Scotland’s largest health union has suspended its strike ballot of NHS staff and is consulting on a revised pay offer. The Scottish government made a fresh proposal on Friday that would see a hike of £2,205 per worker. Unison has announced it will suspend plans to ballot its members on industrial action to consider the deal. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-63406877 Good news for NHS Scotland, reassurance for worried patients and relatives, and headlines for BBC Scotland, the Herald, the Scotsman and the Daily Record? Maybe. In England, lives are still at risk, so it’s the prominent story: It’s the same in Wales but BBC Wales, … Continue reading SNP Government make breakthrough on Unison strike threat but you’d never know it

The Herald today has a classic example of the selective use and description of statistics to get a story, to malign a health board and to accuse government of failure to recruit nurses. Let’s start with the facts. The Herald headlines: Nurses are resorting to whistleblowing channels to highlight staff shortages in Scotland’s biggest health board, as unions warn the national picture is “critical”. The number of employee complaints investigated by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has doubled this year, figures show. Then this: Figures show the health board investigated 29 whistleblower complaints from April 2021-2022, with 14 related to hospitals, nine designated … Continue reading Fake news on Glasgow NHS whistleblowers

Scotland’s National Dailies current sales. Scotland’s National Sundays current sales. In 2015 after they had fully embraced the Union and mounted a campaign to steal independence with a programme of fear based on lies: In 2015, the Scotsman was at 25 000 and the Herald was at 35 000: https://dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2015/08/scots-newspaper-sales-take-further-hit/ Quartered and thirded! TuS gets between 1 000 and 2 000 readers per day with a staffing of less than one old guy and two occasional volunteers. Many use ‘decimated‘ casually but to pedants like me that’s just a titchy, 1 in 10 or 10% cut when as you can … Continue reading Scotland’s Unionist newspapers: Not just decimated but redigendum uno dimidium

From Redfield & Wilton today with a sample of 2 000 including 180 Scots, when asked ‘Which issues would most determine how you would vote in a General Election, if there were to be one tomorrow? You may select up to three’ , 60 of the Scots chose the 16th and last in the list, ‘Scottish Independence/The Union.‘ None of the Welsh sub-set of 100 were interested and only 16 in England chose it. The big two for all groups were the Economy and Health with Education and Taxation next. We don’t, of course know why these choices were made. … Continue reading In England only 1 in 125 care much if Scotland leaves the Union. In Wales it’s SFA

Throughout 2020 and into 2021, Scottish Labour tastelessly weaponised the inevitable reductions in cancer treatment, especially surgery, to protect vulnerable patients from a deadly virus. The ‘tsunami of cancer deaths‘ featured in multiple headlines as Scottish Labour flaunted their faux compassion. Some time ago, I wondered when this wave might appear in the NRS mortality data. It seemed not to but my attempts to get an answer from medics and researchers were met with silence. I guess they feared being associated with the notion that some, at least, cancer surgery or other treatment is not saving lives. The most recent … Continue reading Contrary to Labour scare-mongering there was no tsunami, not even a ripple, of cancer deaths after treatment cuts

From the Statistical bulletin on crimes of homicide recorded by the police in Scotland in 2021-2022, today: In 2021-22, 53 victims of homicide were recorded, 10% (or six victims) fewer than the 59 victims recorded in 2020-21 (Table 1). This is the lowest number of recorded homicide victims since comparable records began in 1976. https://www.gov.scot/publications/homicide-scotland-2021-22/ The figure for England is 710, up from 570 in 2020/2021: https://www.statista.com/statistics/283093/homicides-in-england-and-wales/ All things being equal the homicide rate in England & Wales, for 2021/2022, with 11 times the population, might be expected to be around 583 but was 710, back up to its ‘normal … Continue reading Reporting Scotland Up: Homicide in Scotland is down again to lowest in UK and lowest since 1976

Two days ago, BBC Scotland and the Herald pounced on a one-week increase in Covid infections in Scotland, making little of the fact that it remained lower than in England or Wales and having, of course, omitted to report on the previous week’s fall in infection level at the time – good news is no news they will insist. They went with: Covid in Scotland: Sharp rise in cases as deaths also increase https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-63347214 The more meaningful trend over several weeks, something they should be telling us about, in the public interest they claim to serve, was ignored even though … Continue reading Scotland’s Covid trend is flat and not a ‘sharp rise’ as BBC Scotland would clearly wish

In a ridiculous, frankly embarrassing, interview with John Swinney, BBC Scotland’s Martin Geissler made a number of shouty remarks trying to cast doubt on Scotland’s economy post-independence. He even tried to revive the hoary old notion that we’d have a long difficult path to EU membership. Surely that’s dead now after a string of contrary comments from leading European politicians? However, his suggestion that we’d face ‘10/15 years the economic wilderness‘ when the current average for EU membership is 9 years and, given our current fit with EU requirements, means that 3 years is more likely, was merely a detestable … Continue reading Martin Geissler’s hatchet is blunt

In terms of the total number of cases of Covid 19 in hospital, pro rata, the situation in Scotland remains pretty similar to that in Wales and Northern Ireland and only around 20% lower than in England (below), but in ICU, the contrasts (above) are stark. All things being equal, England should have around 50 in ICU but actually has more than 4 times that and Wales, with only three-fifths the population, tends to have many more ICU cases than Scotland. All things are clearly not equal and the reasons are worthy, surely, of a BBC Scotland Disclosure investigation into … Continue reading Public Interest: Why does Scotland have so very few Covid cases in ICU?

By stewartb It’s a difficult judgement to make sometimes between (a) amplifying by repetition a political statement which causes distaste, and (b) just ignoring it. In this case comment seems appropriate because the matter illustrates a political tactic viz. the blatant use of ‘innuendo’, that has the potential – indeed the objective – to undermine trust in public institutions and processes. The issue arose in a Daily Record article on 21 October: ‘SNP Green Government in ‘political interference’ row over covid public inquiry. EXCLUSIVE: The presence of civil servants on the Inquiry team has led to claims of the Government … Continue reading Innuendo as a political tactic – what damage to public trust?