I ENDORSE the call by Dr Philip Gaskell (Letters, December 14) that we should value the doctors who keep up their general skills, and recall a colleague once remarking that the trend will be that consultants will be likely to know more and more about less and less and end up knowing everything about nothing and that GPs will be likely to know less and less about more and more and end knowing nothing about everything.

Silly and overstated, I know. But perhaps a wee glimmer of truth?

R Russell Smith,

96 Milton Road, Kilbirnie.

I’M shocked that SNP spending on public health campaigns is £1million a year, down from a measly £3m (“Fears as spending on health campaigns hits record low”,The Herald, December 15).

Treating diabetes type 2, an illness mostly caused by obesity, and related illnesses, costs NHS Scotland at least £500m a year and countless millions in lost workdays.

Even more shocking is Shadow Health Minister Miles Briggs’s apparent surprise. I recently heard him talk about the need for more preventive medicine, yet here he is claiming ignorance of the open goal before him.

Scotland needs an opposition that is on the front foot, putting forward solutions and looking like a government in waiting. How about Mr Biggs organising his fellow MSPs into a sponsored weight loss to raise another £1m, thereby highlighting the problem, the SNP’s failures, and augmenting the funds?

Allan Sutherland,

1 Willow Row, Stonehaven