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‘Hospital murdered my child’, mum tells inquiry – STV news

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A mother whose daughter died at a children’s cancer ward after contracting an infection has described her child’s death as “murder”.

Kimberly Darroch told the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry she wants the children and adult hospitals at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) campus in Glasgow to close.

She believes NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board should be punished after she claims staff covered up the true cause of her daughter’s death, which she found out about two years later in the media.

The inquiry began hearing evidence on Monday into problems at two flagship hospitals that contributed to the deaths of two children.

It is investigating the construction of the QEUH campus in Glasgow and the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People and Department of Clinical Neurosciences in Edinburgh.

In a statement read out at the inquiry on Wednesday, Ms Darroch said she was never given details of an infection that her daughter contracted when she died, which she later discovered contributed towards her death.

Ms Darroch also claimed hospital reports about her meeting with doctors to discuss the infection were false.

Her statement said: “My view is that the hospital should be closed. I don’t think it’s safe.

“I feel like the health board need to be punished for all of this. In my eyes, what happened to my daughter is murder.

“She should still be here and I am trying to come to terms with that, after coming to terms with losing her initially.

“I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to. I would never go back to the hospital, never.”

Ms Darroch’s daughter, ten-year-old Milly Main, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in 2012.

‘Hospital murdered my child’, mum tells inquiry

Sturgeon under fire as Scotland spends three times more on rail services than England – Yahoo news

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Nicola Sturgeon has been accused of wasting taxpayers’ money after figures showed that Scotland is spending three times as much as England on keeping railway services running during Covid.

Holyrood has paid almost £60 for every passenger journey since the pandemic struck compared with £22 south of the border, according to analysis by The Telegraph.

In Scotland, this equates to £1.86 for every kilometre each passenger has travelled, compared with 69p in England.

Rail operators on both sides of the border were effectively nationalised to prevent them going bust during the first lockdown, costing billions of pounds of public money. Politicians are now struggling to work out how to handle the ongoing financial burden of running services, amid fears that mass commuting will never return after Covid.

Ms Sturgeon’s administration decided on Monday to keep its two operators on emergency rail contracts until the end of the year. By contrast, in Westminster operators have been transferred onto less lucrative terms to try to limit the burden on taxpayers.

MSP Graham Simpson, the Scottish Conservatives’ shadow transport minister, said: “Scottish taxpayers are shelling out three times more for an SNP rail service that hasn’t operated on a Sunday in seven months and plans to slash hundreds of services.

“Rail users aren’t seeing value for money and the SNP-Green government needs to ensure that under nationalisation the rail services work for the passenger, not the operator.”

The decision came as the SNP fights a bitter industrial dispute with the RMT guards union. Passengers have suffered weekend rail disruption for several months as a result.

In Westminster, the Department for Transport is under orders from the Treasury to cut a rail subsidy that has ballooned to more than £10bn across England. The burden on the public purse is to be reduced through an increase in demand as more commuters return to work, coupled with budget cuts.

Bosses in England are in talks with union leaders to axe thousands of jobs and reduce service levels in order to balance the books.

For political news, please click here: https://www.scotlandmatters.co.uk/politics-matters/

Glasgow, Europe’s drug hell – NZZ (Switzerland)

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Nowhere in Europe do more people die from drug abuse than in Scotland. This sad record is the result of social problems, political failure – and a deadly mix of heroin, cocaine and street Valium.

If only a little had turned out differently, Jason Wallace wouldn’t have been sitting here today. For 20 years, he lived alternately in prison and on the street. In between, he sometimes found shelter with drug-addicted girlfriends, until the police arrested him again. To finance his addiction, he committed violent robberies, stole firearms and sold heroin. In dirty Glasgow back alleys, he injected the drug into his veins with used needles, ultimately infecting himself with hepatitis. Several times he narrowly avoided overdosing.

Twelve years ago, the 46-year-old finally managed to quit, thanks to a self-help group, and has been clean ever since. He doesn’t even touch alcohol anymore.

Meeting in a Glasgow café, Wallace speaks in a careful but firm voice. His body has regained strength, but the past has left its mark on his gaunt face. He works at the Scottish Drugs Forum, a non-governmental organization, and is thus still in close contact with drug addicts today. «In Glasgow’s underprivileged neighborhoods, probably nearly four in 10 residents have an acute drug problem, even if you take alcohol out of the equation,» he says.

To see how Scotland benefits from being part of the UK, click here: https://www.scotlandmatters.co.uk/unity-matters/

New CalMac Islay ferries will not be built in Scotland – STV news

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Two new ferries for Islay will not be made in Scotland after four shipyards from elsewhere were invited to tender for the contract.

More than 30 organisations expressed an interest in taking on the job and 11 entered submissions that Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) said were “rigorously” assessed.

But only four companies, one from Romania, another from Poland and two in Turkey, reached the final stage of the procurement process.

A decision on which shipyard will win the job will be made before the end of March 2022, CMAL said.

The Islay route is one of the busiest services for freight on the Clyde and Hebrides network, and it was decided to contract two new ferries after discussions with Transport Scotland, ferry operator CalMac and communities on the island.

This week CMAL announced that the new vessels will be built at either Damen Shipyard in Romania, Remontowa Shipbuilding in Poland, or one of the Turkish shipyards Sefine Denizcilik Tersanecilik Turizm or Cemre Marin Endustri.

The procurement process for new ferries has come under scrutiny recently because of issues with two vessels from the publicly-owned Ferguson Marine shipyard in Inverclyde.

Holyrood’s rural economy and connectivity committee described the process as a “catastrophic failure”.

New CalMac Islay ferries will not be built in Scotland

For more transport news click here: https://www.scotlandmatters.co.uk/transport-matters/

Sturgeon pushes for independence (again) – The Spectator

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t’s Groundhog Day in Holyrood. Amid criticisms about her administration’s underwhelming ‘Programme for Government,’ Nicola Sturgeon has returned to her favourite hobby house: Scottish independence. Much like ABBA’s reunion, the First Minister combined some new tunes with her greatest hits, declaring that May’s election was an ‘undeniable’ mandate for such a plebiscite by the end of 2023 ‘once the Covid-19 crisis is passed’.

Steerpike is not surprised at Sturgeon’s choice of priorities, preferring to have her civil servants devote their energies to indyref2 rather than letting Scots take their masks off when sat on a train. The SNP and its acolytes have had no compunction in undermining the Union at every opportunity throughout the pandemic; a strategy that has been great for poll numbers but has led to almost half of Europe’s top 20 Covid-19 hotspots being located in Scotland.

Much more noteworthy is the lack of interest in Sturgeon’s announcement. Westminster was admittedly distracted with Boris Johnson’s tax shenanigans but even north of the border there was a far more muted reaction to the First Minister’s pronouncements then her previous statements. The Scottish editions of both the Times and Daily Telegraph for instance relegated the news on their front to a nib; BBC Scotland similarly buried the announcement on its homepage.

Campbeltown wind turbine factory closes permanently – BBC news

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A wind turbine factory in Argyll has been permanently closed, with administrators now selling off equipment used at the site.

Owners CS Wind effectively mothballed the Campbeltown factory, which manufactured offshore and onshore wind farm equipment, in the spring of 2020.

The company said “deteriorating market conditions” had led to a lack of new contracts and declining revenues.

All staff have now either left or been made redundant.

Three-quarters of the 94-strong workforce had already departed in August 2020 with only a handful of staff left running the facility.

The manufacturing plant, located at the Machrihanish Business Park near Campbeltown, was bought by CS Wind, a South Korean firm, in 2016.

At the time it was Britain’s only UK facility for manufacturing onshore and offshore wind towers.

It previously went into administration in 2011 before a partnership between Scottish and Southern Energy and Marsh Wind Technology saved the factory.

After CS Wind failed to secure major work with the Kincardine and Triton Knoll offshore projects in 2019, the majority of the staff were made redundant.

At the time the Unite union called the move a “major blow to Scotland’s renewables manufacturing capacity.”

“Market conditions” are being blamed for CS Wind (UK) being wound up, yet market conditions for wind power have never looked better.

Thousands of towers are required for turbines being planted in the North Sea, with a huge further boost planned in the next 10 years.

Existing onshore windfarms are being renewed after 25 years of torque and tension from generating power.

So there must be other explanations for the repeated failure to make the Campbeltown factory into a success story.

Part of the problem is thought to be the South Korean ownership failing to give the plant the support it needed in the past five years. There’s been a stand-off with Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which provided public funding.

But there is a wider question about the failure to link the renewable power revolution to a manufacturing base in Scotland.

The Scottish government sunk more than £37m in three BiFab yards in Fife and Lewis for fabricating offshore platforms. That also went into administration.

For more environmental fails, click here: https://www.scotlandmatters.co.uk/environment-matters-2/