NHS provides wonderful treatment. Increase taxes and fund it properly
Herein lies the problem for the NHS; when I was a medical student all those years ago acute myeloid leukaemia was fatal within a very short timescale. However, thanks to all the wonderful treatment I am still here and am now on a number of NHS waiting lists. My ageing prostate requires investigation and treatment; my routine "free" eye test revealed a cataract, so onto another waiting list; the haematologists put me onto a chiropody waiting list because of the risk of infections; breathlessness needs to be checked out by a cardiologist.
So that is four waiting lists I'm contributing to as well as my "routine" haematology appointments. As an addendum I had a marvellous experience with a knee replacement at the Inverness National Treatment Centre two years ago.
It is not the NHS that is failing but the huge increase in demand as old c like me are given wonderful treatment. Finish building the National Treatment Centres, increase my taxes and fund the NHS properly.
A friend, who recently had an operation, said to me: "I never believed in angels until I had my knee replaced; now I know they all work in the NHS."
I can't stress enough how lucky we are to have our Health Service.
Iain McNicol, Port Appin.
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Dear Glasgow: think smaller
Glasgow is the Dear Green Place – a city of science and invention, of strength, music, humour, class, and difference. It has given the world steam power, radical thinkers, antiseptic surgery, art movements and fierce working-class and community solidarity.
So how has Glasgow ended up imagining an urban future as one of lookalike towers in glass and concrete ("Change to Glasgow skyline on horizon as tall buildings policy agreed", The Herald, June 4)?
The city council's new Tall Buildings Design Guide may offer developers clarity, but it offers the public little vision. These towers will be high enough to disrupt the best of what Glasgow has built – its tenements, its laneways, its layered civic history – but not high enough to create something distinctively new or transformative. Not radical. Just rentable.
We've seen this elsewhere. In Adelaide, Australia, where I live, one of the world's best low-rise, planned cities is now facing a proposal for its tallest-ever skyscraper: a 160-metre commercial tower to be erected next to the modest but magnificent 30-metre South Australian Parliament. That building is where, in 1894, full women's suffrage was first legislated. Now it risks being cast into permanent shadow.
The lesson is this: once the high-rise model takes hold, private developers will not stop. Height becomes ambition. Overshadowing becomes inevitable. Distinctiveness is lost, and sameness rises in its place.
Glasgow still has a choice. It can honour its green character, its historical depth, and its civic soul. It can grow with distinction, not duplication. Capture of government by property developer interests becomes normalised.
Let Glasgow not be remembered as the city that forgot who it was in the race to be what others already are.
Stewart Sweeney, Adelaide, South Australia.
Lynx are not a danger to humans
Wild animals they may be but lynx were killed off by man armed with nothing more sophisticated than sticks, spears and arrows; the bulk of their extinction may be down to habitat destruction, which only needed the ability to light fires and use an axe. These animals are to be pitied, not feared.
Malcolm Parkin (Letters, June 5) is indulging in solipsism much as those influenced by the book and films of Jaws falsely labelled sharks as malevolent killers rather than relatively harmless apex predators that humans would do well to give a wide berth to. In the wild lynx and wolf avoid contact with humans; we should return the favour if they are ever reintroduced to Scotland.
The main hazards in the US are hunters with maybe bears a distant second, as Tom Lehrer sang:
"People ask me how I do it
And I say, "There's nothin' to it
You just stand there lookin' cute
And when something moves, you shoot!"
And there's 10 stuffed heads in my trophy room right now,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow."
David Bradshaw, Kilcreggan.
Should the lynx be reintroduced to Scotland? (Image: Getty)
First off the tee
Kristy Dorsey writes well about The Golf Lounge ("Behind the scenes at Scotland's original indoor golfing facility", The Herald, June 6). Whether it is Scotland's first indoor golf facility is, however, open to doubt.
Sixty and more years ago, Lumley's in Sauchiehall Street employed Bill Jessiman, a well-known professional, who was available for tuition in the Golf department, pupils hitting balls into nets.
I also recall, perhaps about that time, using a golf simulator in the old Central Hotel in Glasgow. That facility was short-lived.
Why is there always such a desire to be first?
David Miller, Milngavie.
Below the belt
Recently some readers have complained about the inappropriate timing of television adverts for bowel medication and incontinence products being shown around teatime. The latest adverts for 'Low Body Spray' are really offensive. It seems anything goes these days.
Eric Macdonald, Paisley.
A matter of priorities
Well said Stuart Neville (Letters, June 5) regarding tourist buses in Glasgow.
Mazing my way through all the city centre road closures today, it struck me that while there seems to be plenty of money to spend on projects which are not much liked by Glaswegians there seems to be none available for those such as The People's Palace which we really love.
Dave Henderson, Glasgow.
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