Letters / Get on with the day job, Emma!
A ‘Health Survey’ questionnaire from the Liberal Democrat election candidate, councillor Emma Macdonald, came through our letterbox today.
It’s beautifully printed by a company in Somerset, just a couple of miles from Cheddar, where the cheese comes from. On the back page there’s a picture of Emma with a cheesy grin, warning us that a vote for anyone but her next May the 7th “risks letting the SNP win here”. Gosh! But what’s that got to do with NHS Shetland?
On the front page of the leaflet there’s a bigger picture of Emma, looking very serious under a cutting from The Shetland Times which reads: “Procedures cancelled as Gilbert Bain under ‘extreme pressure’”. She says that “across Shetland people can’t always see a GP when they want to…”
That’s true, certainly at the Lerwick Health Centre (probably the locum GP centre of the World) but why is this so? Emma says: “It’s time health services in Shetland got the support they deserve”.
This implies that the £90 million or so that the Scottish Government is spending this year to support health and social care in our islands isn’t enough. But it’s not the Scottish Government that delivers the services.
That’s Emma’s job as a council leader and participant in the ‘Integrated Joint Board’ (IJB) where the council works with NHS Shetland (Chairman: councillor Gary Robinson, Emma’s right-hand man at the Town Hall) to make best use of almost £90m. But have they?
Emma tells us she wants to hear our experiences of the health service “so she can work to deliver change”. What change has she delivered in the past three years?
She says she wants a new Gilbert Bain Hospital. The Scottish Government agrees and is trying to find a way to fund it, once Emma’s IJB decides where it wants to build it.
To borrow the Lib Dems’ hackneyed anti-SNP slogan, “Get on with the day job, Emma!” (because you may still need it after 7 May next year).
Please do fill in Emma’s questionnaire, but I would leave blank the non-health-related questions about which political party you support.
That’s none of Emma’s business.
Jonathan Wills
Bressay
