HEALTH Secretary Nicola Sturgeon may soon become known as Saint Nicola of the NHS. If she continues to save so many services beatification seems certain. This week it was a pledge that children's cancer units in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen would not be downgraded in any way.
HEALTH Secretary Nicola Sturgeon may soon become known as Saint Nicola of the NHS. If she continues to save so many services beatification seems certain. This week it was a pledge that children's cancer units in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen would not be downgraded in any way.
It's great news for the children and their parents - just as it was last week for people requiring brain surgery when she reversed another centralisation policy.
She has also successfully taken on GPs over their nine to five shifts to try to make life easier for working people who can't get to a surgery during those hours.
Add to the list her backing for an opt-out system for organ donations and preventing the closure of A&E units at Monklands and Ayr.
In making at least some of these decisions, Ms Sturgeon has rejected the advice of some clinicians in favour of what patients and their families actually need and want.
Sooner or later she will have to make an unpopular decision, but for now she is successfully championing people over cold figures.
However, there will be a price to pay - all these things have to be paid for.
Is that why it has been reported three quarters of health charities across Scotland have warned they have no funding beyond this month and why other projects, such as Schools of Ambition, are being ditched?
The cash that goes to them is small beer, but the money is going to have to come from somewhere.
For now, Ms Sturgeon is doing what all politicians are supposed to do and delivering what people want whenever she can.
WENDY Alexander continues to underperform at First Minister's Questions.
The main thrust of her attack was on Finance Secretary John Swinney for lobbying on behalf of the whisky industry.
She was trying to make a serious point about cheap booze and spotlighting Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's crackdown on irresponsible promotions while Mr Swinney was arguing for a cut in the levy on whisky.
It was all too easy for Alex Salmond to swat away her argument by pointing out Mr Swinney was talking about an industry producing an expensive product, not cheap cider or lager.
THE only party leader to lay a glove on Mr Salmond was the LibDems' Nicol Stephen.
He thumped the First Minister and his Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop over their failure to live up to their manifesto pledge to scrap student debt.
He did better at Holyrood than his party conference in Aviemore at the weekend, where he proclaimed Scots wanted more powers.
In his big speech, he said his party would have "nothing to do with stripping powers away from the Scottish Parliament".
He has a short memory.
It was one of Mr Stephen's colleagues who gave up territory to Westminster.
Step forward Captain Mainwaring lookalike Ross Finnie.
As Rural Affairs Minister in 1999, he agreed to transfer 6000 square miles of east coast fisheries to English jurisdiction.
Mr Finnie did not consult the fishing industry and insisted the old line east of Berwick-on-Tweed had not been a legal boundary.
