Clackmannanshire News

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1st March 2006

LOCAL WOMAN ORGANISES LIGHTING OF CLACKMANNAN TOWER

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9th October 2005

WHY WAS A MAN LEFT TEN HOURS IN PAIN ON A HOSPITAL TROLLEY?

A PROPERTY developer who suffered an agonising spinal injury was left lying on a hospital trolley for almost ten hours before being transferred to a specialist unit, because only one ambulance was covering the area that night. Neil Twaddle, 42, injured himself after falling in the shower at home in Clackmannan last Wednesday. His wife Dipika returned home from work at lunchtime to find her husband screaming with pain and shouting "I can't feel my legs", and called an ambulance. The series of delays which followed have been denounced by politicians as "absolutely unacceptable", and led to calls for a review of Scottish Ambulance Service arrangements. Mrs Twaddle, a financial advisor, telephoned Alloa Health Centre at 1:30pm. She was told an ambulance would arrive within two hours, but the couple did not reach the Stirling Royal Infirmary's accident and emergency department until nearly 6pm. "Neil thought his back was broken and was terrified," said his wife. "That was just the start of a hellish night, which dragged on until nearly 5am the next morning because there wasn't an ambulance to take my husband to Edinburgh. "He was left on a trolley in a corridor and given morphine to kill the pain. But it wasn't until 11:30pm that the doctor on duty designated Neil as an emergency case for transfer to the Western General in Edinburgh within the hour, where a registrar would be waiting and an MRI scan was to be done."At 3am, Mr Twaddle was still lying in accident and emergency. When a nurse telephoned the ambulance service, she was told the ambulance due to take Mr Twaddle to Edinburgh was being "retasked" to take a child who had suffered burns for emergency treatment in Glasgow. "The staff were fantastic and I cannot fault them in any way," said Mrs Twaddle. "They were busting their guts to get things done, with very little support. Eventually the staff told us there was only a single ambulance covering Stirling and that was causing the problem. We totally understand the child had priority and have no problem with that. "The consultant who had seen my husband came back and said: 'What's he still doing here? There's a registrar waiting in Edinburgh. How many times do I have to tell them [ambulance service] he's to go?' He got on the phone and started shouting at the ambulance service." The consultant was told Mr Twaddle was "on the list", but that 999 calls had to take priority, Mrs Twaddle said. "The ambulance men were fantastic. But they also told us there was only one ambulance crew on from about 7pm for the whole of Stirling. They said there were ambulances sitting there but no-one to drive them." Mr Twaddle arrived at the Western General at 4:45am - 13 hours after the initial call for an ambulance - where he is being treated for a prolapsed disc. The Scottish Ambulance Service confirmed there had only been one ambulance available in the Stirling area that night. A spokesman said: "There was only one ambulance because for certain week-nights that is deemed the appropriate level of cover between 2am and 8am. "The ambulance service decides what cover is necessary by using a system which analyses the number of calls we get and deploying resources in relation to the demand that we get. On the night in question we were dealing with an unusually high proportion of hospital transfers." Shona Robison MSP, the SNP's health spokeswoman, said: "I am very dubious about a risk assessment by the ambulance service, which says this is a safe way to provide ambulance cover for an area which has a population of around 86,000 people. It is absolutely unacceptable and dangerous that the people of Stirling are being left without effective cover. "This should be a warning shot across the bows. It's only a matter of time before there is a major incident with tragic consequences. There must be a review." 

16 June 2005

GREEN LIGHT FOR NEW KINCARDINE BRIDGE

MINISTERS gave the go-ahead yesterday for a third road bridge over the River Forth.
Nicol Stephen, the transport minister, announced that a new crossing will be built near the Kincardine Bridge at an estimated cost of £100-£120 million. Motorists will not be charged to cross the new bridge, at least for the foreseeable future.
The Executive's decision had been widely expected, as ministers gave provisional backing to the scheme three years ago, pending the outcome of a public inquiry.
Ministers endorsed the inquiry's findings yesterday and unveiled the timetable of construction.
But the plan drew attacks from campaigners, concerned at any increase in road capacity. Dr Dan Barlow, the head of research at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said his organisation did not approve of the plan, but stressed that, if it was to go ahead, it had to be the last road bridge over the Forth. He insisted that the bridge had to put an end to any suggestion of an expensive new crossing alongside the Forth Road Bridge.
The new Kincardine road bridge will be modest by modern standards. It will be a single-carriageway construction, and its estimated cost is cheap in road-building terms.
Mr Stephen said the project would help to reduce congestion and improve the environment for local communities.
The 1,200-metre crossing, combined with the recently opened Kincardine eastern link road, will free Kincardine of traffic crossing the Forth.
The entire length of the new route is almost four miles and has been chosen to minimise the impact on the salt marsh and mudflats at Kincardine, which form part of the important feeding grounds for birds on the Firth of Forth.
Work is due to start next year. It will include cycle and pedestrian paths and is due to open to traffic by the end of 2008.
Mr Stephen said: "This second crossing will improve transport links in the Forth Valley and central Scotland. It will significantly improve the quality of life for the local community in Kincardine, as well as improving travel for road-users in Clackmannan, Falkirk and Fife."
The new crossing will be a slender, low, multi-span viaduct to match the Kincardine Bridge, which opened in 1936 and is slightly east of the new location. The existing bridge is used by up to 26,000 vehicles a day which is 4,000 more than its design capacity, and much of the traffic is lorries.
The two bridges will bring total capacity to 55,000 vehicles a day, with new and upgraded road links to enable traffic to bypass Kincardine, which is a significant bottleneck.
Vehicles heading to and from Clackmannan and Kinross will travel over the new bridge, with Fife traffic continuing to use the existing one.
Business groups have given a warm welcome to the plans. Iain Duff, the chief economist at the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI), said: "It should alleviate some of the congestion on the Forth Road Bridge, which will be particularly welcomed by the road haulage industry. In particular, SCDI expects that it will make it easier for freight operators from Glasgow and the south-west to use ferry services at Rosyth."
SANCTUARY FOR WILDLIFE
INTER-TIDAL areas of the Firth of Forth, which includes the mudflats and salt marsh habitat around Kincardine Bridge, are internationally important for seabirds, ducks and waders, including shelduck, knot and redshank, during the winter months.
Washed by seawater with the high and low tides, the area provides a vital winter food source for the birds, which probe vegetation and mud with elongated beaks for crustaceans, molluscs and other invertebrates.
In conservation terms, internationally important means any percentage of an international population greater than 1 per cent of the total. Kincardine and the Firth of Forth support a significant concentration of what is known as the north-west European and North African migration line.
Two per cent of this population of shelducks (about 4,500 birds) are present in winter, as are 3 per cent of the western European and Canadian population of knots (9,250) and 3 per cent of European and west African population of redshanks (4,300).

10 June 2005

HANEY BOY CAGED

THE teenage grandson of crime clan leader Big Mags Haney was yesterday behind bars for rape.
Thomas Haney, 18, was detained at a young offenders' institution for three years and three months and ordered to register as a sex offender by the High Court in Edinburgh.
He had been found guilty earlier this year of raping the woman in Clackmannan on April 2004 while she was drunk. Haney, of Stirling, admitted having sex with her, claiming it was consensual. But his victim, who is in her 30s, told the court she was a lesbian.
Haney's notorious grandmother, Mags, 62, is serving a 12-year sentence for running a massive drugs racket from her Stirling home.
Her daughter Diane, 36, son Hugh, 32, and niece Roseann, 41, are also serving time

COLLEGES UNDER MICROSCOPE IN MAJOR REVIEW

THE most wide-ranging review ever carried out into further education in Scotland was announced today by Deputy First Minister Jim Wallace.
The contribution made by colleges to the country's economy will be looked at as part of the review.
Several colleges are expected to merge under the initiative, starting with Borders Community College and part of Heriot-Watt University.
Mr Wallace also announced that Falkirk and Clackmannan Colleges will merge to become the Forth Valley College of Further and Higher Education.
He made the announcement during his final speech to the annual conference of the Association of Scottish Colleges as Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning.
Mr Wallace said:
The review will consider FE's strategic future over the next ten to 20 years.
Scottish Executive staff will support the review, but it will be essentially the sector's own review. It will be inclusive, free-thinking and dynamic."
Work is progressing between Borders Community College and Heriot-Watt to co-locate on the Netherdale campus in Galashiels.

6 May 2005 

MAKING HISTORY: LABOUR'S 3RD TERM: THE FACTOR   

By Stephen Moyes

BRITAIN really went a bit up the poll yesterday - at least in the choice of unusual venues for votingA portable cabin with an adjacent mobile loo was made a makeshift polling station at Burley Woodhead, West Yorks.David and Jacquie Bradley lent their camper van for the 75 voters in the Dorset hamlet of Warmwell. And paintings inspired constituents as they put an 'X' by their choice at York Art Centre.In Chittering, Cambs, the ballot box was in a caravan in a pub car park, while in nearby Croydon, villagers popped into the local's pool room.The booth in Clackmannan, Scotland, was parked by a graveyard and it took a mountain trek to reach a caravan to vote in Balnacra, Strathcarron. Meanwhile a helicopter rounded up votes from islands last night for today's count in Argyle and Bute

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