Dentist left me down in mouth

FLUORIDE rinses in the classroom (someone always swallowed rather than spat), school dentist visits, plus the six-monthly check up at the NHS dentist. Dental health was almost literally rammed down your throat as a child. I'd like to think it worked in my case – still got all my own at least, even if a few are filled.

But it would appear that despite all of this, Scotland's children still have substantially higher levels of recorded decay compared with other European countries.

Today new English figures will reveal that dental decay in youngsters is soaring – yet it's still nowhere near as bad as in Scotland, where the estimate of obvious decay in five-year-olds is 2.16 teeth per child.

As a result the Scottish Government has established a target that 60 per cent of primary one children will have no signs of dental disease by 2010.

All very laudable – but for it to work you have to have dentists on board. That's dentists who don't decide that because you're ten minutes late for an appointment your two children won't be seen for their six-monthly check up (and nor will their mother). The kind of dentists who have already printed off a charge letter totalling £30 for the privilege of having no treatment at all.

I am still fizzing at the events in my Gorgie dental surgery last week. To be told that not only would we not be seen despite a 40-minute journey to get there thanks to heavy traffic (cue high stress levels), but that I was being charged for nothing . . . well you can imagine the gnashing of teeth that occurred.

It is understandable that dentists get peeved when people fail to turn up and don't call to cancel. But that's not what happened in this case.

Admittedly the dentist may well have decided there was no time to see me, but to send two children packing without having the chance to open wide and say "aahh", is a kick in the teeth for the Government's aims. And surely the dentist hadn't planned to conduct all three of our check-ups in just ten minutes? Where had our appointment time gone?

Then of course there's this charging business. Scotland's health service is always held up as being far superior to that south of the Border, but not in this case.

In England and Wales dentists are not allowed to charge for missed appointments, but they can refuse future treatment. It's a similar scenario in Scotland for GP surgeries – there's no charge, but three-strikes and you're out policies are not unknown.

But Scottish NHS dentists can charge whatever they like if someone fails to show (not that we did, I must stress). It is completely at their discretion. They have more freedom than banks and credit card agencies when it comes to taking money out of your pocket.

They also have patients over a barrel given that there are so few dentists taking on NHS patients these days – if you don't want to pay the fine you could end up without any dentist whatsoever. In fact in Scotland 76 per cent of people who tried to register with an NHS dentist in the last two years have found doing so difficult.

Why is dentistry treated differently to other NHS health provisions? Why are patients charged at all for treatment – never mind missed appointments – when other NHS care is free at the point of delivery? Of course it's all to do with the archaic way they are paid. If they were paid in a similar way to GPs, by the size of their patient list, then charges for missed appointments would become unnecessary.

And if that then encourages people to take their kids to the dentist, rather than putting them off because they know they'll be slapped with a fine if they're slightly late, must surely be welcomed.

Until then though, the next time I'm kept waiting past my allotted appointment, I'll just hand over an invoice for my wasted time. I'm sure the dentist will understand.

Home truth for Sean

DOES anyone really care what Sean Connery has to say about anything? He certainly seems to believe that the Scottish public dote on his every word. Someone should enlighten him.

This time the grumpy actor has waded into the debate about football and bigotry. His apparent expertise lies in the fact that he has changed his allegiance from Celtic to Rangers. Maybe it was to make dining out with David Murray in Roseburn a less fraught affair.

The real question should be why he's not a supporter of either of the two teams in his home town. He grew up not too far from Tynecastle, or given his Irish roots, Hibs would be a more obvious choice. His footballing choices certainly won't do his book sales much good in Edinburgh.

Connery is also a Sir, of course. Quite why, I'm at a loss to understand (as I am with most who get such "honours"), and for someone who is all for Scottish independence, it seems an odd status to accept.

But it seems likely that one who should be decorated, Olympian Chris Hoy, is likely to remain unadorned.

Perhaps once Edinburgh City Council has knocked down Meadowbank and the velodrome where Hoy took his first tentative turns on the track, they could remember him in some way.

Maybe with the block of apartments which will undoubtedly be built on the site – once developers are prepared to build again anyway. Chris Hoy Heights has a certain ring to it.