Ex-SNP chief ’s parting shot at Nats
A FORMER SNP council chief has quit the party with a blistering attack on members who lack a ‘basic grasp of reality, civility or indeed rational thought’.
Ewan Dow, the ex-leader of Tayside Regional Council, disclosed that he has not renewed his membership after nearly a quarter of a century in the party. His position in the 1990s saw him described as the SNP’s most powerful politician until Alex Salmond seized office.
In a Facebook post, Mr Dow wrote: ‘For the past five months I have not been a member of the SNP, the party I was a member of for almost 25 years.
‘The reasons for not renewing my membership, when it ran out at the end of last year, are many fold, some to do with unhappiness with local circumstances, more to do with my desire not to be associated with the many supporters and/or members of the party to whom a basic grasp of reality, civility or indeed rational thought seems completely foreign.’
Referencing the so-called Cybernats, an army of pro-SNP supporters on Twitter, he added: ‘The SNP’s aye had its share of eccentrics but it’s one thing to go about SNP conference pestering people with a poorly printed theory of how the British State are responsible for all Scotland’s ills including the weather, it’s another for the voting public of Scotland to see your idiocy and decide not to vote for a pro-independence party, particularly the SNP, as a result.’
Mr Dow, who was a parliamentary candidate for the SNP on three occasions, continued: ‘A few days after the referendum I wrote a note pleading with Yes voters to put the referendum behind us and move on awaiting the next opportunity when more of our fellow friends and neighbours felt they were ready. Pointing out the flaws in the Smith Commission and Westminster but not being obstructive about it.
‘What I most pleaded for was not to engage in name calling, tribalism or continuing to go on about the 45 as if we were some elite club. Sadly for many this fell on deaf ears.’
Jackson Carlaw, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said: ‘As even senior SNP figures are beginning to recognise, their case for independence has fallen to pieces and many of the rank and file have had enough.’
An SNP spokesman said of Mr Dow: ‘We are sorry that he has made this decision, but understand he has personal reasons for doing so and wish him well for the future.’
a HOSPiTal closing for lack of a single doctor sounds like something out of a Third World country.
instead, as we report today, this is Scotland under the SnP – self-styled guardians of the nHS.
This is the party that is fresh from lecturing Westminster’s Health minister Jeremy Hunt about where he is going wrong; fresh from boasting about ‘doing things differently’ in Scotland; fresh from trying to woo striking junior doctors over the Border; fresh from ditching its self-imposed embargo on voting on english-only Commons Bills to ‘save’ the nHS.
The reality of the GP crisis is that the failure to recruit a single doctor will close lockhart Hospital, on the edge of lanark, a 30-bed unit used principally for elderly patients. modest enough – but its closure means 30 people and their extended families facing uncertainty.
and it is a symptom of a wider crisis over the recruitment and retention of GPs, the severity of which can be judged by the fact that 1,000 doctors were asked to provide cover at the hospital and not one came forward.
The most serious aspect of the crisis is the SnP failure to grasp its severity. a spokesman yesterday trotted out the tired line that the number of GPs is at a record level and that a £20million package to support GPs was announced in march.
Well, the population – whose age profile is rising too – is at a record level. GP numbers should be keeping pace. and we know from bitter experience that hurling vast amounts of money at the nHS without reform delivers few results.
Worse is to come. a survey by the Royal College of GPs found 58 per cent of GPs in Scotland plan to leave or reduce their hours in the next five years. Scottish Health Secretary Shona Robison, happy to sit back and point to increased spending, has shown little willingness to innovate and tackle vested interests.
Yes, we need to train more GPs but we cannot allow them to vanish on graduation to the sun-splashed shores of, say, australia.
equally, we need ways of attracting GPs to rural areas and not just the bright lights of the Central Belt.
all the SnP posturing cannot disguise that the closure of lockhart Hospital is a straw in the wind and the ‘more money’ mantra is the equivalent of a couple of aspirin for a system in need of radical surgery.