The separatist's continued mismanagement of our heath service was laid bare in a recent Audit Scotland report which has warned that Scotland’s health is not improving and the NHS faces significant challenges.

The NHS in Scotland 2017 report exposes just how badly the SNP has mismanaged the NHS since it came to power more than 10 years ago.

Hospitals are short-staffed, workers are stressed and the maintenance backlog is spiralling out of control. And while this happens, as this report states, people aren’t getting any healthier.

What more indication could the SNP need to show it has to change its ways on the NHS. For years it neglected the health brief at the expense of agitating for separation, and now patients are paying the price.

These problems are amplified in rural constituencies like Argyll and Bute that are more often than not forgotten about by the urban obsessed SNP that only seek to centralize more and more power.

What we need is the SNP to listen to these concerns and others when they are raised. Sadly what will happen is the usual zealot like reaction from the ever dwindling numbers Nationalists accusing we in Scotland who make measured and reasonable criticism of the SNP's many failures as "talking Scotland down".

Scotland needs no lessons in patriotism from any Nationalist political party. I know and love my country and frankly Scotland deserves better than the SNP.

Cllr Alastair Redman