Readers' Letters: A man's not a man for a' that at blood donor clinic

Why did I end up doing something daft like working in a real job? If I had only joined the NHS as an administrator, for example, I could be earning £250,000 running a health trust. Better than all that studying to become a doctor. Less real work and responsibility for life and death too.

I was convinced of the insanity of the public sector when I gave blood a while ago. I have gone through life for several decades with the very odd idea that I was a man and therefore was unable to become pregnant. I was put right on this, however, by earnest NHS staffers who tried to convince me, despite an O Grade in Biology, that I could end up in the family way, even though I am a hulking 6ft 2in and hairy-faced with a number of children (achieved in the time-honoured way with a person known as “a woman”).

I begged to disagree and I now find that they are still sniffing around the transgender hinterland by asking “Are you pregnant, or have you been in the last six months?”, adding “(if not applicable, please tick No)”. This despite my profile clearly showing that I am “M” for Male! I pointed this out to a staffer, but still had to tick the Idiot Box. Perhaps they should add: “Have you had your brain removed?”

Now, after “chest-feeding” and “people who menstruate” juvenile drivel, I read that men in the NHS in England can take up to a year off for the “male menopause”. The what?

Questions asked at a blood donation session have annoyed reader (Picture: Adobe)

If I worked for the NHS, I would ask for time off for Transgender Idiot Fatigue. I get enough of it just reading about their antics in the papers!

Dave Anderson, Aberdeen

Over-optimistic

The Scottish Government is currently probing why the A9 dualling project will not be completed by 2025, as promised. This was never going to happen. It took three years to dual three miles and there are 80 miles in total to be dualled. How much of the cost, as with the HS2 project, was reliant on EU funding?

Margaret Vandecasteele, Cupar, Fife

Failed experiment

Lord George Robertson confidently asserted that Scottish Devolution would finish the SNP for good. It is not too difficult to imagine how that statement must come back to haunt him on those nights when sleep doesn’t come easily. Since devolution, the Scottish Executive, with sleight of hand, became the Scottish Parliament and half a billion pounds, then, was spent on a building to house the much-heralded new establishment.

This initial cost was a warning of the ambitions of the newly elected administration. Gone, the compact Scottish Office which used to serve the country well, alongside autonomous Local Authorities, when numerous Scottish Members of Parliament served in the Cabinet at Westminster. Absent from the new Administration were the seasoned politicians who endorsed devolution but chose to remain at Westminster.

The question that must and should now be asked, given the failure of Lord Robertson’s assertions: what is the point of the Scottish Parliament? The SNP have failed to achieve Scottish Independence and comprehensively failed in delivering good governance to Scotland. Billions of pounds have been spent on the administration of this extra layer of Government, which could and should have been spent on now-failing essential services, in particular the NHS and Education. Recently the summary withdrawal of promised support of funding for the arts displays a Philistine inability of the SNP Government to understand the wider picture of what is essential to maintain the wellbeing of a nation.

Could the billions of pounds spent on the maintenance of the Scottish Parliament in its current form, with the added consequence of a large black widening hole, be better spent?

Jane Ball, Cardrona, Scottish Borders

Clueless Labour

Labour is economically clueless. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves says she’ll follow the Bank of England’s destructive interest rate policies and the Office for Budget Responsibility’s useless forecasts.

Both institutions are neoliberal to the core and helped spawn the 2008 financial crisis and 13 years of austerity. Labour doesn’t understand that government’s first responsibility is to ensure public services – energy, transport, water, health, education – are well-funded. The private sector can’t grow without the public sector supplying a healthy and well-educated workforce and needed infrastructure.

But, of course, Margaret Thatcher sold most UK public assets on the cheap – health and education are next on the chopping block, and water in Scotland – to foreign corporations and governments, who are making out like bandits. Like the Tories, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer opposes renationalisation and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting wants more private health care.

And Reeves has boxed herself in, pledging to stick to her iron-clad fiscal rules, a self-imposed straitjacket that guarantees more austerity. She fails to understand what John Maynard Keynes understood – that governments can afford what they need because they are not like households. They are currency issuers and are only constrained by the economy’s productive capacity. The UK economy is starved of public investment but Labour refuses to deliver it.

This begs the question – why does Labour want to govern if it doesn’t understand the first thing about what governments are supposed to do? One thing is certain – Labour’s economic illiteracy will ensure the UK’s continued demise. It’s not as certain that Scotland will escape before the UK hits rock bottom.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

​Face facts

You rightly head Stan Grodynski’s latest letter (4 October) “What about…?” Using the customary Scottish nationalist device of whataboutery, he seeks to criticise my letter (3 October) without actually engaging with it, preferring instead – as Scottish nationalists always do – to deflect by saying ‘Look at what wicked Westminster is doing’. His criticism of my letter is simply “I wouldn’t have started from there”.

Mr Grodynski doesn’t want to know about the money wasted at Holyrood. But he is fascinated by the money he claims is wasted at Westminster. He claims “more than a hundred billion pounds (including tax revenues from Scotland)” have been wasted on cherry-picked projects. But he gets his facts wrong. This is not surprising when his misinformation obviously comes from social media posts.

In complaining about HS2 – “a catastrophic public transport project” – in this context Mr Grodynski clearly implies that Scotland has contributed to it. The Full Fact fact-checking service has investigated this claim and shows that “all money spent on HS2 which is raised by Scottish taxes will be returned via something called the Barnett formula... So for every £1 spent on HS2, Scotland receives 9.2p more funding”. Given that Scotland has 8.3 per cent of the UK’s population, that isn’t a bad deal.

As for his dismissal of PPE and Test and Trace spending, Mr Grodynski might remember how Scotland benefited from the UK Treasury’s largesse with furloughing and business support, as well as the development and roll-out of vaccines.

Contrary to social media claims, in March 2021, that NHS Test and Trace had cost £37 billion, Full Fact has shown that this was not the case: “£37bn is the budget for the project’s first two years”, not what was spent.

Perhaps Mr Grodynski would have preferred the UK government not to try to protect us all during a major pandemic. He should question how a separate Scotland would have been able to support individuals and businesses, something that would certainly not now be possible when Scotland faces a £1bn black hole in its finances.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Blame Westminster

Contrary to the assertions of Alexander McKay (Letters, 4 October), falling life expectancy in Scotland is caused by factors largely outwith the control of any Scottish government. Increased poverty is the main driver of ill health, with resultant early deaths, and that is mainly down to UK austerity exacerbated by cruel Tory welfare reforms.

This week, new research from Barnardo’s confirmed that the two-child limit remains the single biggest driver of child poverty, while a Financial Times article praised the SNP’s Scottish Child Payment, with Oxford academic Danny Dorling stating that “it moves Scotland from being one of the most unequal places to live in Europe for a child to being one of the most equal – in just 12 months”.

And contrary to Suella Braverman’s echoes of Enoch Powell, Scotland needs more immigration and a younger population, just as a booming economy in Ireland has resulted in record immigration and life expectancy is now in advance of the EU average. The Tories caused the cost-of-living crisis with their hard Brexit, which has increased food prices, and their failed energy policies, that have resulted in higher gas and electricity prices, yet households and businesses in energy-rich Scotland pay even higher daily standing charges than the rest of the UK.

Given Sir Keir Starmer’s support for Brexit and a refusal to commit to abolishing the two-child limit or other draconian Tory policies, there is no radical change in prospect as part of a failing UK. There is every reason to continue supporting the SNP, not least as we have the best-performing health service in the UK and the most progressive welfare policies to help the poorest in society – but with the economic powers of a normal country, we could do so much better.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh

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