AFTER reading Keith Brown’s comments on Tory MSP Michelle Ballantyne’s  outlandish NHS statement, I felt compelled to write to you. Ballantyne stated that she “would be happy if the government had nothing to do with running the NHS”, with Brown declaring her comments “astonishing”.

Why is it astonishing?

Having any services in public hands – including the NHS – goes against the entire conservative ideology that the capitalist market always prevails.

The Tories only feign support for the NHS as the idea of privatising health care is still too toxic for the majority of sensible voters to stomach.

Hence why they are starving it of funds, with the goal being that public opinion will change due to the deteriorating service – at which point they can justify a change, ie privatisation.

In saying that, true to form, the Tories have shown their blatant disregard for public opinion by beginning privatisation anyway, slowly but surely, chipping away at NHS services since they have been in power. The most recent and glaringly obvious example of this was the news that that cancer screening is to fall into private hands.

The most frustrating thing, from my personal experience of speaking to friends and colleagues, is that it seems their ploy to swing public opinion towards privatisation has been a success to some extent. That said, hopefully the opinion polls are correct in showing they have a long way to go.

However I still find it incredible that anyone would be willing to give up the NHS in the hope that every issue it may have is going to be miraculously resolved by privatisation. It’s not even as if it can be explained by the ignorance of going down uncharted territory – you only have to look across the pond to see the alternative.

We hear stories from the US of families being forced to sell their homes to pay for cancer treatment, their children often then saddled with medical care debt. All this after the trauma of having to nurse their parents to the end – what a horrific situation, one that is now accepted as quite normal practice in the US. Is this an improvement on our current health care system?

If we don’t fight for the NHS then I fear it really is going to be a case of “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”. We owe it to future generations to ensure that the current privatisation is halted and reversed.

Unfortunately I can only see this fight becoming more difficult as Westminster panders to the US in order to drum up trade deals post-Brexit. US pharmaceutical and Medicare companies are desperate for a slice of the NHS pie and when the people making the decisions already have the best private health care money can buy you can guarantee they won’t hesitate to sell it off.

So to conclude, I didn’t find Michelle Ballantyne’s views on the privatisation of the NHS astonishing. Quite the opposite, sadly. Perhaps the only thing astonishing about it was that she was naive enough to declare publicly what the vast majority of Tories MPs only whisper behind the closed doors of their private members clubs.

Named and address supplied

SHOCK! Horror! Scottish Tories thinking of breaking away from the Westminster party!

Look at all the benefit they have had from letting them make their decisions for them. Surely they don’t believe they could cope on their own? Their group is far too wee, and too poor, not enough millionaire donors!

And after all, they don’t want to be labelled nasty, English-hating separatists! Don’t they know they are better together?

P Davidson
Falkirk