In Care Home Professional on 8th April: Leading care home operator HC-One has expressed its outrage at Scottish Labour Party and GMB Union allegations it had withheld PPE from staff at a home where the deaths of eight people have been linked to the coronavirus. The UK’s largest care home provider accused the organisations of “political point scoring” after GMB regional secretary Gary Smith wrote to Dumbarton MSP Jackie Baillie alleging that protective masks at Castle View care home (pictured) had been “locked away by management, and staff were told they did not need to use them”. Scotland organiser Kirsty … Continue reading Why it suited Jackie Baillie for BBC Scotland to ignore report of locked-away PPE in Scottish care home

By stewartb HC-One has now published data on Covid-19 cases and related deaths in its care homes. These numbers are cumulative since the start of the UK COVID-19 outbreak. As of 12th May 2020: 4,747 suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 to date in HC-One homes 856 deaths with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 to date (By my calculation: 18.0% of cases resulting in death.) Candidly, its not absolutely clear from the company’s text whether the above figures are for its homes across the whole UK or just the rUK excluding Scotland. In the same information release, it provides this separately … Continue reading Shocking 1 in 5 covid-19 cases die in HC-One’s Scottish care homes

A Covid-19 home test cost around £195: https://www.better2know.co.uk/shop/products/home-testing-kits/covid-19-test Private care homes for the elderly in the UK typically charge more than £800 per person per week: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/care/paying-for-care/paying-for-a-care-home/ Most UK care home staff are paid only the minimum wage or in some cases even less: https://www.homecare.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1605174/Most-home-care-workers-are-paid-less-than-minimum-wage The owners of private care homes in the UK, such as HC-One are often based in the USA or in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, pay no UK taxes and yet can pay investors, dividends of around £45 million per year: https://www.wikipolitiks.org/wiki/HC-One_Ltd HC-One, the owner of Home Farm in Skye and Highgate in … Continue reading Jackson Carlaw DOES NOT attack super-rich Tory-donor care home owners who have failed to pay for their own staff to be tested

Today, Jackson Carlaw, using a Channel 4 report as evidence, attacked the First Minister for the lack of testing of staff in Highgate Care Home, Uddingston, and by association the deaths there. On August 16th 2019, the Care Inspectorate rated the HC-One Highgate as follows: Among the many problems, one was life-threatening: In August 2019: Requirement 2 The provider must ensure healthcare professionals are involved in assessing and reviewing residents support needs if appropriate. Timescale: by 31 January 2019 This requirement was [also] made on 11 September 2018.Action taken on previous requirement: We looked at residents who experienced falls. We … Continue reading Jackson Carlaw attacks First Minister for deaths in another HC-One private care home which failed inspection in 2019 and 2020

Where GPs cannot be found to run a practice in some area, it is always presented as some kind of failure and, often, used to accuse the Scottish Government of something. In 2017, there were 52 health board run surgeries out of a total of more than 1 000 in Scotland. Intuitively, I’d have thought that being run by a health board with all its expertise and quality control mechanisms might be a safer bet for the patients than the risk implicit in control by a small number of individuals for whom the profit motive is a factor. I see, … Continue reading Might locals feel safer if a health board runs GP practice?

I guess most readers here might have even more to say about the horrific waste of human life that nuclear weapons cause but, accepting that, this Government is probably more sensitive to attack on it’s budgeting, so this is a story worth exposing and sharing. Here’s what Peter Grant MP had to say about the £1.35 BILLION waste: Continue reading SNP MP reveals massive £1.35 BILLION waste of tax-payers money by UK Government

What a lovely graph, with SNP support at 50% or above and climbing for the last 5 polls and the Carlaw effect on the Tories now clear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election Continue reading Polls show Jackson Carlaw has not been good for the Scottish Conservatives

From BBC response to the Government’s consultation on decriminalising TVlicence evasion 31 March 2020 at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/bbc-consultation-response-decriminalising-licence-fee.pdf Note that evasion, UK data, has been falling since 1991 when it was 13%. This correlates with the results of the Survation poll with data collected on 16-23 April. Overall, it suggested 51% of Brits trust the BBC ‘to provide you with information about covid-19.’ With trust for the Scottish Government at 70%, social media was alive with gleeful commentary on the gap but it’s far better than that, when you see the regional breakdown. It’s better because we can reasonably link the responses to the … Continue reading TV Licence evasion much higher in Scotland

In the Herald yesterday, McArdle, uncharacteristically refers to the FM without crticism: The number of ‘extra’ deaths from any cause since the Covid outbreak began is a fifth lower in Scotland than in England and Wales. The discrepancy in excess death rates was highlighted by Nicola Sturgeon as she was asked during the daily briefing “why the percentage of deaths in care homes is so much higher” in Scotland than south of the Border. It’s a victory of sorts but a small one in the light of the ‘extra’ deaths, as she puts it, to help the slower readers (?), from the European … Continue reading Sturgeon’s statistics accepted by the Herald!

The UK lock-down was put into effect on 23rd March. In the Telegraph, yesterday and repeated widely by opposition politicians and journalists, including BBC Reporting Scotland: More than 2,000 coronavirus deaths could have been prevented if Scotland had locked down two weeks earlier [9th March], according to a study published as Nicola Sturgeon urged people to ignore Boris Johnson’s exit plan. A team of epidemiological scientists at Edinburgh University estimated that around four out of five deaths could have been stopped with earlier action, based on the behaviour of the Scottish population. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/11/four-five-scottish-covid-19-deaths-prevented-lockdown-had-started/ The scientists and the media missed something … Continue reading Fact-check: Scottish Government COULD NOT have locked down earlier to save lives