By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

A 95-YEAR-OLD former soldier, wounded fighting for his country, is now entrenched in his last big battle to keep his independence.

Alexander Ramsay has lived in his council house in Kirkton, Dundee, for the last 61 years.

He wants a motorised scooter to help him get around, but can’t get permission to create a “run-in” to his property to get the vehicle in off the street.

Mr Ramsay’s councillor, Ian Borthwick, says he has been playing “ping-pong” with officials and has effectively been told the 95-year-old with two artificial knees and arthritis in his hips is “not disabled enough” to qualify for help.

Mr Ramsay claims he was refused his request for a run-in, after going round the houses with various officials.

He even presented a letter from his doctor, dated February 19, outlining his medical problems and stating he would “benefit from a motorised buggy,” but that adaptations would be required to allow access for the vehicle.

Frustrated with the lack of action, the old soldier contacted The Courier in the hope that highlighting his story would get him the help he needs.

“I asked the housing officer to make a small gap of about 30 inches on the fence to get a scooter in and he would not entertain it at all,” he said.

The old soldier, who was wounded in North Africa during the second world war and has had two knee replacements, suffers from osteoarthritis and continues to have arthritis in his hips.

Despite his problems and daily pain, Mr Ramsay manages to live an independent life, and he doesn’t want to move from the home in which he and his late wife Barbara brought up their family.

“My sweetheart died 13 years ago last April and I live on my own,” said Mr Ramsay. “But my family comes here from America and Canada and I have the room for them—I don’t want to move.”

Mr Ramsay said, “When I got home from hospital at the end of the war, my wife and children were living with her sister in a single room attic in Hawkhill.

“We got this new house in 1947—nobody but me and my family has lived here.”

Mr Ramsay gets about with the aid of a walking stick, but says a scooter would give him freedom to roam further.

Mr Borthwick wrote to the director of social work, Alan Baird, to see if he could find a way to be more flexible.

“That was a week or 10 days ago, and I haven’t heard anything back,” he said.

“I really think—in light of the man’s age and all he has gone through and his service to the country—they ought to find a way whereby he can be assisted.

“To fit the criteria he has to be almost permanently in a wheelchair. He doesn’t achieve the wheelchair criteria, so he doesn’t get a ramp—a bit of earnest consideration is what we want.

“Sometimes you need to exercise judgment and a degree of flexibility—if this is absolutely impossible, then say so and say why it is so.”

A Dundee City Council spokesman said, “We have provided advice about equipment and will look into this to see if further help can be provided.”