Opening BBC Breakfast this morning, the appalling story of a truly dysfunctional maternity service in Kent, almost entirely Tory MPs, but not the biggest story across BBC UK, below:
In the full story, above, there’s not a mention of any politician, Government or Labour opposition.
It was the same in the even more shocking report from Shropshire in 2020 when we had:
More than 1 000 cases! The health board CE has to answer. There’s no mention, certainly no anxious photo, of the minister or of the PM. There’s no image of a creepy Labour MP ‘supporting’ the parents either.
It was the same in Nottingham, Essex and in Wales, no politicisation, no exploitation:
But in Scotland, the BBC and the Labour Party do it differently:
Not only do we get an exploitative photo of the Health Secretary, a former nurse, who clearly cares about what she does, we get the First Minister and Anas Sarwar ‘supporting’ the parents. That last thought would make you boak.
Completely absent, of course, from BBC Scotland reporting, facts:
BBC Scotland and the rest of ‘our’ media have an ongoing obsession with supposed spikes in new-born baby deaths.
Three times in the last year, they have announced probes into these. Nothing has come of any of them.
Stillbirth and infant death figures are stark evidence of the quality of governance and associated public services in any country.
Our media have not shown any interest in putting Scotland’s record into the kind of context they have loved with drug deaths, but for which the data are easily accessed.
From the above, you can see that Scotland had 3.5 stillbirths and 3.3 infant deaths per 1000 live and stillbirths in 2019.
The UK figures were 4 and 3.9. These small percentage variations conceal quite large numbers. For example, were the UK stillbirth ratio to be the same as that in Scotland, their 6 072 live births could have seen a reduction of 31, to 212 stillbirths, from 243 (4%). Add to those 31 a similar number of infant deaths prevented.
There was a time when Scotland aspired to Scandinavian levels of stillbirth and infant death. Note that Denmark has higher infant deaths and Sweden has higher stillbirths.
Talking-up Scotland 
And do also bear in mind how much political resistance there had been from the Tories to the Inquiry into East Kent Hospitals Trust even beginning…
As to the BBC’s Christian Fuller’s report, note the absence of line by line examination of how the report ‘could’ be interpreted, nor any excruciating “Analysis by..” to re-define the bounds of reality with polluted water supplies or incontinent pigeon assassination squads.
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Absolutely dreadful for the families involved. I don’t know how they cope with such a loss.
I heard one of the mother’s being interviewed this morning, and she said they had received no help from the authorities, and that is was charities who had come to their aid. She also remarked that the “apology” from the Health Trust, there’s a contradiction in terms, useless.
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