Long A&E waits and excess deaths – Royal College reveals remarkable, unreported differences across UK! By stewartb Candidly, this is a highly sensitive subject. In advance of what follows, and for the avoidance of doubt, excessively long waits in A&E in Scotland are unwelcome: they need to be eliminated. And ANY and ALL avoidable ‘excess deaths’ are deeply regrettable: the causes need to be eradicated. This blog post summarises new analyses from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) of 12-hour A&E waits in NHS England. It reports the Royal College’s assessment of excess deaths in England that it claims … Continue reading Excess deaths due to long A&E waits almost three times more common in England than in Scotland

Labour across the UK has committed to not increasing taxes to improve public services and protect the vulnerable. Anas Sarwar has joined them on the wagon. Carefully extracting the initial IFS comments on higher taxation for the better off in Scotland, hoping it’s a vote-winner, they ignore these consequences of that taxation, also from the IFS: Scotland has introduced two significant new benefits for families with children: the Scottish child payment (£25 per week) and Best Start grants (three lump-sum payments when children reach a certain age) – targeted at lower-income households. Primarily as a result of these, amongst the poorest … Continue reading Sarwar joins campaign to increase child poverty

Today, just after the Find out Now poll restored a Yes lead for the first time in 9 Nos since early January, Survation find an 8% lead for No and the Times insists the leadership battle is damaging support for the SNP. I can’t see the data tables yet, so I don’t know what the figure is for SNP as opposed to Yes support. Anyhow, like Savanta, Survation is a pollster with a strong tendency to find No support. They found No at 1% and 6% ahead, in the middle of the recent run of Nos, had no survey in … Continue reading Another pollster who rarely says ‘YES?’

From SNP Media: As a result of the SNP Government’s approach to business rates, farmers in Scotland look set to avoid additional costs facing their counterparts in the rest of the UK. Following Westminster’s change to the way it calculates rates assessments, operators of anaerobic digestion (AD) plants – many of whom are farmers – in England and Wales are facing a rise in business rates. Industry chiefs have said this ‘is adding yet more strain onto an industry that is already facing rising supply chain and feedstock costs.’  Under devolution, the Scottish Government has taken a different approach to business rates and … Continue reading Scottish farmers £744 million better off than UK counterparts

In the Herald today: GPs in Crisis: The Ferret investigation in partnership with The Herald. GPs are in crisis – patient lists are spiralling, surgeries closing and doctors in chronically short supply. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/23380292.gps-crisis-ferret-investigation-partnership-herald/ The Ferret, Scotland’s supposedly independent factchecker, returns after some time to be just another corporate media bitch, perversely trumpeting its relationship with the Herald, in pursuit of their shared ambition to promote Scottish Labour and do down the SNP. The full report is behind the paywall but I feel sure they won’t be reporting these facts: There were 3,494 GP Whole Time Equivalents (WTE) in Scotland in 2022. … Continue reading Scotland’s Corporate Ferret way behind UK People’s Canary as it fakes another story

BBC Scotland yesterday, under the grudging headline EIS teaching union backs pay deal to end school strikes give no credit to the management/government side in strike resolution. Imagine this was a working-class union in England? They do, of course, give lots of space to the three Unionist parties in Scotland with this unchallenged hypocrisy in the light of the views held in their London HQs: The Scottish Conservatives accused Ms Somerville of being “asleep at the wheel” over the strike action. Party education spokesman Stephen Kerr MSP said: “It would never have lasted this long – and caused so much … Continue reading Education Secretary shouted down by three noisy weans who preferred strike days

Today the Herald can reveal: Bus operators in Scotland have seen an increase in anti-social behaviour since a flagship scheme allowing young Scots to travel for free was launched, The Herald can reveal. And the evidence? Well for the first 12 paragraphs it’s just the impressions of Labour councillor Tom Conn and Facebook activist Alex O’Kane and then, as promised at the top, a bus operator: A slight increase that cannot be attributed directly to the scheme? Oh. Has the Herald writer maybe imagined all this for a wee headline so he can keep his job working for a corporation? See that SNP … Continue reading Oh ye shouldnae throw yer grandson aff the bus for a ‘slight increase’ in disorder

Some folk are bit too keen to smugly tell you that, based on Betteridge’s Law, a headline ending in a question mark can always be answered with a resounding NO. I don’t subscribed to such a rigid view but in this case it’s true. You do need to read down a bit in this bland anon piece, with no analysis I note, to find: Long waits for potentially life-saving diagnostic tests are common in Ireland, as they are in Scotland. The two countries have similar populations but very different health systems. The Irish Cancer Society estimates that more than 200,000 … Continue reading NHS Scotland does cancer scans TWICE as fast as Ireland’s health system

Back in 2011, Labour Shadowy Health Secretary, Jackie Baillie, said it was concerning that 21 Scots, treated in a back pain centre in Bath, could not be treated closer to home. 11 of the 18 paragraphs in the BBC Scotland report were given over to Jackie Baillie and Murdo Fraser, blaming the Scottish Health Secretary directly for this. Today, BBC Wales has People with eating disorders in Wales could be sent as far away as Scotland in order to get treatment. There must a Con Shadowy Health Secretary there to attack the Labour Health Secretary for this gross failure. No, … Continue reading Jackie Baillie shocked by patient transfers FROM Labour Wales