Yesterday, First Minister Swinney announced his Programme for Government or 'rewiring the state' as he preferred to call it. It was a long and miserable performance, and essentially a re-hash of what every government worldwide should be doing as a matter of course anyway. We can pick only a few of this 'rewiring'. Let's have a look.
One of the most controversial proposals was reducing the number of mainland Health Boards from 11 to just two. That proposal would leave only Western Isles Health Board, Orkney Health Board and Shetland Health Board intact. However, and rightly, the proposal met with howls of derision and anger. In our view it is utter folly. Scotland needs at least four Health Boards with Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland included in a Highlands Health Board.
Another piece of utter folly is Swinney's Food Price Cap whereby he proposes to cap food prices. How on this earth can a government do that? Does he want food producers and shops out of business?
A £2 bus fare cap? For how long? And who is going to end up paying? The taxpayer? The bus company, and drive them into liquidation?
Reduce the number of Quangos? A long time coming but we'll believe it when we see it. Remember, Quangos are a speciality of Nationalist governments. They just love appointing their own placemen to their Quangos. There are nearly 150 such bodies currently in Scotland.
Reduce the number of Scottish Councils from the current 32? We would really like to see this as, in our view, Regionalisation worked well previously. Indeed, Regionalisation worked so well that it threatened the supremacy of what was then the Scottish Office.
It is the only sane proposal of the lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment