FWIW this is the text from my talk at the NHSforYES event last night: I’m Alan Thomson. I’m from Aberdeen, and I’ve been a consultant anaesthetist at the Maternity Hospital and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for the last 10 years or so. I am going to talk more about how and why, as an NHS Consultant, I came to my decision about how to vote on Thursday. As a declaration of interest I should be clear that I am here as an NHS professional, as a parent, and as (relatively infrequent) patient. I’m not a member of any party, and I’m not here because I like or dislike particular politicians. To be quite honest, I think it is a bit daft and even a little dangerous for any of us to make our decision on Thursday on those terms. Whatever your political allegiances, though, it might be worth for a moment remembering how we got here… we, the people, elected at the last Scottish elections, as a majority government, the one party that guaranteed in their manifesto to hold a referendum on independence. I know that many people wish we weren’t having this vote. Some are very upset about it, but personally I think it is not a bad thing that a political party has actually kept its promise about something important. It’s a bit uncomfortable, though, isn’t it? Because this is a very different kind of vote. Part of what you are feeling is power. Genuine power. Everyone with a vote, all of us, have an equal opportunity to determine what kind of country we are going to live in. That is a considerable responsibility and many of us probably still feel a bit unprepared for it. And it gets even more uncomfortable when we disagree with our friends, fall out with people on facebook and get bombarded by all these stories in the media about how the sky will fall on our heads if we dare choose self-government. So what about my decision? First of all I look at is around me. Where do we stand? Well I’ve lived and worked in various parts of Scotland as well as working in England and overseas, and what I see around me in this country is that Scotland is a small nation with rather more than its fair share of resources, natural (of course), commercial and most of all human. I see a society which judging by its voting patterns, is broadly communitarian, social democratic or centre left. To put it another simpler way, I would suggest, that while we don’t particularly mind some folk getting pretty wealthy, we don’t like the idea of anyone being very poor. We certainly don’t have a monopoly of these values in Scotland, and nor are they by any means universal here, but I do think that there are an awful lot of people in Scotland, right now, who are sensing that we can have a better country, more in tune with these values, if we want it. As an NHS worker I am part of a choice that we have already made. A part of the great post-war settlement that founded the welfare state, we chose and choose today to pay, from our own money, via taxation, for everyone in our society’s health care. When I go to put an epidural in to relieve labour pain, I don’t ask to see a credit card first. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t ever thought about how much I could charge, but my point is that the large majority of us recognise that some things are better run for the collective good of society as a whole, and better run, for the most part, by those whose primary responsibility is to that society, rather than to shareholders or owners seeking profit. I think that this understanding informs much of the way that public service in Scotland works, and will continue to work if we have control over all of the levers that any country can pull to improve its lot. But we don’t have access to the most important of these, and I’m afraid to say that for all of the slightly panicky promises we’ve heard over the last week, none of what has been said will give us anything like what we need which is responsibility, as a nation, for our own revenue and spending decisions. I’ve been a bit reminded of the jilted partner who on seeing the packed suitcase says “but I can change!” except, have you noticed – that is the one thing that is not being said. There is no evidence whatsoever that there will be one jot of change in the general direction of UK politics, where there is a race to the bottom to shrink the state, privatise the assets and then for the politicians responsible to take big fat payments to sit in boardrooms or dispense advice to those very companies benefitting from the dismantling and selling off of what MacMillan, I think, called the family silver. It is corrupt, it is undemocratic and here in Scotland we have a unique opportunity to chose to do things differently. I’m straying off topic – let me return to my personal reasons for voting YES. I had the great privilege of going from a local comprehensive school to University to study for five years and graduate in Medicine without the colossal debts that students accumulate these days. In Scotland we made a decision to try and minimise the costs borne by individual students, recognising that society benefits through increased skills and more taxation if the workforce is well educated. I’ve done a lot of medical education over the years I’ve been very aware of efforts to widen access to medical school across all socio-economic groups, but I can tell you (I really better tell you, if fact, because my own wife has done a significant amount of research on this topic) that it is clear that some of the brightest and best of our young people are already frightened away from doing a long, difficult degree course like medicine because of the high personal financial cost. Without complete control over the money generated in Scotland and complete control over how it is spent, I do not see us being able to continue to avoid students paying tuition fees. I strongly believe that medicine, and for that matter all of the professions, should be open to everyone. I don’t want medicine, and the rest to increasingly become the career privilege of the wealthy. It doesn’t make for good healthcare, and it doesn’t make for a good country. One of the other interesting findings of my other half’s research was that there is a lack of aspiration from many of the brightest kids from poorer backgrounds. What a waste. How did we get to the point in Scotland (Scotland!) where whole cohorts of youngsters don’t see the point in acquiring the knowledge and skills needed to make a success of their lives? This is the country whose greatest export isn’t whisky or oil for that matter, but its people, who have gone to all corners of the world to innovate, create businesses and help other nations flourish. Something has gone very wrong in the last 40 years, and that something is Westminster policy. We have watched the destruction of traditional industries at least partly for ideological reasons. We have watched as income inequality has increased massively, and we have seen the creation of a disenfranchised underclass who have little stake in our society. And lets be clear, this is not the inevitable result of globalisation or the internet age, this is a choice that the UK has made election after election, whether for the Tories or for Labour governments matching the same spending patterns. If you look elsewhere in Europe, it is clear that other developed economies made different choices, and have considerably less inequality. Take one heavy industry as an example of how industrial policy in the UK has failed – those over 50 in the audience may remember being exhorted to vote NO in the devolution referendum in 1979 in order to save Scottish Shipbuilding, which then employed 35,000 people. Here we are now trying to save the 6,000 remaining. And we are told vote NO to save those jobs. Look across the North Sea for a moment to our neighbouring developed economy, Norway. Look not at her oil, but at her successful shipbuilding industry. Her high wage, developed economy, European shipbuilding industry. There are 90,000 people employed in the maritime industry in Norway, with around 20,000 directly in shipbuilding alone. And we are apparently Better Together. I’m not going to insult you by not recognising that all the decisions we made in an independent Scotland would need to be paid for. All of the money we spend has to be taxed or borrowed. But exactly how an independent Scotland would do that is a matter for people in Scotland to decide. I do not for one minute accept the carefully choreographed scare stories of the last few days which are basically saying that despite Scotland’s GDP per capita, our wealth as a nation, being 14th in the world (and even the BBC agree with this) that we are uniquely badly placed to make the decisions on how we spend our money. Before I finish I want to say one more thing about the NHS workplace. NHS Grampian, though it is rather creaking along just now, is supported massively in the delivery of services by colleagues from all over the world. In Scotland we need people with skills to come here to live and work, to help us build our economy, improve our services and provide, yes, a tax base to help us provide the pensions and care for our older folk that we would wish to. And all who wish to call Scotland home is welcome – to work, to live and to vote. You know where I am going with this….. whilst there is plenty of racism and xenophobia right here, in this country, we do not and will not ever see a time, I think, where we have Scottish government vans driving around effectively saying “immigrants go home”. We will not tolerate the dog-whistle politics of “send them back”. And yet, here we are, in UK, and that is exactly what we’ve got. I reject that, and people in Scotland reject that. During the campaign, I have met a multitude of folk from across the political spectrum who have one thing in common. A belief that in Scotland we will do better if the decisions about our future are made by the people who live here. Indepedence will not fix anything on its own, but it is very clear to me that there are many many things we can and should do better. Nothing in life is zero risk, and as I often say to my patients if you only see the risks and none of the benefits, then you would never leave your house. It is a journey we should take, so I’m voting YES and I’ll hope you will do the same.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 11:24:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015