WEBSITE UPDATE STATEMENT

As many of you will know, the Action to Save St. John’s Hospital Party evolved as the political arm of the “Stop the Downgrade Campaign”. At the 2007 elections, we fielded candidates in 6 of the 9 wards in the West Lothian Council area, and one candidate in the Scottish Parliamentary constituency of Livingston. Three of our Council candidates were duly elected, and although Ernie Walker did not succeed in his bid to become the MSP for Livingston, his contribution undoubtedly contributed in large part to the election of Angela Constance MSP.

Since 2007, we, your Councillors, have worked tirelessly to achieve the stated aims and objectives of the campaign group, and we will continue to fight to secure them. At the same time, our relationship with the SDC has led to a great deal of misunderstanding and misstatements by certain elements of the Board of NHS Lothian, our political opponents and the media. We have seen the media recently wrongly attribute the Stop the Downgrade campaign to West Lothian Council. We have, as a party, had comments from the SDC wrongly attributed to us.

The danger is that this continued mis-reporting of our activities and actions will engulf our ongoing efforts on behalf of the hospital, and impact on it’s survival as an acute emergency hospital. For that reason, and that reason alone, we have established a website for the political party.

There will be those who will point to breakdown and division: nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact is we are a small party, with limited resources. We cannot afford to be worn down by distractions. That would seriously undermine our effectiveness.

We are aware of the hypocrisy of those who have sought to make capital from our association with the group. For them to question Elected Members about their membership of, and association with, campaign groups or any other group for that matter, is as inappropriate as it is a breathtakingly arrogant affront to the democratic process. The recent suggestion that the new structures being put in place in West Lothian are a “reward for bad behaviour”, show a complete lack of understanding of exactly what has been achieved by the democratic process at work in West Lothian.

But then democracy is often criticised by those running out of excuses for their own failings.

We look forward to seeing you on our new website at www.atssjh.org.uk