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Showing 60 of 2,355,091 contributions. Latest 30 days: 148. Coverage: 12 May 1999 — 14 May 2026.

Dorothy-Grace Elder (Glasgow) (Ind) rose— Ind Chamber

Question Time · Scottish Borders (Economy)

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Chamber

Closing the Opportunity Gap for Older People

No one doubts the minister's sincerity, but I would like an answer to my earlier question. What is the Executive's position on employing people who are over 60? Does it include a complete cut-off at age 60? Some literature seems to indicate that it has, while other literature ...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Chamber

Closing the Opportunity Gap for Older People

Oh, go on.The minister's comment was exceedingly kind. I know that she will work on and perhaps take on the Carntyne incinerator case. If I can help with anything, I certainly will. I have found out in politics that what counts are individuals, irrespective of party. Margaret ...

Dorothy-Grace Elder (Glasgow) (Ind): Ind Chamber

Closing the Opportunity Gap for Older People

Many visions have floated across our radar today. My favourite, and the point at which I really got the giggles, was when Alex Neil referred to reading various documents while in his pram. My vision was of Alex Neil sitting in his pram, dribbling mush down his bib and thinking...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Convener's Report

Hepatitis C was the issue that I was worried about.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Convener's Report

I had the meeting down as taking place at 2 o'clock. What happened about hepatitis C?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Convener's Report

You are joking.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Convener's Report

Yes, we are having lunch at half-past 1. I have a Health and Community Care Committee meeting at 2 o'clock.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

There is a shortage of hedgehogs on the mainland.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

If possible, they should reach a compromise from this spring onwards. Once SNH starts this—and it has already started to advertise in the newspapers for people to go and trap the hedgehogs—there will be a killing system worked out for next spring. We should try to defend the p...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

The Parliament will be on the hedgehogs' side rather than SNH's side. Three islands have protested about SNH's activities in other matters. Members might remember the case of the Arran farmer who could not even get an extra hectare or so for a couple of cows to make his farm v...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

Perhaps we should ask for the views of the petitioners on that.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

Yes, legislatively.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

Seriously though, that has been SEPA's line all along, through 18 months of the cattle incinerator issue. I sat in the city chambers with the MEPs two months ago and heard Mr Collins declare that SEPA is an agency of central Government and, as such, cannot oppose a decision by...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

I have a couple of points to make. I took a petition on the Carntyne cattle incinerator to the Transport and the Environment Committee and to the European Parliament. The Transport and the Environment Committee's report on the petition recommended that things should be brought...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

A will would not be allowed to get through.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

No—we must keep the petition live.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

I am so sorry—I had left my seat to speak to the clerks about Dr Curnow's attendance later in the meeting.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Current Petitions

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

We should not rule out the petition.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

I meant the successor justice committee.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

There is a good case for passing the petition to the Justice 1 Committee. Scottish troops have been sent in and, tragically, some have died. The Parliament has as much right to a voice as Westminster or the representatives of any other part of these islands have. Rather than r...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

We could ask for that information from the Scottish Parliament information centre, because it tends to give better answers than the minister.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

The situation is shocking. The issue of eating disorders seems to have fallen out of the loop in the Parliament. Many people assumed that something was being done. We should never assume.Could we write to the Cullen centre? Ms Marrison mentioned that its waiting list is about ...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Very well done.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Were you in a good unit with other young people?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Is it better that such patients should be together? Would it not be better if patients of the same age group were together?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Was it a mixed ward?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Is not it always? I think that we also get sick of these working parties, which seem to drag on and give a superficial glow to the matter as if something is being done.Will Gráinne Smith or one of her two companions explain whether the young patients—teenagers and so on—are pl...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Why was that? What possible excuse could have been given for that?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

It is very good of Gráinne Smith to come here today. Being from the north-east, she has made a considerable journey to raise a national issue. Eating disorders are much more common than anyone would assume. I have a young friend of just 18, who is a particularly clever young w...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Item in Private

Thank you very much, Phil, for the kind thought. Do not worry. If anything affects Blairingone in the future, I will be back.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Item in Private

Perhaps the German delegation from our sister parliament might be able to remain for that item.

Dorothy-Grace Elder (Glasgow) (Ind): Ind Committee

Item in Private

We might want to make changes. Last time, we discussed the report in public in the interests of openness, but the press and others simply could not understand the fragments that were coming out. Some new information for our current report on Blairingone has come in even overni...

Dorothy-Grace Elder (Glasgow) (Ind): Ind Chamber

Question Time · Fallen Stock (Disposal)

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. You were obviously calling members who represent rural constituencies and regions to ask questions on this matter, Presiding Officer, but some of us in Glasgow have an intense interest in fallen stock because that is where fallen stock i...

Dorothy-Grace Elder (Glasgow) (Ind): Ind Chamber

International Situation (Contingency Planning)

I will ask a question that was asked by the children who marched today, of whom some members are extremely proud. Given that the First Minister has repeatedly mentioned evil regimes that appear to need sorting out, does he support the invasion of other countries that are contr...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Helen Eadie has pinpointed future dangers. The Health and Community Care Committee has dealt exclusively with chemists but, as Helen said, the measure could be the first step in a back-door approach, which would be cause for concern. If we dive in now and get a response from t...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

No. Thank you very much, Mr Hughes.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

So the proposal is the result of big business pressure on the Office of Fair Trading, and perhaps also on some politicians, in connection with supermarkets and one or two names—

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

So did the idea come from supermarkets and big business?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

You will perhaps have heard about last week's meeting of the Health and Community Care Committee, at which the officials from the office of unfair trading—as I would call it in this instance—received a fair bruising from that committee's members. In fact, I would say that they...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Pharmacists have lost a lot of the very easy trade, which the supermarkets take. You are left with the dispensing, which is the hard stuff.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

You are perhaps aware that in the 20 years up to 1990 approximately 50,000 small shops closed in Britain, some of which were pharmacies. I do not know whether a study has been done since. However, those closures were largely due to supermarkets virtually eating whole high stre...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Can we not? I thought that we could send a copy.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Would you also consider making a request for a public inquiry to one of the two justice committees? You and I are the only Public Petitions Committee members on the Health and Community Care Committee, and you will recall that the Health and Community Care Committee did not go...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

I was just saying that we had not come to your very good point about the blood batches and requesting details.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

What about Phil Gallie's point about the blood batches?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Could we write to the Minister for Health and Community Care and tell him that we have had the report and that his order has not been carried out by that trust? Mr Gunn cannot sue properly in the United States. The man is cut off from everything.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Even so, could we not just write a letter to that trust?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Yes, but he needs his records urgently. The Minister for Health and Community Care has already tried.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

I request that we also write to the trust that covers the Royal hospital for sick children in Glasgow and ask about Mr Gunn's records. It might be that those records are with a GP.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

This issue makes me ashamed to have anything to do with politics. It makes me want to scrape politics off my shoe. Do you want a full public inquiry to be held? The Irish had a public inquiry, as well as paying out money to sufferers.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

That is the hospital in which you were infected as a child.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

Which health board is withholding your records?

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

However, you must find that difficult because your records have been withheld from you in Scotland.

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

However, blood batches can be traced through the records. I understand that America still holds, in Florida, the records that show the links to the prisons and institutions that I was talking about. The blood was known as skid-row blood and it was brought into this country dur...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

I am old enough to have been a journalist when this scandal began. This involves very heavy politics, does it not? It stretches back to the United States of America and the decision that was made under the governorship of Bill Clinton in Arkansas. Later, one of the prisons had...

Dorothy-Grace Elder: Ind Committee

So, as far as you know, the health boards have not complied with the orders of the Minister for Health and Community Care?

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Chamber

Plenary, 27 Mar 2003

27 Mar 2003 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

Question Time

Scottish Borders (Economy)

SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE

Elder, Dorothy-Grace Ind Glasgow Watch on SPTV

In the same item of business

10. Christine Grahame (South of Scotland) (SNP): SNP

To ask the Scottish Executive what measures it has taken to promote the economic well-being of the Scottish Borders. (S1O-6709)

The Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning (Iain Gray): Lab

A wide range of policies promotes economic well-being. Scottish Enterprise Borders is taking action in line with the direction and priorities that are set ou...

Christine Grahame: SNP

As the minister is aware, the draft bill for the Borders rail link was lodged this week. Given that the Borders has suffered a net loss of 500 jobs since Lab...

Iain Gray: Lab

As Christine Grahame knows well from previous exchanges, we are keen to see progress on the matter. However, the business case is not staring me in the face ...

Ian Jenkins (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale) (LD): LD

Does the minister agree that, although there are real problems in the Borders economy, there are also real grounds for optimism? The population of the Border...

The Presiding Officer: NPA

I am interested in the Borders, but I would like a question.

Ian Jenkins: LD

Does the minister agree that none of those things—apart perhaps from the railway—seems to interest Ms Grahame, who prefers to launch lightning raids on the B...

Iain Gray: Lab

I can only agree. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Mr Jenkins's far more constructive approach both to representing his constituents and the interes...

The Presiding Officer: NPA

I call Margo MacDonald.

Dorothy-Grace Elder (Glasgow) (Ind) rose— Ind

The Presiding Officer: NPA

A case of mistaken identity. I call Margo MacDonald.

Margo MacDonald (Lothians) (Ind): Ind

And I was going to say something nice about you, Presiding Officer.

The Presiding Officer: NPA

Let us hear from the right independent.

Margo MacDonald: Ind

On the regeneration of the Borders economy, will the minister explain why the Executive has chosen to transfer 270 Scottish Natural Heritage jobs to Invernes...

The Presiding Officer: NPA

I know that it is the end of term, but let us have a question.

Margo MacDonald: Ind

The question is about the policy of moving 270 jobs. I am in agreement with those other MSPs that I mentioned. I do not agree with the transfer of those jobs...

Iain Gray: Lab

The connection between Margo MacDonald's question and the original question is the 200 civil service jobs at the Scottish Public Pensions Agency that were re...