SUPERB article by Joanna Cherry (The international community must demand that laws of war are obeyed, Oct 20). I completely agree. The only thing I would add is that Russia and the UK abstained on the UN Security Council resolution for completely different reasons. This resolution called, among other things, for compliance by all with international humanitarian law.
Russia wanted the resolution to include a call for a ceasefire, an end to indiscriminate attacks against civilians and a condemnation of the imposition of a blockade on the enclave. Whatever one may think of Russia’s underlying motives and of its hypocrisy, given its own actions in Ukraine, its reasoning on this resolution at least addressed the human situation in Gaza head-on.
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The UK said that it was abstaining because the resolution needed to be clearer on Israel’s inherent right to self-defence and ignored the fact that Hamas was using Palestinian civilians as human shields. It added that Hamas had “made the Palestinian people their victims too”. This reasoning is weak. The resolution did not challenge Israel’s right to self-defence, unequivocally condemned the Hamas attack and called for the release of the hostages but had been carefully drafted to concentrate on the humanitarian question. The UK chose, by its shameful vote, to avoid calling for humanitarian pauses and compliance with international humanitarian law.
The veto by the US, and the pathetic abstention by the UK, will not make it easier for these countries to call for international law to be observed in other situations, such as Ukraine.
The other 12 members of the Security Council (Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland and UAE) voted for the resolution. I would like to think that an independent Scotland, if given the opportunity, would have voted the same way.
Eric Clive
via thenational.scot
THE NHS Dental Centre in Castle Douglas has been closed for many months as, under the old arrangement of NHS sub-contracting, the dental company could not recruit dentists to work in it at a rate the company or the dentists could afford. This point was made clear at the time the centre closed.
Given the current views of NHS dentistry among younger dentists I cannot see a rush to take on an NHS practice in Castle Douglas, knowing there will be a massive backlog of semi- and full emergency cases to deal with, for little reward and a lot of stress.
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In 2003 Dumfries & Galloway Health Board paid me to look at what was happening in D&G with respect to NHS dentistry and come up with a solution.
I stated in my 2003 report that it would be struggling to hold onto NHS dental provision as the NHS margins for practices got tighter and tighter, that NHS fee rises did not reflect the inflationary costs in actual dental practice and had not for more than a decade.
Under a past CEO at D&G my detailed report never made it from his desk to the board who commissioned it, as it did not support the move for the dental centre at the old hospital site
which was politically more hospitable with the then Scottish Government. I suggested the need to expand the NHS salaried side and the use of mobile surgeries on articulated trailers, much like many of the early scanners moved between schools or health centres to meet local needs. I had practical experience of managing, deploying and using mobile dental units while serving in the Royal Navy and fully understood their efficiency and effectiveness for dealing with small population groups.
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The irony was that officials from the local British Dental Association, Community Dental Service and Local Dental Committee opposed the idea, even as the increasing majority of the BDA members in D&G planned to exit NHS dental provision within the following decade, as it would “threaten” NHS dental provision in D&G.
Here we are, 20 years later, with the problem of NHS dental provision getting ever worse across D&G and still the solution appears to be coercing dentists, by bribery, to retain a NHS dental service in D&G. A solution which has failed time and time again, over the last two decades, whether undertaken by individuals or dental corporates in our area for the same reasons:, inability to retain dentists or even recruit them to an NHS practice in the first place.
The current NHS dental model has failed patients and dentists across the UK, as it does not meet either group’s basic needs. Throwing the ever more limited funds available at NHS dentistry in “incentive payments” (aka bribery) makes little or no sense – except to politicians. There needs to be a complete rethink about where and how limited NHS dental funding should be used to meet patients needs and expectations across Scotland. The universal NHS dental service system enjoyed prior to 1990 in Scotland has collapsed and is not returning any time soon, while the policy at Westminster is to shut NHS dentistry down in England, with a knock-on effect on Barnet consequentials for NHS dental health care in Scotland.
Peter Thomson
via email
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