Bonnie Jean

Lets start with a wee test. How many of you have heard of John Crofton? Rachel Carson? Tim Berners Lee, anyone? If you haven't heard of them, don't feel bad. These people all did something useful, and the curse of being useful, is that you generally don't get attention. No good news is news.

Which brings me to another useful person who gets very little attention; Jean Turner. I was at a Stobhill meeting with her in Kirkintilloch the other night and it was a reminder to me, of just how much I have to learn, before I'm upsides with Jean on the health brief. Jean could tell you what an ACAD is, standing on one leg. She could explain how all the different areas of health care connect; what step down beds are; what the implications of merging health visitors with district nurses are; what can go wrong in the most routine of operations which would require emergency attention and so on. For the past four years, Jean has been sharing that expertise with anyone who would listen in the Scottish Parliament and because of her things are much better up here than they are down in England. But most of the people I speak to say 'Who's Jean Turner?' Well, it's time you knew.
( By the way, John Crofton came up with the definitive cure for TB in the 'fiftes, Rachel Carson was a microbiologist who wrote 'The Silent Spring' and stopped the indiscriminate use of pesticides and Tim Berners Lee was the inventor of the Internet. So now you know.)