Letters / At odds with her candidate?
SNP Shetland convener Chris Bain has attacked Green candidate Alex Armitage for calling the SNP’s new walk-in GP centre a “pre-election stunt”.
She blasts Dr Armitage’s criticism of local healthcare decisions being “made in a centralised, top-down manner”, saying, “the reason we need a walk-in GP centre is that the local organisation has failed to deliver. The ‘N’ in NHS stands for National, after all.”
So, in her own words, “the local organisation (NHS Shetland) has failed to deliver.” There you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth.
And who has been running NHS Shetland for the last couple of decades? The SNP Scottish Government and its appointees, of course, not Emma MacDonald!
Bain also seems at odds with his candidate Hannah Mary Goodlad’s position on local powers?
She rightly sings the praises of Faroese self-governance and calls for devolution of major local powers e.g. a “Shetland Energy Act”, to convey Cairngorms National Park-like status and planning control of all local energy developments to Shetland.
Yet here is her local convener, condemning Dr Armitage’s call for such powers.
Lending force to Dr Armitage’s criticism of a “pre-election stunt”, the Royal College of General Practitioners has reportedly made a “scathing assessment” of the proposed walk-in centres.
It was tried in England 20 years ago, and, “most have since closed, and those that remain have largely been reconfigured as urgent treatment centres.”
I don’t often agree with Dr Armitage, however, he – and indeed, Hannah Mary Goodlad – are 100 per cent right about the need for devolution of increased local powers. It is the only way to prevent islanders being trampled underfoot in the forthcoming energy stampede.
Bain’s comments reinforce her party’s 19-year ethos of relentless centralisation. She is all for it. It seems the talented Ms Goodlad is out of step with both her local and national party’s policies and may, indeed, be “in the wrong party”.
John Tulloch
Aberdeen
