Iain MacDonald BBC Scotland

Patients can face long journeys to find dental care

Get your teeth into that then.

Maybe it's my unchallenged status as a major dental disaster in my own right, but for some reason people seem to think it was awfully funny that I've been doing something on the apparent failure of NHS dentistry.

I point out I can't really blame the NHS, my contributions to the Tooth Fairy job creation scheme mostly involved football and fighting in my youth. In the ring - well, mostly.

And I can't really blame any dentist for not wanting me on their books.

But the last 24 hours have been interesting and instructive.

The case for the dentists' defence is not just about money, according to Dr Andrew Lamb, but about the way that dental practice has changed.

Now it's about prevention rather than just about cure: and dentists are taking to private practice - and a more leisurely consultation pace - to avoid burnout.

And he insists that many dentists are still taking the vulnerable and the poor - and their children - on the NHS.

But talk to Tobias Rinke, originally from Hamburg and now operating in the dentist-poor North East of Scotland, and he'll tell you it is impossible to operate as a purely NHS dentist any more.

I have �2,000-worth of insurance to pay up for - I can't make a living on the NHS, my business would just go bankrupt

Pulling a tooth, he asks - guess how much a dentist is paid for that by the NHS?

Fifty quid, I guess wildly. Seven pound fifty, he says.

I have �2,000-worth of insurance to pay up for - I can't make a living on the NHS, my business would just go bankrupt.

So it's a mixed practice or nothing then and that probably means NHS dentistry will not be the same again.

Part of Tobias' business is running a mobile clinic, where for your dental appointment, the surgery - and the dentist - turns up on your doorstep.

So no chance of second thoughts and strategic auntie's funerals there, then.

But it sounds like an agreeable idea and the Tories are targeting kids with proposals for a similar set-up, today.

In the Highlands, Heather's family hasn't had a dentist for three years and her eldest two children's teeth now have problems.

They've just been able to get the kids into a new clinic in Wick right up in the top right hand corner of the country.

Heather's only prospect of a dental appointment meanwhile is in Inverness. They run a sheep farm in a strath in Sutherland.

Going to Wick is a 100 mile round trip from their front door.

Going to Inverness is 200 miles. In completely opposite directions. On pretty poor roads.

That's the patients' problem.

Dentists insist they still provide care for the vulnerable

And if you listen to Andrew Lamb, who chairs the British Dental Association in Scotland, things are not going to get better for areas like the Highlands.

It's about economies of scale, and a six-dentist practice can work in a city where, in the country, a two-dentist practice may struggle to survive.

John Jamieson, who led Highland dentists into their own private insurance plan and away from the previous NHS system, says the politicians don't really understand the economic realities for dentists - and he warns that somebody should be looking at the figures for so-called salaried dentists.

Meanwhile, he says, those who most need modern dentistry just don't go to the dentist.

The discontent among dentists, he believes, is beginning to spread to GPs' surgeries. So watch this space.

One of those who didn't make earlier reports is the eight-year-old son of a colleague of mine despite the fact that he had a major dental drama at the weekend.

As his mother relaxed in the bath, Fergus opened the door to a party canvasser and ushered him in

He lost two front teeth - naturally.

But while waiting for the Tooth Fairy, he very considerately decided to wash them and one escaped down the plug hole.

Yet, somehow or other, the said fairy apparently managed to slip down the drain and recover the merchandise.

And overnight trading was successfully concluded, to the satisfaction of all.

Mind you, the same young man is not about to win employment as a night club bouncer.

As his mother relaxed in the bath, Fergus opened the door to a party canvasser and ushered him in.

The party representative, to do him credit, discovered himself outside the bathroom door (closed, of course) and enquired of the householder if she was a floating voter.

Her response has not been minuted.

Which, frankly, is a more pleasant incident than some.

Having successfully ignored the Apprentice Boys' march - the first in 30 years - in Inverness at the weekend, I read there are to be more, if Inverness's new branch of the organisation - the Inverness Campsie Club - has its way.

Apparently members previously had to travel all the way to Perth for a wee walk with flutes and big drums.

'Nasty journalists

Apparently the media is just stirring up controversy.

Mmmm, next thing you know, these nasty journalists will start trying to commemorate events that happened more than 300 years ago, in another country.

Can't trust them an inch.

And this week I got my first ever BNP leaflet.

Apparently a protest vote for the BNP will give Labour a kick up the backside and make them deal with the flood of immigrants who squeeze locals out of jobs and strangle the economy by shipping their wages home.

Setting out on the A9 for a parts that sometimes seem pretty foreign, I wonder if that includes me.