Staring ahead, not in defiance but in defeat...
Brain cancer patient is left in agony for 4 hours after ambulance ‘fails to turn up’
POET John Donne said no man is an island. He never lived to see these past few weeks of Shona Robison’s career, which look increasingly like the final few weeks of her career.
The Health Secretary was a pale sketch of doleful isolation at First Minister’s Questions yesterday. As foe upon foe rose to demand her sacking, she gave no sigh or head-shake or roll of the eye.
Beside her, Nicola Sturgeon was up and down like a pogo stick with a briefing folder, defending her minister from the onslaught. Miss Robison is her friend but Miss Sturgeon is her boss and both know that, sooner or later, the dagger will have to be taken up. Anyone who thinks being stabbed in the back is the worst experience in politics has never waited patiently to be knifed in the front.
Richard Leonard shunted the shiv a few inches forward. The Labour leader queried if the First Minister knew how many ambulances took more than an hour to respond to a 999 call last year. She didn’t and steeled herself for the answer. A couple of hundred? A few thousand, tops.
THE figure was ‘16,865’. Miss Sturgeon winced. Her backbenchers hushed; they thought she’d already cured the lepers and made the blind see. Mercifully, the First Minister forwent her usual response that those patients should count themselves lucky; in England their ambulance would have been attacked by a pack of wolves en route to the hospital.
Worse, Mr Leonard had brought along a terminally ill woman who waited two hours for an ambulance, eventually took the car to hospital, and didn’t see a doctor until the next morning.
Mr Leonard said the Health Secretary should be fired. Willie Rennie agreed. Neil Findlay too. That old Kirk Douglas film had been turned on its head as MSPs pointed to Miss Robison and proclaimed: ‘She is Spartacus.’ The drama was palpable.
The Health Secretary kept her head up, lips pursed, eyes fixed on an imaginary point of interest straight ahead. You become familiar with that stare over time. It’s a stare of defeat, not defiance. Miss Robison is on political life support and she is aware the First Minister could pull the plug any time.
Mind you, the SNP leader had her own worries. Ruth Davidson asked why she rejected a deal with the UK Government on the Brexit Bill. Whereupon we were treated to a farrago of fright from the First Minister: Westminster would seize control of farms, force us to grow GM crops and put a chlorinated chicken in every pot. Such fears seem not to burden the Welsh Government which came to an agreement with Westminster. Miss Davidson quoted a Welsh minister saying ‘compromise’ was ‘the art of negotiation’. A Nationalist MSP hooted: ‘It’s the art of capitulation’.
IT seems Wales is talking down Scotland now, too. A boycott of leeks and Ryan Giggs is surely on the cards. George Square will be kindling a pyre of Max Boyce LPs before the week’s out.
‘For once, will you do a deal in the national interest and not your Nationalist interest?’ Miss Davidson snapped in exasperation. She actually pronounced it ‘yurr Nationalist interest’ because the Tory leader becomes more Scottish the angrier she gets.
Ashten Regan-Denham, MSP for Downton Abbey North, broke out her manicured vowels in aid of the First Minister. She posed a question on Brexit so well planted it could have come from Homebase.
Exactly 30 minutes after telling parliament the Brexit Bill could stop Holyrood addressing alcoholism, Miss Sturgeon outlined her government’s plans for tackling the drink and drug culture.
John Mason said the problems were acute in the East End of Glasgow. The First Minister assured him: ‘I see it in my own constituency.’ They must be slowing down the limo in Govanhill these days.
A TERMINALLY ill grandmother was left writhing in pain for nearly four hours after an ambulance failed to show up to take her to hospital.
Margaret Goodman, 58, was given four months to live in December after being diagnosed with brain cancer.
Earlier this month she suffered an ‘excruciating’ episode that led to her husband and palliative care nurses making several urgent calls for an ambulance so she could be admitted to hospital where doctors could administer pain relief.
Despite having a care plan in place, Mrs Goodman, of Sauchie, Clackmannanshire, waited more than two hours before being told no ambulance was available.
Instead her husband Gavin had to drive her to Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Stirlingshire.
It has since emerged that the former teacher was among 16,000 patients who waited more than an hour for an ambulance last year.
The figures were disclosed by Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard, who raised Miss Goodman’s case at Holyrood yesterday as Shona Robison faced calls from Mr Leonard – backed by Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie – to quit as Health Secretary.
Mrs Goodman told parliament of her ‘shocking’ experience of the NHS, called for Miss Robison to step down and wiped away tears as she described her experience of the NHS as ‘horrendous’.
She said she was left with ‘no dignity’ during her wait, adding that her husband and her nurses called for an ambulance four times between 11.45pm and 2am before Mr Goodman decided to drive her to the A&E unit.
Once there, Mrs Goodman was put in a wheelchair before a nurse finally took her into a side room at 3am and gave her morphine after Mr Goodman begged her to help.
She then waited a further four hours to see a doctor. Mr Goodman, 60, said: ‘Where was the ambulance? We have an ambulance station a quarter of a mile from our house. We’ve had no explanation at all.’
Asked if she thought Miss Robison should resign, Mrs Goodman said: ‘She should.’
A spokesman for the First Minister said she has ‘complete confidence’ in Miss Robison.
The Scottish Ambulance Service disputed Mrs Goodman’s claims, saying it received one call, with a second to cancel the ambulance.
A spokesman said: ‘We received a call at 1.26am which was not immediately life-threatening and were advised at 2.11am the ambulance was no longer required.
‘However, Mrs Goodman waited longer than we would have liked. We apologise and are investigating the circumstances.’