As NHS England staggers into a ‘third world’ crisis, BBC England ignores yet BBC Scotland platforms Labour and Cons to make one up here

BBC Scotland above and BBC England below:

You’d be forgiven for thinking things were difficult in NHS Scotland but hunky dory in England, yet in the Guardian today:

NHS chief warns trusts in England are ‘stretched to limit’ amid strikes. Several NHS trusts in England have already declared critical incidents during the walkout, which continues until Tuesday. Some have asked staff to return to work, citing patient safety. It means that Sunak’s key pledge on NHS waiting times risks going into reverse. Official data suggests that since the PM made his pledge a year ago, the waiting list has gone up by 500,000.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/07/nhs-chief-warns-trusts-in-england-are-stretched-to-limit-amid-strikes

And in the Guardian yesterday:

Thousands of cancer patients could die early if ministers and junior doctors do not urgently resolve their bitter pay row, health officials have warned.

Oncologists and cancer leaders are becoming increasingly alarmed and frustrated at the devastating impact of NHS strikes on care and treatment. Tens of thousands of patients have had cancer appointments, treatments and operations cancelled since the strikes began about 13 months ago.

https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2024/01/06/cancer-claims-by-leading-english-medics-mean-snp-could-save-hundreds-from-early-death/

And two days before that:

Tens of thousands of patients will have their care cancelled from Wednesday in England amid massive disruption caused by a six-day strike by junior doctors – the longest in the NHS’s 75-year history.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/03/tens-of-thousands-face-nhs-cancellations-six-day-junior-doctors-strike-england

And the day before that:

NHS bosses fear patient safety could be compromised during this week’s junior doctors strikes in England if medics do not honour an agreement to abandon picket lines if hospitals become overwhelmed during the winter crisis.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/01/nhs-bosses-fear-for-patient-safety-during-six-day-junior-doctor-strike#:~:text=NHS%20chiefs%20fear%20for%20patient%20safety%20during%20six%2Dday%20junior%20doctor%20strike,-Hospital%20bosses%20in&text=NHS%20bosses%20fear%20patient%20safety,overwhelmed%20during%20the%20winter%20crisis.

None of these events are taking place in Scotland where there have been no health service strikes, staffing is greater and waiting times were already shorter, yet BBC Scotland platforms Labour and Cons to suggest there is a crisis here and that they have a solution for it.

13 thoughts on “As NHS England staggers into a ‘third world’ crisis, BBC England ignores yet BBC Scotland platforms Labour and Cons to make one up here”

  1. I received a notification from Talking Up Scotland about its latest article and clicked on the link to read it.

    The following happens whenever I do this –

    According to the grey pop up with the yellow banner across the top which appears, it is a –

    ‘Suspicious link

    This link opens a site that might be harmful’

    Clicking on ‘show details’ I get this message –

    ‘The reputation of talkingupscotlandtwo.com.wordpress.com is unknown.

    Are you sure you want to continue?’

    There is also a blue shield with a capital ‘G’ emblazoned and the words

    ‘Safer with Google’

    I am then offered these two choices –

    ‘Open anyway’ and ‘Don’ t open’

    It is the only time I get this message from Google Gmail.

    I might not be the only one which is why I am sharing my experience here.

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    1. I don’t get notifications from WP anymore I have to specifically go to the site..sounds like TUS is a threat to someone somewhere, if you are getting the ‘reputation of TUS is unknown’ message…hmm.

      Liked by 3 people

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  2. Thatchters dream was to see the NHS sold off and privatised…heard a programme many years back, radio 4 BBC, investigating about how the NHS was definitely going to be privatised, the neocons were already in cahoots with the private companies in the US, it was almost in the bag. Not sure why it’s been so delayed, but looks like the destruction of England’s NHS is well under way.
    Scotland better get out of the UknotOK or see people dying on the streets and their family members suffering and dying should they not be able to afford health ‘insurance’. I read recently that in the US, ‘millions of children do not have health insurance’. Children who I presume will be denied the care they need when they need it. That’s coming to Scotland unless independence is secured and fast.

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  3. Must say the article shown on the BBC suggested by Slabour to my mind does have some merit. Have felt for some time that the NHS is ‘top heavy’ and amalgamating Trusts might just reduce the financial burden and free up more cash for front line services. Just saying it seemed to work fine for other public services e’g Police etc

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    1. Sweeney (Todd?) the bbc et al are poisonous I wouldn’t believe a word they say or print this is playground politics at it’s worse…..how many times did they mention that
      sweeney was scottish labour…..there is no such party, they are not registered in Scotland therefore no such party exists.
      This is divide and conquer all day (and night) long they are relentless and even the smallest childish “idea” they have is platformed to make us all think that we would be better under a labour government…….we won’t……we will be destroyed by their
      recklessness and narrow minded inward looking unionism……there empire is long finished and Westminster long broken…..we need to vote for independence and get rid of this media madness.

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  4. Reporting Scotland tonight did a real hatchet job on A&E in Scotland then bigger up Sweeney with his 3 health boards idea. It was the most dreadful report that after running down A&E in particular then ended by basically saying A&E was OK.

    I am still so angry that I can’t give a fuller account just how bad it was. Watch it on catch-up if you can.

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  5. Less BBC viewers, less programmes.

    Westminster austerity. NHS funding from 2015 £125Billion a year. No increase.
    Westminster Gov spending £1090Billion. 2020/21. No increase for the NHS.

    Scottish Gov has to mitigate the cut. Increase funding and social care. Personal care means elderly people can stay in their own home longer. Cutting Residential care and hospital stays. Saving taxpayers monies. The elderly have more appropriate care in their own homes.

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  7. The sheer hypocrisy on display from the BBC and Labour in Scotland is breathtaking – Consider the Police Scotland amalgamation and the rumpus that caused, including the petulance of London over VAT.
    It’s the same old propaganda game https://archive.ph/ZCqrl of “efficiency” London Tories have been playing for years – Sweeney’s “cluttered” versus Gulhane’s “provide value for money another” versus the chair of BMA moaning about “lack of medics”, it’s as ever a moanfest over the silver bullet instead of London funding, whilst the “impartial broadcaster” portrays a “NHS in chaos” and recycling their QEUH bunkum at every opportunity.

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  8. So Labour in Scotland now has the solution to NHS Scotland’s financial and operational challenges! Reduce territorial health boards from 14 to three – and save £20m! And are the Tories in Scotland as supportive as the BBC News website indicates when it reports: ‘Opposition PARTIES HAVE CALLED FOR Scotland’s health boards to be merged’? (my emphasis) BBC Scotland’s claim of support seems at variance with what we read elsewhere in the same article: ‘The Tories agreed that amalgamation COULD BE DISCUSSED but not at the expense of services in rural areas’! Not another BBC Scotland misrepresentation?

    Labour claims that NHS Scotland’s organisation is currently too ‘cluttered’: is that how the party judges the merits of health boards dedicated to Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles? I wonder if the residents of these islands will agree?

    For the avoidance of doubt, the purpose of this post is NOT to argue for the preservation of the status quo. Rather it is to challenge Labour and any allies for rationalisation that may emerge to provide a much better case for change than Labour’s current emphasis on bureaucracy and saving £20m! Otherwise, this sceptic will judge all this as a distraction, an attempt to fill a policy vacuum in Scotland by opposition politicians who deep down really do know that addressing the big challenges facing health and social care in Scotland requires substantial additional resources that whilst held in this Union can only come to Scotland through Westminster – but in all likelihood won’t be forthcoming!

    It’s worth noting that having scoured current policy statements of Labour and the Tories regarding the future of the NHS in England (and also in Wales), I found no reference by either party to rationalisation or centralisation as a ‘solution’, and no reference to ‘decluttering’. Indeed, the direction of travel is more towards localism and subsidiarity, essentially accepting inevitable system complexity. But perhaps things are already simpler, less cluttered in the NHS outside Scotland?

    There are c.215 NHS Trusts in England, including 10 ambulance trusts. CATCHMENT POPULATIONS PER (territorial) NHS TRUST AVERAGES C. 310K: THIS RANGES FROM C. 860K TO LESS THAN 100K. (https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Emergency-Medicine-Apr22q.pdf )

    The marketised health system in England has ‘Integrated Care Systems’ – currently 42 geographically distinct ones – each with an Integrated Care Board (ICB: which commissions health and social care services) and an Integrated Care Partnership (ICP: which strategises/plans local health and social care services). The ICSs have CATCHMENT POPULATIONS OF BETWEEN 500K AND 3 MILLION.

    The England-focused health think tank, the Kings Fund on 19 August 2022 published this: ‘Integrated care systems explained: making sense of systems, places and neighbourhoods’. Here is one notable extract:

    ‘A key premise of ICS policy, and a core feature of many of the systems that have been working as ICSs the longest, is that MUCH OF THE ACTIVITY TO INTEGRATE CARE, IMPROVE POPULATION HEALTH AND TACKLE INEQUALITIES WILL BE DRIVEN BY COMMISSIONERS AND PROVIDERS COLLABORATING OVER SMALLER GEOGRAPHIES WITHIN ICSs (often referred to as ‘places’) and THROUGH TEAMS DELIVERING SERVICES WORKING TOGETHER ON EVEN SMALLER FOOTPRINTS (usually referred to as ‘neighbourhoods’). This is important as ICSs TEND TO COVER LARGE GEOGRAPHICAL AREAS (TYPICALLY A POPULATION OF MORE THAN 1 MILLION PEOPLE) SO AREN’T WELL SUITED TO DESIGNING OR DELIVERING CHANGES IN SERVICES TO MEET THE DISTINCTIVE NEEDS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF LOCAL POPULATIONS.’

    ‘This three-tiered model of neighbourhoods, places and systems is AN OVER-SIMPLIFICATION OF THE DIVERSE SET OF ARRANGEMENTS SEEN IN REALITY, but the terminology is now in widespread use within the health and care system. National policy and guidance has made it clear that ICSs will be expected to work through these smaller geographies within their footprints.’ But to repeat, no Labour (or Tory) plans to declutter in England: other things are being proposed of course, including by Labour greater use of the private sector to reduce NHS waiting times.

    For perspective on catchment populations, Scotland has a population of c.5.5 million and 14 territorial health boards, so on average each serves a population of 390,000, but the variance around this mean is large. Taking the three island boards and their catchment populations out of the calculation, the 11 remains boards are serving c. 5.43 million people, an average of c.493k per board.

    Back on 17 February 2023, the Herald carried this headline: ‘Scottish Labour proposes mass merger of NHS boards to save £20m’. Announced at the party’s conference, the article reports: ‘Deputy leader Jackie Baillie said her party would reduce the number of territorial boards from 14 to three if it came to power at the 2026 Holyrood election. She said the days of sticking plaster solutions were over and it was time to be “bold”. But EVEN the Herald couldn’t resist noting this: ‘Moments earlier she attacked the SNP care plans as a “national centralisation service”!

    For perspective, the newspaper adds: ‘The current budget for all the boards is £13.7billion, so a £20m saving would represent just 0.15 per cent of that.’

    Given this Labour policy was announced early in 2023 and there seems nothing new being said about it now, why was it been given headline status almost a year later on the BBC News website? How is this NEWS?

    Reforming NHS Scotland may well be required going forward tho’ I suspect the reform of social care and its relationship with NHS Scotland is more of a priority. Regardless, in the short term, the Scottish Government and NHS Scotland will again be enforced spectators – perhaps with trepidation – as the next UK government post the 2024 General Election decides how it will resource what England wants and needs in terms of health and social care. Only then will we discover what further resources, if any, Scotland’s government will have to work with if Westminster opts for more austerity.

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    1. Well said.
      I confess being no fan of the British obsession with centralisation=efficiency – As often as not you end up with the Post Office scenario where none of those in charge had anything to do with the scandal that ruined and lost so many lives over almost 2 decades, it must have been the civil servants or the software developer… I had an early experience of that as a child as Beeching’s cuts of the 1960s landed, essentially tossed the entire south-west of Scotland into a recession from which frankly it never recovered… and proud some are of it (no offence intended to the ‘proud boys’ of Kirkcudbright, well maybe a bit).

      The last thing Scotland’s NHS needs is further centralisation in the British style headlining ‘efficiency of expenditure’, rather than centralisation in the Estonian style, efficiency of information…
      In Estonia your tax, your health condition and everything about you is owned by YOU controlled by YOU but centrally held – There is no need for nurses to waste endless hours asking inane questions to write responses on a piece of paper, it’s simply available at the swipe of YOUR card. How many squillions could be saved there ?
      And if you look at the quality of life Estonians enjoy, perhaps there’s some reporting to be done ?
      Nah says James Cook, Paul Sweeney, Damn Baillie et al….

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