and no more, the better.
George K. McMillan.5 Mount Tabor Avenue,Perth.
Banks holding us to ransom
Sir,-The draconian measures needed to retrieve our present financial crisis, so correctly outlined by Neil McKinnon (June 16), would be a lot less draconian if our money supply was not created from thin air by the private banking system, who, of course, charge interest but was instead created debt free by the state.
The shortfall in the money required by the public sector is presently created by this private banking system, in exchange for Government bonds, and interest has to be paid to these bankers before a single road or hospital can be built.
The interest on our national debt, which is the total of all our unpaid borrowing, past and present, is set to reach £74 billion by 2014, so every week the government will be paying the private banking system £1.4 billion as interest, with little hope of ever repaying the capital.
For those who believe that the Royal Mint prints all our money, this will come as a serious shock. It is, however, the ghastly truth and the sooner the state creates our money supply, free of interest, the cheaper the financing of our economy will become.
Malcolm Parkin.15 Gamekeepers Road,Kinnesswood,Kinross.
Surface threat to motorcyclists
Sir,-I am astounded in this day and age of extreme health and safety awareness that councils are still deciding that surfacing roads using loose chips is suitable. This method has been used for many years and seems to have changed little.
In the first week or so of laying such a road, there is undoubtedly a risk of reduced traction which is likely to promote skidding.
This is true of cars but it is particularly hazardous to motorcycles, even after the seven to 10 days following the lifting of the temporary speed limit.
Cars tend to dislodge stones for some time afterwards and they are deposited between the two sets of wheels, just in the area used most by motorcycles.
The authorities will no doubt argue that they set speed limits for some time after the road is surfaced but, as a motorcyclist of many years’ experience, I can assure them that there are circumstances when even 10 mph can result in a slide and fall.
In the first week of June, I encountered a newly-laid surface of chips between Friockheim and Forfar which reminded me how badly this affects motorcycle steering.
Perhaps, of course, motorcycles are deemed to be unsafe in any case and such surfaces may deter their riders.
Whatever the thinking, in this case, it seems that cost outweighs safety.
Ken Kennedy.80 Torridon Road,Broughty Ferry.
Invisible Perth police force?
Sir,-I have just received MSP John Swinney’s newsletter in which he welcomes the news that police numbers have risen in Tayside. There are now a record number of police officers on Scotland’s streets, he tells us. How can he possibly say that? I spend a lot of days walking the streets of Perth and see nothing but traffic wardens.
Perhaps he means more police at night time trying to help Samaritans cope with mostly drunken youngsters, but if this is the case, I wish he would say so.
Neil G. Sinclair.New Fleurs,St Martins,Balbeggie.
Disproportionate Israeli assault
Sir,-Andrew Lawson (June 16) makes an odious slur on the humanitarian aid activists by comparing them to yobs.
Has Mr Lawson listened to any of the activists, seen their testimony on TV or read their accounts?
One of the aid activists killed by the Israelis was Ibrahim Bilgen, a 61-year-old electrical engineer with six children. Does this seem the likely portrait of a yob?
Mr Lawson seems to be ignorant of the fact that the passengers on the Mavi Marmara were not remonstrated with but subjected to a brutal attack by soldiers who opened fire before boarding the ship.
What kind of proportionality is this?
Mr Lawson ends by asking how a Dundonian would react if a few rockets landed in his front garden.
Perhaps he should ask how he would react if an Israeli tank parked on his front lawn and demanded that he leave his house and go and live somewhere else.
Alister Rutherford.44 Grove Road,Dundee.