AS a taxpayer and potential patient, I await an assurance from Health Secretary Jeane Freeman that members of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde responsible will be held strictly to account for the scandalous shortcomings in hygiene at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital ("Hospital in pigeon droppings scandal faces £50m bill for repairs", The Herald, March 11) and the shocking failure to ensure that the completed structure complied with construction standards critical in a modern general hospital.
Duncan Macintyre,
2 Fort Matilda Terrace, Greenock.
THAT the QEUH needs £50 million to rectify deficiencies will come as no surprise to those familiar with NHS Scotland. My local hospital, Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock, needed major refurbishment at inconvenience to staff and patients and the problem is yet again obvious at the new hospital. Governments come and go but the common denominator is civil servants centrally and health boards failing to provide due diligence in these projects. Name and shame those responsible for such inefficiencies.
That the world famous Institute of Neurologist Sciences needs a facelift is a given but Scottish viewers of Sky /Netflix/Amazon must feel a sense of pride when the Glasgow Coma Scale is referenced in productions on these platforms. We deserve better from our planners than seeing a new hospital the target of such criticism.
Pat Crumlish,
Crosbie Court, Troon.
Religion no more
I READ about anti-Semitism reported in the Labour Party, Islamophobia in the Tory party. Football "fans" with so much sectarianism and hatred for each other that they have to be kept apart by expensive policing. Protestants and Catholics who have walls built to separate them within cities in the UK and now I read that Orthodox Jews were spitting and shouting insults at Jewish women who had the audacity to pray at the Wailing Wall – shock, horror ("Angry protest at Wailing Wall", The Herald, March 9).
It is no wonder that I have no time for religion and all it stands for, but it is interesting that having worked in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as well as all over the world, the only time I was ever asked if I was Catholic was when I was in Indonesia and it was probably because I was white. The questioner was more astounded when I replied that I did not follow any religion.
Steve Barnet,
Broom Park, Gargunnock.
Taxing question
I WOULD like to fully endorse Wendy Hebard’s excellent letter (March 7) in support of the much-debated tourist tax or transient visitor levy (what a mouthful; in many countries it is simply described as the "city tax").
There is a very simple question to put to those hoteliers who claim that the tourist tax “will threaten vital investment in the hotel industry” and have a negative impact on visitor numbers. I am sure that our hoteliers are much-travelled individuals, so the question is this: thinking of the destinations that they have visited, has the application of a tourist tax (usually no more than the cost of a cup of coffee a day) ever deterred them from making that visit? I suspect not.
Eric Melvin,
6 Cluny Place, Edinburgh.
Triple jeopardy
I WAS taught not to use three words when two will do and have been reading of the demise of the PIN number - Personal Identification Number number.
Other examples of redundant words are:
"Advance" planning; disappear "from sight"; few "in number"; "free" gift; fall "down"
The last example makes me wonder why young people fall and elderly people have a fall.
David Miller,
80 Prestonfield, Milngavie.
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