The alarm bells warning us about the state of Scotland’s NHS are now deafening.
The fact that almost 2000 employees at the country’s showpiece facility – Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) – have signed a letter to their bosses urging them to act over the lack of staff should be the wake-up call they need.
QEUH staff, the majority of whom are nurses, have taken the unprecedented step of writing to highlight the
“intolerable” conditions they are working under.
A dangerously high number of staff shortages is leading to increased anxiety and stress among the workforce.
This has led to NHS workers going off sick, which has created an even greater shortfall on the wards – some of which have been left with just one nurse to 30 patients for an entire shift, which is far from safe.
Bosses must take action on these warnings before lives are lost. Today, the health unions will release the results of their ballot for strike action over pay – and it will be no surprise if there is an overwhelming rejection of the Scottish Government’s offer.
Unless nurses are paid a decent rate closer to inflation, the health service will continue to haemorrhage experienced workers and will also fail to attract new talent into the profession.
We rely on nurses to care for us when we’re at our lowest ebb and if we don’t look after them, there will be no one to look after us.
Energy crisis must be addressed by Westminster
It is obvious that Boris Johnson and his government will do nothing in the face of the biggest financial crisis facing Britain in decades.
That the Downing Street squatter even turned up at the meeting with energy bosses yesterday was noteworthy only because no one really expected him to bother.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have because following the pow-wow with three Tory ministers – none of whom back a windfall tax on oil giants – came a plea for companies to volunteer to do more.
Nothing about extra measures to help the poorest, nothing about reining in the energy companies’ mega-profits and nothing about keeping the limit on the price caps in October and January somewhere on the scale of sanity.
There are two big levers any government could pull to avert an energy price disaster – hit the energy companies with a proper windfall tax and intervene in the market to keep the price cap down.
Action is needed on both before it is too late.
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