I’m indebted to our Cartoon Correspondent, Ian McAnulla, for educating me on this. In 1996, US cartoonist David Levine drew the above cartoon replacing the scar from US President Lyndon B Johnson’s recent gall bladder operation with an outline of Vietnam and thus cleverly pointing to the scarring effects of the Vietnam War on his career. A few days ago, the Guardian’s Steve Bell explicitly repeated the idea with an outline of Gaza on Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu’s stomach, cleverly suggesting it would be his Vietnam. Bell is clear about his reference to Levine on the drawing, bottom left. Several … Continue reading Steve Bell’s Netanyahu cartoon was not anti-semitic

Umpteen lesser ferry correspondents than me, including the Herald’s Captain Maritime Williams, have predicted the MV Hebridean Isles would not sail again just as those new ferries will never be finished. The old lady is back on duty between Kennacraig in Argyll and Glen Campbell’s Islay, 2 hours and 20 minutes each way and you can monitor her at: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:182556/zoom:8 I don’t know about you but I’m getting a warm glow deep in my lower decks when I think of her, steady amid-ship and making 14.3 knots, while the passengers get through the range of malts. Makes you winder how … Continue reading 38 years young and still steaming…..ahead and on time – the ferry that will not die

In the Times last night, the above. From NHS England at the end of 2022, there were 129 857 beds. From NHS Scotland for the same period, there were 13 695 beds. With only a tenth of the population, all things being equal, NHS Scotland might have been expected to have only 12 985 beds but had 13 695, 710 or 5% more. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/bed-availability-and-occupancy/bed-data-overnight/ https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly-quarter-ending-31-december-2022/data-summary/#:~:text=There%20were%20on%20average%2013%2C695,the%20percentage%20occupancy%20was%2089%25. Continue reading Latest – NHS Scotland has 5% more beds despite Conservative Government’s winter pledge

From the Daily Mail yesterday: PLANS to recruit an army of cut-price doctors to plug gaps in Scotland’s crisis-hit NHS have sparked safety fears. There are already almost 150 medics with only two years of training working across the health service in Scotland. Now NHS chiefs are considering expanding the roles of ‘physician associates’ to plug gaping holes in the frontline workforce. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12633761/The-cut-price-doctor-Health-chiefs-raise-safety-fears-plans-recruit-doctor-associates-two-years-training-chronic-staff-shortages-NHS.html You’ll not be surprised to hear there are more gaping holes in this story than there are in Scotland’s NHS staffing. First, Physician associates are clinical graduates trained in the medical model. They must pass an intensive 2 year … Continue reading ‘Cut-price doctors’ twice as common in NHS England

In 2018, the above document from the UK Civil Service, attracted no media coverage at the time, to my knowledge, and only became known to me after a reader, I think, drew my attention to it. It’s stunning. Look at the text in the box at the bottom on the right for those waiting more than 12 hours. A&E patients in England who have to wait more than 12 hours had the clock restarted once they were transferred from A&E whereas in Scotland, for all who wait over 4 hours, the clock is not restarted and the time of first … Continue reading Two reasons why the gap between Scotland’s faster A&E performance and that in England & Wales may be even greater

The contrasting realities of life as the Daily Mail sees it in England and Scotland, are inadvertently exposed today. Nothing could more quickly confirm that there are no plans in Scotland to release violent prisoners early than the Daily Mail‘s failure to replicate the bad news for down south, up here. There is, of course, not a sniff of the phenomenon in Scotland. Try searching for ‘Scotland release violent prisoners early‘ and get only the same stories about England. What could explain this, given the regular stories in Scotland of over-crowded prisons, pushed into a compliant media by the opposition … Continue reading Violent prisoners NOT to be let out early

For those more ‘normal’ folk who, unlike me, don’t get excited when they see a scatter-graph like the one above from the IFS six days ago , let me explain. The closer clustering of the dark blue Scottish dots, each representing a local education authority, means that the range of children attending schools in that area is very like, in terms of, in particular, income, parental qualifications, job status and property value, the range of such attributes in the neighbourhood around the school. Put crudely, children from more affluent homes tend to attend the same school as those from more … Continue reading Class far less important in population of Scotland’s less-segregated schools

From Sky News today: An Ipsos exit poll suggested the opposition, together as a coalition, has likely won 248 seats in the 460-seat lower house of parliament, the Sejm, while Law and Justice appears to have 198 seats. In order for a government to pass laws, it needs at least 231 seats. Three opposition parties, Civic Coalition, Third Way and the New Left, ran on separate tickets but with the same promises of seeking to oust Law and Justice and restore good ties with the European Union. Mr Tusk, a former prime minister and European Council president, told his supporters … Continue reading Great news for Scotland’s man in the EU

Today, the Guardian has sacked its long-serving cartoonist Steve Bell for the above, suggesting it refers to the clearly anti-semitic, Shakespeare’s ‘pound of flesh’ and labelling it anti-semitic. Nine years ago, I wrote to Steve Bell, praising his work generally but regretting that he had done this: He wrote back to call me a ‘nationalist dupe!’ I replied with my usual sophistication – ‘Bellend!’ A friend and fellow Bell-admirer suggested, in desperation, that maybe the missing four-letter word beginning with ‘f’ was ‘free?’ Do I welcome his sacking now? Of course not, I’m over it. Continue reading At last, Steve Bell can go and ____ himself

From BBC Wales today: “We are not getting a true reflection of what is exactly happening on the shop floor,” said Dr Suresh Pillai, vice president of RCEM for Wales. “This year alone from January to June, they have excluded about 45,000 patients and that’s a huge number. “If you don’t factor those patients in the already overcrowded emergency department, we cannot measure how bad things are. “If you don’t get the true figures, then the perception would be ‘everything is fine’. In fact, it is not.” Dr Pillai said the issue had routinely been raised during meetings with the … Continue reading Shock as Labour-run NHS Wales is revealed to have cheated on A&E figures to cover 36% superiority of NHS Scotland