Report to the People
9th October 2004
Testing Times
Picture
the scene. It’s the end of the
summer holidays and your suntan’s fading as fast as the evening light and the
memories of your poolside fortnight. It’s
also exam results day. And all over
the country, teenagers wait anxiously by their letterboxes, or pace the hall
carpet bare, pausing only to phone friends to find out what they’ve heard and
to swap the latest rumour.
Now,
make the weather a bit colder and the students a bit older.
Bingo! You now have a perfect mental image of MSPs on the day of a
reshuffle.
But
the excitement around finding out which Ministers have been given an A+ and
which detention on the backbenches, should not divert us from the important
matters in hand. Andy Kerr’s
appointment as Health Minister, for example, won’t make the problems facing
the NHS magically disappear. He has
his work cut out if he is to rebuild the bond of trust between the health
authorities and the communities they serve.
Indeed,
Mr Kerr had hardly hung his jacket up on his new peg before I was meeting him to
underline the strength of local feeling on Argyll and Clyde’s plans for the
IRH and the many, serious flaws which their document contains.
Still,
at least attending – together with people from all over Scotland, including
many from Inverclyde – today’s official opening of our new Parliament will
give Ministers a brief break from all this political intrigue and backbench
lobbying.
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