Freedum!!!!!! ..and blankets

I rack my brains. I really do. But for the life of me I can't recall when Labour was in charge of the NHS in Scotland there ever being a shortage of blankets!!!! Of all things.... a hospital with no blankets... it's bizarre. How incompetent does he SNP have to be to engineer a shortage of blankets in a flagship hospital...??????

Health Minister Nicola Sturgeon makes much of her background in nursing. You wonder what the reaction of nippy sweetie Staff Nurse Sturgeon would be to a political leadership that left her bare of something so basic as wrappings to keep the sick warm.... in Britain! In the 21st century!

Actually, when Labour was in charge there were years of increased investment and rising satisfaction with the NHS in Scotland. Those days have gone. Unfortunately. But not for long.....

As for this fiasco...has Ms Sturgeon been sleeping on the job?

We've sold off the blankets. Now we're flogging the ointments.
Buy one get one free. Tempted?

Where's our schools Fiona?

In February 2007, Fiona Hyslop, speaking to The Herald, said:

“Within the first 100 days of an SNP government we'd start replacing PPP with a Scottish Futures Trust. It would be a not-for-profit trust which would serve as an alternative finance scheme - and it would squeeze out the PPP programme.”

Two and a half years later, we have no Scottish Futures Trust and the effect on our (non-existent) school building programme is evident.

SNP politicians say that they have "opened" a number of new schools, but what they do not say is that the SNP has not commissioned one new school in all the time they have been in power.

Last week they announced that there would be part-funding for 14 new secondary schools, but none of these are expected to be complete by the time of the next Scotttish elections.

As for the claims to have "opened" new schools: over the last two years, the only projects that have been completed are either PPP projects left over from the Lab/LibDem administration or delivered and funded by local authorities, without help from Holyrood.

Ministers like Fiona Hyslop have been quick to attend opening ceremonies and take the credit, but they have done nothing to deserve any credit for any schools.

A damning statistic: tThe Scottish Futures Trust will not build and deliver a single school in the lifetime of this parliament.

What Exactly is The Scottish Futures Trust? ..and can we trust it to build our schools...??

The Education secretary has announced 14 new Secondary Schools* across Scotland. These schools are to be financed by traditional methods of borrowing.

So what, I hear you say, of the SNP's flagship "Scottish Futures Trust", the all singing all dancing replacement for PPP, the magical money making machine that was to do away with the hated PFI and provide enough money to match the previous, Labour-led, administraton's school-building programme "brick for brick"? Whatever happened to the SFT?

The SNP says that these schools will use the SFT. But they will not be financed by the SFT. How can that be?

Well. It seems that the "Scottish Futures Trust" has been transformed (without actually telling anyone) from

...."an all singing all dancing financing mechanism that will help match the previous school-building programm brick-for-brick",

into ...

..."a wee office in Glasgow where 5 civil servants will use Project Management Software to report on the progress of a few new schools that are actually financed in the same old way as before..."!!!

Right. So no Scottish Futures Trust and just 14 schools and none of them likely to be completed by the end of this Parliament.

That's why we voted SNP, is it?

As I said elsewhere: the SNP lack of vision and ambition for the people of Scotland is so disappointing. Disgraceful actually.

*Any new school building is good news, but to put this figure in context: there were 3 Secondary and 3 Primary Schools built in my own council area by the last administration. So only 14 in all of Scotland, and not likely to be completed any time soon, is pretty mean, is it not?

a little p.s. 6th Oct. 2009.

There is to be a debate at Holyrood on Thursday on the provision of schools. Apparently Fiona Hyslop ducked the last big Education debate (on teacher numbers). Will she hide away again?

Record numbers killed by "C-diff". SNP demands immediate public enquiry*

* Warning. Only part of this headline is accurate...


The herald reports here that the C-Difficile hospital acquired infection is killing more Scots than ever before. The figures jumped from 597 in 2007 to 765 in 2008, a rise of a third.

The one thing that is missing is the Nationalist outcry which greeted the C-diff figures before 2007. In 2006 hospital acquired infection was the direct responsibility of Labour ministers in Holyrood ad Westminster, the fault of the UK union and quite possibly a plot by the English to infect innocent Scots in their hospital beds.

Now?

Well... silence actually... Where is the strident voice of Nicola Sturgeon calling for an immediate public investigation and Ministerial resignations? Difficult, isn't it when you are the Minister responsible..? Where are the sirens of the cybernats demanding to identify whose fault is it now...? Who is to blame? And who should resign...?

Actually, it's the same as before.... Ministers can set all the policy targets they want and exhort this action ot that, but it is ultimately down to the people on the ground to take the necessary steps. Sometimes they do, and things work out. Sometimes they do, and things still don't work out. And sometimes they don't........ The point is that things happen, and the Minister, while top of the tree of responsibility is sometimes dependent on the workers at the roots to solve the actual problems

In short, government is difficult. And slogans and campaigns are great for stirring up emotions, but there is no substitute for clear thinking, hard work and perseverence. Even then, sometimes the problems remain stubbornly unresolved. If the lack of outcry from the SNP grass roots on this issue is a sign that, at last, they are beginning to recognise these hard facts, then hallelujah!

Of course it might just be that they never really cared about C-diff as a problem in itself, just a stick to beat the other parties with.... In which case, their silence on the issue now is understandable if, predictably, hypocritical.

Two Related Dogs Breakfasts

The Education Minister Fiona Hyslop is in deep doo-dung (continuing) about the failure of the SNP's promise to have class sizes of 18 in all P1 - P3 classrooms. This failure is related to the SNP's inablity to finance new schools. After promising to match Labour's school building programme "brick for brick", using the "Scottish Futures Trust" as the financing mechanism, it turns out that the "Scottish Futures Trust" has no future: it doesn't exist and it never existed. So the prospect of using the "Scottish Futures Trust" to find the money to build enough schools to accommodate class sizes of 18 was never feasible, and you can't hope to reduce class sizes in all schools without an extensive programme of building new schools.

To be fair to Fiona, the "Scottish Futures Trust" is John Swinney's failure, but it is of no help to the Education Minister that her two key policies are sunk without trace half way through the Parliament. No new schools and no class-size-18. The failures in Education Policy are the failures of the Education Minister.

If it was any other party Fiona would be out on her ear by now (you can just hear the Nationalists screams if a Labour Minister ever failed to this shocking extent), but the SNP seems remarkably tolerant of those who fail to deliver for Scottsh children.

Still and all, time to do the honourable thing Fiona. Resignation time, don'tya' think?

What does "brick for brick" actually mean?

Yesterday at FMQ's Iain Gray asked Alex Salmond to take responsibility for the lack of delivery by Education Minister Fiona Hyslop.

The latest admission by Hyslop, that there are 1000 fewer teachers in Scotland's schools than a year ago is bad enough.

But the SNP has already abandoned it promise of reducing class sizes in P1-P3 to 18.

As for the SNP's promise to match Labour's school building programme "brick-for-brick": it is a disgrace and a disaster. Not one new school has been commissioned since the SNP came to power.

Meanwhile Fiona Hyslop and Alex Salmond travel the country opening the latest of the almost 200 schools that Labour commissioned and built, and shamelessly basking in the reflected glory of the achievements of others.

This is more than just another party-political bunfight. The education of our children is a key to our future prosperity. The provision of new and efficient buildings in which teachers can teach and children can learn is vital to this process. The non-delivery of new schools is a crime against a whole generation of youngsters, and the Scottish Nationalists should be ashamed of their failure to deliver such a basic requirement of any competent administration.

Two weeks ago, three junior ministers were sacked. I don't know how competent or otherwise they were, but it seems to me that Ms Hyslop's incompetence is so great, and she is so close to the First Minister, that it gives her a paradoxical protection from the the fate which she surely deserves.