Marlyn Glen
Charles Dickens, Dundee and Hard Times
28 December 2011
The Christmas - New Year period has its own popular book, film version and ghost story all in one - the evergreen A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, an allegory on the redemption of a greedy man who redistributes his wealth to the less fortunate.
Dickens is regarded as one of Britain’s greatest writers, and 2012 will see many events to mark the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth.
His fame is such that he is one of the few writers with an adjective named after him to describe a social condition - "Dickensian"
In October 1858 Dickens visited Dundee and gave a public reading of A Christmas Carol in Dundee .
The Dundee "Advertiser" reported :"On Friday night Mr Charles Dickens gave his first reading – the Christmas Carol –in the Exchange Hall, Bank Street, in presence of a very large and fashionable audience, who had met to see and hear the most popular novelist of the day."
After a two-hour reading,"Mr Dickens concluded amid loud applause."
Lenin, on the other hand, was far less praiseworthy.George Orwell tells that " the story was read to Lenin on his deathbed and according to his wife, he found its ‘bourgeois sentimentality’ completely intolerable. "
However, Karl Marx declared that Dickens " issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together."
Dickens’ novels highlight the plight of those failed by a Victorian society and who were pre-destined for the workhouse, the debtor’s prison, begging, squalor, and endless hours of spirit-breaking toil in the mills.
Dickens was not , of course, the only observer of the dire straits of the poor.
Below is an extract from a local book, written in 1850 by James Myles, a contemporary Dundonian, called "Chapters in the life of a Dundee factory boy: an autobiography".
His minimalist prose tells simply but effectively how child labour left its lifetime mark.
"When I went to a spinning mill, I was about 7 years of age, I had to get up out of bed at 5 o’clock, commence work at half-past five, drop at nine for breakfast ,begin again at half past nine, work until two which was the dinner hour, start again at half-past two , and continue till half-past seven at night.
"However, although these hours were long, they only made up the working dayIn reality, there were no regular working hours, masters and managers did with us as they liked."The working conditions were unhealthy.
"About a week after I became a mill boy, I was seized by a strong heavy sickness that few escape on becoming mill workers
" The cause of the illness which is known as ‘mill fever’ is the pestiferous atmosphere produced by so many breathing in a confined space together with the heat and exhalations of grease and oil.
"This fever is slow and dull, and painfully wearisome in its operation."It produces a pale sallow and debilitated look, destroys rosy cheeks , and unless the constitution be very strong , leaves its pale impress for life. "
However, whereas people such as Myles sought fact to make their case for the betterment of conditions, Dickens sought fiction, through his novels instead.
In Hard Times, published in 1854, Dickens describes how the massive changes wrought by the industrial revolution had fashioned the fictional "Coketown" and the lives of its people.
He wrote,
" It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all daylong, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next….. So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions."
Hard Times has been regarded by some as an indictment of laissez-faire capitalism.
George Orwell was less persuaded , saying "its whole moral is that capitalists ought to be kind, not that workers ought to be rebellious….if men would behave decently the world would be decent."
Dickens provided a vivid analysis of the troubles of society, but didn’t suggest a collective, political remedy.
Personal changes in behaviour were his solution rather than whole-scale political and structural changes in society.
Dickens was no paragon of virtue himself.
In his private life, he became progressively detached from his wife of 22 years who had borne him 10 children and who had suffered several miscarriages.
They separated in 1858, with Dickens somehow regarding his wife as responsible for him having to support so many children financially and for her "lack of energy" as well.
What Orwell said about Dickens’ attitudes to capitalists certainly applies to Dickens himself – " if men would behave decently the world would be decent."
Dickens’ time was an era of extreme poverty judged by its standards of drinking water, provision of food, sanitation, health, housing, literacy and education, and information.
Yet, the poor were regarded by many of the comfortable classes as the source of their own predicament, an undeserving, feckless underclass on whom philanthropy and public money would be wasted.
Dickens viewed his novels as the best means to attack such beliefs and to rouse the conscience with stories of the unscrupulous ill-treatment and subjugation of the lives of his memorable characters pitted against a backdrop of glaring class inequalities.
And with his books being so popular, their message could not be easily dismissed.
If Dickens had been our Ghost of Christmas Present what would he be asking us to confront morally in what are today indeed hard times?
His great-great grandson, Gerald Dickens, is in no doubt.
He has said that the present day issue of bankers’ bonuses " sums up A Christmas Carol in a nutshell".
As we know today, appeals against selfishness calling for changes in the personal behaviour of bonus-wealthy individuals, as Dickens would have favoured, have been shown not to work.
There has to be legislation by Government to achieve this, just as progressive thinkers after Dickens’ time advocated government intervention in implementing programmes for improvements in health, housing, education and employment.
However, none of this detracts from Dickens’ ability to remind those in authority of their moral responsibility towards those they employed.
He never had to look far for evidence of the need for that accountability as this contemporary incident from Dundee shows :
In 1846 the case of "Six unfortunate and unprotected factory girls of Dundee" between the ages of 14 and 20 employed as flax-spinners in Baxter’s mills reached Parliament.
40 women in the mill had seen other workers in the same flat as themselves awarded a three pennies a week increase in wages and, not unnaturally, the women had asked for a similar rise.
Their request was refused, and they took the afternoon off for recreation as others at the mill sometimes did.
The rules of the mill meant that they could expect a fine of time and a half deduction from their wages.
However, on returning to work next day, they were detained in a room by four men , kept there till noon, whereupon they were marched through the streets of Dundee to another private room where waited a magistrate, a member of the Baxter family and the mill manager.
The six women then signed a paper which was then used against them duplicitously as a "confession"
The magistrate sentenced the six factory girls to ten day’s ‘ imprisonment with hard labour.
The matter was raised in Parliament with a call for a select committee to be set up" complaining of the illegal Trial and Imprisonment of Jane Bennett and other Factory Girls", but it was voted down.
30 December 2011
16 December 2011
Marlyn Glen : Dundee in 2015
Dundee in 2015
Marlyn Glen
16 December 2011
Last month I took part in what was one of the most memorable events in the story of the Labour Movement in Dundee – the 8,000 demonstration against Tory Government attacks on decent retirement pensions for public sector workers.
It was a feat of organisation, a procession of people power with hundreds and hundreds of brightly coloured flags and vivid banners, and expressions of unity as a light to guide us down the long grim tunnel that this decade will be.
By contrast, the Tory Government’s attempts to portray their deficit reduction policy as a crusade of national solidarity – "We’re all in this together" - were rudely dispelled last week when David Cameron pleaded with the rest of the EU for special treatment for just one group in Britain – the banks, the same institutions that have got the country into the mess we’re in.
The other 26 countries in the EU, some with governments that are on the Centre-Right of politics want to impose a Robin Hood-style tax on banks’ transactions.
However, David Cameron stood firm for Bankers’ Rights, for the same institutions still revelling in bonuses, that will not lend today to businesses that want to borrow money to create jobs.
In the 2010's Dundee faces a "lost decade" in which its "lost generation" will see its living standards slump to levels not experienced in many years.
Employment in Scotland is forecast not to return to previous higher levels until the early 2020s.
A couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002.
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Male pay in Dundee has slumped by 7 per cent on average in the past year.
A pay freeze will endure in the public sector till 2013, and Chancellor George Osborne plans to limit pay rises to 1 per cent till 2015 thereafter.
As prices rise, real wages fall, reducing living standards.
The new economic model is the old belief that government should be acting in the same manner as the household does.
This says that when a household hits hard times, it cuts back , and therefore a government in the same straits should cut its spending and as quickly as possible.
Decades ago, this argument was disproved by Keynes with his "paradox of thrift".
For Keynes, national economies cannot be run like individual household budgets.
The more money a person saves or cuts back on, the less money is available for buying the goods and services that are being produced, leading to job losses and less taxation coming into Treasury.
The next few years are almost certain to be less healthier times.
Not surprisingly, personal health worsens as insecurity heightens.
One of the best ways of keeping people healthy is to keep them in a job.
Job loss and job insecurity can make people more vulnerable to illness through loss of self-worth, lower income, exclusion from previous social activities because of lower incomes, and living with no control over daily life.
The Child Growth Foundation has already expressed concerns that huge job cuts mean less income, resulting in people turning to cheaper calorie-rich food higher in fat, risking higher levels of diabetes and obesity.
Cuts in voluntary sector funding puts greater stress on an already overstretched NHS, at a time when the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has fallen to its lowest in 4 years.
Local government faces a cut of some £700 million in real terms till 2015.
Councils have received a "flat cash freeze" in their revenue allocation from the Scottish Government as a result.
These dire assessments describe how everyday life will be in the first few years of this decade .
The 30th. November rallies across Britain against pensions "reform" are unlikely to be the last.
Pensions are very much a personal rather than a political issue.
Bear this comparison in mind …. last weekend, world-wide publicity was given to Moscow, ( population 11 million, the most populous city in Europe), saw 60,000 demonstrators take to the streets last week in protests against election-rigging by Vladimir Putin.
In Dundee, (population 140,000,) the strength of opposition to Tory plans to cut public sector pensions saw over 8,000 take to the streets.
Dundee 2015 figures
Pay
The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that a couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002
In 2002, the median weekly pay for men in Dundee was £358.
In 2011 it now stands at £ 405 .
In 2002 the median weekly pay for women in Dundee was £241 .
In 2011 it stands at £309 .
(Source : Office of National Statistics )
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Dundee City Council spending – the Flat Cash Freeze
Dundee City Council’s revenue allocations from the SNP Government to provide services in the city remain frozen, meaning a cut in real terms spending and services.
2011-12 £317million
2012-13 £316milllion
2013-14 £318million
2014-15 £318 million
The number of teachers in Dundee is now the lowest in 6 years.
NHS Tayside spending
NHS Tayside’s current budget of £596milllion is forecast to increase in real terms by just £6million by 2015, a 1 per cent increase, at a time when health service costs are rising annually by 4 per cent.
Overall in Scotland total health sending is set to decrease by £319million in real terms.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now the lowest in 4 years.
Fuel Poverty
1 in 4 households in Scotland lives in fuel poverty.
A household is defined as being in fuel poverty if, in order to maintain a satisfactory heating regime, it would be required to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel.
This year, as energy companies pushed up prices even higher, the SNP Government all but abandoned its promise to "eradicate" fuel poverty in Scotland by 2016.
The SNP Government has also slashed funding for fuel poverty support by one third – from £71 million last year to £48 million this year.
Obesity
Over 1 in 4 of all adults in Scotland is obese, with the highest level, almost 40 per cent in the age group 55-64 .
The percentage of children aged 2-15 with a body mass index "outwith the healthy range" rose to its highest level last year to over 30 per cent.
Diabetes
NHS Tayside over 19,000 diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of 2011 almost 1 in 20 of the population.
Almost ten years previously the figure had been 11,200.
16 December 2011
Last month I took part in what was one of the most memorable events in the story of the Labour Movement in Dundee – the 8,000 demonstration against Tory Government attacks on decent retirement pensions for public sector workers.
It was a feat of organisation, a procession of people power with hundreds and hundreds of brightly coloured flags and vivid banners, and expressions of unity as a light to guide us down the long grim tunnel that this decade will be.
By contrast, the Tory Government’s attempts to portray their deficit reduction policy as a crusade of national solidarity – "We’re all in this together" - were rudely dispelled last week when David Cameron pleaded with the rest of the EU for special treatment for just one group in Britain – the banks, the same institutions that have got the country into the mess we’re in.
The other 26 countries in the EU, some with governments that are on the Centre-Right of politics want to impose a Robin Hood-style tax on banks’ transactions.
However, David Cameron stood firm for Bankers’ Rights, for the same institutions still revelling in bonuses, that will not lend today to businesses that want to borrow money to create jobs.
In the 2010's Dundee faces a "lost decade" in which its "lost generation" will see its living standards slump to levels not experienced in many years.
Employment in Scotland is forecast not to return to previous higher levels until the early 2020s.
A couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002.
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Male pay in Dundee has slumped by 7 per cent on average in the past year.
A pay freeze will endure in the public sector till 2013, and Chancellor George Osborne plans to limit pay rises to 1 per cent till 2015 thereafter.
As prices rise, real wages fall, reducing living standards.
The new economic model is the old belief that government should be acting in the same manner as the household does.
This says that when a household hits hard times, it cuts back , and therefore a government in the same straits should cut its spending and as quickly as possible.
Decades ago, this argument was disproved by Keynes with his "paradox of thrift".
For Keynes, national economies cannot be run like individual household budgets.
The more money a person saves or cuts back on, the less money is available for buying the goods and services that are being produced, leading to job losses and less taxation coming into Treasury.
The next few years are almost certain to be less healthier times.
Not surprisingly, personal health worsens as insecurity heightens.
One of the best ways of keeping people healthy is to keep them in a job.
Job loss and job insecurity can make people more vulnerable to illness through loss of self-worth, lower income, exclusion from previous social activities because of lower incomes, and living with no control over daily life.
The Child Growth Foundation has already expressed concerns that huge job cuts mean less income, resulting in people turning to cheaper calorie-rich food higher in fat, risking higher levels of diabetes and obesity.
Cuts in voluntary sector funding puts greater stress on an already overstretched NHS, at a time when the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has fallen to its lowest in 4 years.
Local government faces a cut of some £700 million in real terms till 2015.
Councils have received a "flat cash freeze" in their revenue allocation from the Scottish Government as a result.
These dire assessments describe how everyday life will be in the first few years of this decade .
The 30th. November rallies across Britain against pensions "reform" are unlikely to be the last.
Pensions are very much a personal rather than a political issue.
Bear this comparison in mind …. last weekend, world-wide publicity was given to Moscow, ( population 11 million, the most populous city in Europe), saw 60,000 demonstrators take to the streets last week in protests against election-rigging by Vladimir Putin.
In Dundee, (population 140,000,) the strength of opposition to Tory plans to cut public sector pensions saw over 8,000 take to the streets.
Dundee 2015 figures
Pay
The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that a couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002
In 2002, the median weekly pay for men in Dundee was £358.
In 2011 it now stands at £ 405 .
In 2002 the median weekly pay for women in Dundee was £241 .
In 2011 it stands at £309 .
(Source : Office of National Statistics )
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Dundee City Council spending – the Flat Cash Freeze
Dundee City Council’s revenue allocations from the SNP Government to provide services in the city remain frozen, meaning a cut in real terms spending and services.
2011-12 £317million
2012-13 £316milllion
2013-14 £318million
2014-15 £318 million
The number of teachers in Dundee is now the lowest in 6 years.
NHS Tayside spending
NHS Tayside’s current budget of £596milllion is forecast to increase in real terms by just £6million by 2015, a 1 per cent increase, at a time when health service costs are rising annually by 4 per cent.
Overall in Scotland total health sending is set to decrease by £319million in real terms.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now the lowest in 4 years.
Fuel Poverty
1 in 4 households in Scotland lives in fuel poverty.
A household is defined as being in fuel poverty if, in order to maintain a satisfactory heating regime, it would be required to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel.
This year, as energy companies pushed up prices even higher, the SNP Government all but abandoned its promise to "eradicate" fuel poverty in Scotland by 2016.
The SNP Government has also slashed funding for fuel poverty support by one third – from £71 million last year to £48 million this year.
Obesity
Over 1 in 4 of all adults in Scotland is obese, with the highest level, almost 40 per cent in the age group 55-64 .
The percentage of children aged 2-15 with a body mass index "outwith the healthy range" rose to its highest level last year to over 30 per cent.
Diabetes
NHS Tayside over 19,000 diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of 2011 almost 1 in 20 of the population.
Almost ten years previously the figure had been 11,200.
6 December 2011
Marlyn Glen : NHS Tayside staffing - Three Facts and An Admission
Marlyn Glen
NHS Tayside staffing : Three facts and an admission
6 December 2011
Three significant NHS staffing figures were published last month and one highly significant admission was made.
*The latest official government figures show that the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continues to remain below the level it was at when Alex Salmond’s SNP Government took over in 2007.
*The overall NHS workforce in NHS Tayside is now over 300 less than it was two years ago .
*Around 1 out of 4 student nurses in abandon their courses.
and
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted that the number of nurses and midwifery staff in the NHS in Scotland is now lower than the number was under Labour.
Let’s look at the first fact.
The latest official government figures show that numbers of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continue to fall under Alex Salmond’s SNP Government.
They remain at a level below the number of nursing and midwifery posts in the health board when the SNP came into government in 2007.
It’s now 23 whole–time equivalents in staffing numbers below what the figures were back then.
The headcount figure is also down on the 2007 level.
This trend stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In the last 4 years, under Labour from 2002-2006, the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside increased each year , and increased in total by over 230.
Let’s look at the second fact again now.
The overall number of NHS staff in NHS Tayside is now over 300 fewer than it was two years ago .
Today there are 13,914 staff in the health board, including GPs and dentists, ( using the SNP Government’s preferred choice of headcount figures.)
This is a decrease of around 320 from the 14,230 staff level reported two years ago.
This trend also stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In its last 4 years, under Labour, the overall number of staff in NHS Tayside increased each year and increased in total by almost 900.
These figures were already anticipated because of the SNP Government’s failure to match the Labour-led Scottish Executive’s growth in health spending.
The third fact is that the number of nursing students who drop out of their courses, known as the "attrition rate" still affects around 1 in .
The reasons for this are well-known and long-standing and include the need for childcare assistance and better support for clinical placements as well as financial difficulties and problems with career prospects.
This last issue, career prospects, now looks like taking on a greater significance.
In terms of demand, as the population ages there will be more need for nursing staff
In term of supply, there is a need to replace an ageing NHS workforce with younger staff .
Some 10,000 of Scotland’s nursing workforce are now over 55
In addition more of them are needed to meet the rising demand from the elderly.
However, student nurses can now see their career opportunities being restricted as the number of nursing posts in the NHS in Scotland falls - 2,000 lost in the past year, and so these diminishing career prospects will create anxiety, disquiet and perhaps a career re-decision.
And what of the highly significant admission ?
Earlier last month, ( 10th. November ) Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted to the Scottish Parliament, the SNP’s failure on nursing numbers which are now below those under Labour.
She stated,
"The number of nurses and midwives has reduced by 0.2 per cent from
the level that we inherited. "
No Government or health secretary can afford to have declining health staff numbers , particularly when you have previously declaimed that you " will protect the health service during the lifetime of this Parliament " with fewer nursing and midwifery staff.
Why is the NHS in this condition ?
The SNP Government simply just pass on cuts from the Tory Government in Westminster.
Furthermore, more money being spent on the SNP’s populist 5-year council tax freeze means of course less money for spending on the health service.
As a consequence of more and more duties being demanded with no increase in resources for the NHS in Scotland, career options for loyal staff such as voluntary redundancy packages have their
appeal.
This, however, will result in a further loss of nursing skills, with overworked and under-pressure dedicated staff remaining.
The extent of this working environment is revealed in a new poll of its members by the Royal College of Nursing in Scotland where more than 1 in 3 said that there were discouraged or told not to report their concerns over issues such as staffing levels or patient safety.
When RCN Scotland appeared before the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee last month, their observation resonated with many :
"Nurses think they are very much on their own and that they are being targeted for savings……Nursing has lost a sense of all being in it together."
Three significant NHS staffing figures were published last month and one highly significant admission was made.
*The latest official government figures show that the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continues to remain below the level it was at when Alex Salmond’s SNP Government took over in 2007.
*The overall NHS workforce in NHS Tayside is now over 300 less than it was two years ago .
*Around 1 out of 4 student nurses in abandon their courses.
and
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted that the number of nurses and midwifery staff in the NHS in Scotland is now lower than the number was under Labour.
Let’s look at the first fact.
The latest official government figures show that numbers of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continue to fall under Alex Salmond’s SNP Government.
They remain at a level below the number of nursing and midwifery posts in the health board when the SNP came into government in 2007.
It’s now 23 whole–time equivalents in staffing numbers below what the figures were back then.
The headcount figure is also down on the 2007 level.
This trend stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In the last 4 years, under Labour from 2002-2006, the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside increased each year , and increased in total by over 230.
Let’s look at the second fact again now.
The overall number of NHS staff in NHS Tayside is now over 300 fewer than it was two years ago .
Today there are 13,914 staff in the health board, including GPs and dentists, ( using the SNP Government’s preferred choice of headcount figures.)
This is a decrease of around 320 from the 14,230 staff level reported two years ago.
This trend also stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In its last 4 years, under Labour, the overall number of staff in NHS Tayside increased each year and increased in total by almost 900.
These figures were already anticipated because of the SNP Government’s failure to match the Labour-led Scottish Executive’s growth in health spending.
The third fact is that the number of nursing students who drop out of their courses, known as the "attrition rate" still affects around 1 in .
The reasons for this are well-known and long-standing and include the need for childcare assistance and better support for clinical placements as well as financial difficulties and problems with career prospects.
This last issue, career prospects, now looks like taking on a greater significance.
In terms of demand, as the population ages there will be more need for nursing staff
In term of supply, there is a need to replace an ageing NHS workforce with younger staff .
Some 10,000 of Scotland’s nursing workforce are now over 55
In addition more of them are needed to meet the rising demand from the elderly.
However, student nurses can now see their career opportunities being restricted as the number of nursing posts in the NHS in Scotland falls - 2,000 lost in the past year, and so these diminishing career prospects will create anxiety, disquiet and perhaps a career re-decision.
And what of the highly significant admission ?
Earlier last month, ( 10th. November ) Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted to the Scottish Parliament, the SNP’s failure on nursing numbers which are now below those under Labour.
She stated,
"The number of nurses and midwives has reduced by 0.2 per cent from
the level that we inherited. "
No Government or health secretary can afford to have declining health staff numbers , particularly when you have previously declaimed that you " will protect the health service during the lifetime of this Parliament " with fewer nursing and midwifery staff.
Why is the NHS in this condition ?
The SNP Government simply just pass on cuts from the Tory Government in Westminster.
Furthermore, more money being spent on the SNP’s populist 5-year council tax freeze means of course less money for spending on the health service.
As a consequence of more and more duties being demanded with no increase in resources for the NHS in Scotland, career options for loyal staff such as voluntary redundancy packages have their
appeal.
This, however, will result in a further loss of nursing skills, with overworked and under-pressure dedicated staff remaining.
The extent of this working environment is revealed in a new poll of its members by the Royal College of Nursing in Scotland where more than 1 in 3 said that there were discouraged or told not to report their concerns over issues such as staffing levels or patient safety.
When RCN Scotland appeared before the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee last month, their observation resonated with many :
"Nurses think they are very much on their own and that they are being targeted for savings……Nursing has lost a sense of all being in it together."
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