Waste of talent

June 7th, 2010

The word ‘cuts’ has been banded about so casually in the political debate recently its easy to forget the very real consequences of them.

Cuts mean people lose their jobs and the services we all use suffer as a result.

We had been told the ‘cuts’ are being deferred to next year but anyone in the teaching and nursing profession will now they are well underway.

For those newly-qualified teachers, there was the heart-breaking news this week that three-quarters of them are unable to get work.

And in the NHS, more than 1,500 nurses are set to lose their jobs as the squeeze on the public sector starts to bite.

These cuts will impact on all of us by damaging our health and education services.

But beyond that, there is a real human cost to those cuts that is hidden in the numbers game.

Just this week, I have been contacted by a trained midwife who went for five interviews in a week and is still unable to land a full-time position despite qualifying several months ago.

She is not the only one in that position.

And I have heard from teachers who get dressed for work every morning and wait by the phone in the hope that they get a call for a supply job.

There are few more noble vocations that teaching and nursing but these people are facing up to an unenviable choice – give up on their aspirations or emigrate to further their career.

This is no way to treat people who have dedicated themselves to public service.

Instead of trying to pin these cuts on everyone else, whether it be the council or the Con-Dem coalition, it is time the SNP Government in Edinburgh faced up to this grotesque waste of talent.