Professor John Robertson OBA
On BBC Breakfast and on their website, an extended report on Enhertu, a drug which can give patients with a specific type of incurable breast cancer an extra six months to live on average.
At the very bottom of the BBC UK report, this:
Some told the BBC they were considering the idea of moving to Scotland, where they could get it on the NHS. Jeannie says that’s not an option for her family.
“We shouldn’t be having to think of moving to Scotland or selling our houses,” she says. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7v6g9q6rjqo
The extended website report does not find space for the above map but the broadcast version seen by millions does, hopefully many in Scotland, because it’s a rare sight for viewers in a country only repeatedly described as the ‘drug death capital of Europe‘.
When a drug for some tragic condition has been approved in England or Wales, before it has in Scotland, you can be sure BBC Scotland will be all over that story, door-stepping the health secretary and giving the shadowy Tory health spokesperson, Sandesh Gulhane, a platform to rant against the SNP. When it’s the other way round, they report as if this in not in the public interest to know.
Some would like to see an enhanced/extended BBC Scotland at 6. I would not. It’s just be more of the same from the likes of Lisa Summers, faking the news on NHS Scotland.
Now and again, the independence cause gets a wee boost from BBC UK or England at 6 as a result of them not having that direct agenda to undermine Scotland at all times.
Here are some earlier examples:
For full text, click on: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/page/2/?s=BBC+UK
Support Scots Independent, Scotland’s oldest pro-independence newspaper and host of the OBA (Oliver Brown Award) at: https://scotsindependent.scot/FWShop/shop/
The Oliver Brown Award for advancing the cause of Scotland’s self respect, previously awarded to Dr Philippa Whitford, Alex Salmond and Sean Connery: https://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=116
About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brown_(Scottish_activist)
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
After gleefully watching England lose to Pakistan in the cricket this morning, I switched channels in the hope of catching some news – and came in near the end of this story on BBC Breakfast, just in time to hear a woman say “… it’s just not fair that I should have to move to Scotland…”
Couldn’t believe my ears. Whilst I feel sorry for anyone with such a health problem, it’s their government that is denying them access to this drug – and I simply don’t see it as right that anyone should be able to simply move here to stretch the already stretched resources of our government.
An inhumane attitude maybe, but when their government – and many people who live there – see us as second class citizens and begrudge giving us anything, why on earth should we open the doors to them?
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”…it’s just unfair that I should have to move to ENGLAND !”
That is the truth for so many Scots over the last 300+ years when faced with life chances as part of the United Kingdom of England and the rest .
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Yesterday dental desert story yesterday. Fully accept there is a shortage ….. because EU dentists have gone home to Poland, Spain etc. Randomly googled Perth NHS dentist and immediately found a dentist in one of BBC deserts.
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I am waiting on the BBC Scotland headline,
“Scottish Government frittering away valuable money gifted to them by our glorious union on expensive drugs”
“This money could be better spent on other health issues”, said Sandesh Gullane spokesperson for himself.
He drowned on, “This is another example of the SNP having the wrong priorities.”
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*droned
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@ Anonymous @ 9.35am
“Yesterday dental desert story yesterday”
The perfect storm for NHS Dentistry was Brexit and Covid.
This was regarded as having created a fundamental shift in the dental workforce availability in the last few years.
It was reported that In February 2020, just after the UK officially left Europe in January 2020, that in March 2020 the world entered a phase of lockdown due to Covid-19 and normal working practices changed significantly.
Group Dentistry Now online reported that “With the UK now out of Europe, dental material prices rocketed, increasing by some 30%.”
They also reported that “Brexit effectively reduced the available workforce in the UK by 30%, but this was not immediately recognized because no one was working due to lockdowns. The shortage Brexit had caused did not manifest itself as an issue until 2022. No one was recruiting, no one was seeing a dentist, so few saw the problem coming”.
The BBC in Scotland try to promote what they say is , in Scotland, “NHS Dental Deserts” and that it is purely only down to a political wrongdoing by the Scottish government, and also as if Scotland were once again unique as a nation within the UK that , according to the BBC and others, were supposdley the only nation seeing huge problems in Scottish public service. While they, the BBC here, were ignoring (deliberately that is) any mitigating circumstances that has seen an exodus of Dental staff since Brexit and also the consequential negative impact resulting from the Covid pandemic on our NHS.
(of course we forget that only other UK governments within the UK were those who were negatively impacted by the Covid pandemic and so we are all expected to believe that only our government and only our country, Scotland, has seen absolutely no consequences resulting from the pandemic to our NHS services, to include Dentistry also).
The failure of the BBC is in them always choosing to present any report as if it is a black and white situation devoid of any grey areas , which they as a supposed news organisation are supposed to explore and explain, but instead they dare not venture into those grey areas for fear that it will then expose their true agenda aka propaganda that will then explain and define the many problems encountered and experienced by our Scottish government all resulting from Scotland being a part of their UK.
The fact that the BBC online article , in their “NHS Dental Deserts” chose to include a quote from Tory MSP Health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane who they quote as saying:
“The critical shortage of NHS dentists has been exacerbated by the SNP making Scotland the highest taxed part of the UK, with the BDA pointing out it has actively hampered recruitment and retention of dentists”
No mention by him, Gulhane, of Brexit or any Covid consequences but instead purely him playing politics as a politician who is in a opposition party to the SNP , but the BBC in allowing him to comment on this, are then both condoning his behaviour and also endorsing his partisan and selective opinion/position.
The reality is they, the BBC, should be challenging his, Gulhane’s, opinion via what the Tory party, as the former UK government, failed to do in England with the serious lack of NHS dentists there and where people in many parts of England still cannot find any NHS dentists where they live.
Unfortunately both the BBC here and also the various Pro UK opposition parties to the SNP all fail to note the ‘elephants in the room’ as in Covid consequences and very much Brexit too upon our Scottish NHS (and other services too and also any negative economic consequences as well to our country, Scotland, because of Brexit)
That is a tactical and political choice by them, as in both the BBC here in Scotland and the pro UK opposition parties, all of which we predicted that they all would do as seems it is far easier for them to just declare #SNPBAD upon everything is it not than admit anyone on the UK side was wrong or #BAD.
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I had a conversation with a neighbour who is a journalist. I asked why there was a preponderance of negative stories in the media and the response was that it is the purpose of journalism to find the negatives. This is ‘to keep ‘officialdom’ on its toes. When I asked why there were so few positive stories, the reply was there should be no need to report such things because these things are what is expected – we do not report on people who do not rob banks or assault their partners because people should not do these things. The other reason is that if you give praise people become complacent.
Couple this attitude with the fact that the media is largely owned by big corporations controlled by people who have mainly right wing views, then the real crimes committed ‘perfectly legally’ by large organisations are seldom reported and the reason is that these hacks, intrepid exposers of bad behaviour, will get their jotters if they do so or face the threat of an injunction. So, they hound public bodies and poor people.
Alasdair Macdonald
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‘…. it is the purpose of journalism to find the negatives.’ Whatever the truth of this – and I tend to think there are matters of degree here and in Scotland we have a mainstream media that gets too close to gaslighting a nation – there is no merit in accepting it as inevitable, no need to roll over and be passive. We have the example of past efforts by the Labour Party to respond to the British press.
Source Labour List (24th April, 2014) 5 things Labour’s new rapid-rebuttal team need to get right. (https://labourlist.org/2014/04/5-things-labours-new-rapid-rebuttal-team-need-to-get-right/ )
Selecting from the article, firstly regarding the need to ‘rebut’: ‘The standard for all media response teams now is the Clinton office of the 1990s, where the motto famously was: “Let no attack go unanswered, let no opportunity go unexploited.”
And on the recommendation to ‘Give your rebuttal a frame’ – ‘Building narratives. Joined up thinking. Whatever you want to call it, it’s important.
Adding: ‘Come up with a bigger story about the Tories (or Lib Dems, or UKIP). Every story, response, or attack we want to put out about them now has to fit in to this bigger story: “X is just the kind of thing we’ve come to expect from Y because of Z.” In a year’s time, we want voters to have ideas about the other parties drummed into their heads. That does not mean repeating the same attack or line ad nauseam, because that’s just an empty frame – it means linking every story to a larger idea of what these parties represent.’
The rest of the piece gives interesting stuff to ponder too.
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So in essence , their job is to mislead the public into believing that government is useless.
I wonder why some many don’t trust politicians and have little interest in politics.
I hope you laughed ironically at the reply, Alasdair!
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