IT would appear from your article about the speculated budget gap in Police Scotland’s funds by 2024/25 ("Police Scotland’s budget gap could hit £200m in next few years, warns report", The Herald, September 30) that those of us who warned of the dangers of creating this monster were correct.
Although it was not just the financial aspect that worried us (there were many letters in The Herald warning of the dangers). it was a major part of our concerns.
According to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre paper of October 2013 "one of the main drivers for reform was to deliver financial savings", and according to the estimates net savings would, by 2026 and including set-up costs, run at £1.27 billion.
The Scottish Government supported the reforms and so another mistake which has and will cost the Scottish public dearly commenced.
W MacIntyre, East Kilbride.
TIMELY WARNING
YOUR report of a £2.5 million takeover of a home care provider ("Scottish care business sold in multi-million deal as coronavirus boosts demand", Herald Business, September 29) serves as yet another reminder of the predatory interest of commercial profit-based companies in our NHS and our care services. The acquisitor company in this case, Cera Care, makes no bones about its ambition, claiming on its website: “Our Care Sector is broken, and Cera is here to fix it”. No. That is the job of our NHS and of the National Care Service, which both the SNP Government and opposition parties have vowed to create alongside or as part of it.
The fact that commercial interests regard the plight of patients and their families under the coronavirus pandemic as increasing “the growth potential of the market” (as your report states) should serve as a particularly sinister warning of the opportunist aims of the capitalist sector, and the threat that they pose to our precious universal needs-based health and care services.
Michael Otter, Kinlochbervie.
CLOCKWORK BLUES
ON reading your article on the precarious financial prospects of Glasgow’s “Clockwork Orange” ("Greens launch bid to protect subway", The Herald, September 30), I decided to do some online research into the SPT (Strathclyde Partnership for Transport). After wading through pages of information on repeated rebranding and remit variations of what essentially started as Glasgow Corporation buses I gradually lost the will to live. If ever proof was needed to support the adage that a camel is a horse designed by a committee it’s there in Wikipedia.
David J Crawford, Glasgow G12.
PIANO PAUPERS
SO “boogie” is a word on the brink (Issue of the Day, September 30).
It’s worse than I thought. Not only are the young of today unable to dance, presumably “Woogie” is also missing from their vocabulary, and they don’t thrill to the percussive drive of piano.
What a pity music is also wasted on the young, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw.
R Russell Smith, Kilbirnie.
GETTING NEEDLED
WHY are jags now referred to as jabs in Scotland? Will we have to refer to Partick Thistle as "the Jabs" in future?
Don Ferguson, Kirkintilloch.
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