From Nursing Standard on 7 May 2026, the above and: A group of 100 health visitors are taking to picket lines for two more months after their NHS employer ‘refused to acknowledge’ a job evaluation appeal that would see them get a pay increase of up to £9,000. The specialist nurses, who work at the Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board (CTMUHB ) in south Wales, are fighting for their Agenda for Change (AfC) pay band to be increased from a 6 to a 7 after a job evaluation outcome found in their favour. 1 You know what’s coming? Does he never … Continue reading Nurses fight for band 7 status after missing out on £9,000 pay rise in NHS Wales but are they treated any better in Scotland?

From BBC UK today: The failings surrounding the HS2 rail project are partly due to a focus on achieving the highest possible speeds and political pressure for progress on the scheme, a review is expected to find. The scheme has been undergoing a “reset”, and in March Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander asked HS2 bosses to look at lowering top speeds to save money. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c936xeeye41o This comes on top of an earlier, though not much, admission of failure. From BBC England 29 December 2025: HS2 has confirmed that its aim to get trains running between Birmingham and London between 2029 and 2033 “cannot be … Continue reading HS2 despite chopping link to Scotland to take 2 to 3 times as long as Japanese and French equivalents AND now go even slower – Con and Labour governments not to be blamed as it’s not a Scottish ferry is it?

As the Royal College of Nursing launches research claiming ‘Two-thirds of NHS nurses believe lack of staff is putting patients at risk, survey finds’ and ‘across the UK’, at their conference in Liverpool today, their Scottish branch continues to ignore, conceal, the facts on staffing. In the Herald today, there’s no mention of this crucial context their readers might need: There are 67 700 nurses in NHS Scotland as of March 2025 figures. 1 To compare meaningfully, you know the drill, all things being equal in terms of patient load per nurse, but with 10 times the population, NHS England … Continue reading RCN Scotland’s claim of ‘unsafe’ patient loads on nurses ignores NHS Scotland’s far higher staffing level per patient

I’ve had to correct the above because while governments and top politicians know to call it the UK, hardly anyone else from Portugal to Bulgaria does. After centuries of the UK’s elites and those Celts co-opted to it, self-referring to it as ‘England’, that’s what 99% of Europeans and beyond call it. Protests against the UK in Tehran chant against ‘Inglesi’. Here are typical examples: French: Angleterre German: England Spanish: Inglaterra Italian: Inghilterra Dutch: Engeland Polish: Anglia Portuguese: Inglaterra Swedish: England Finnish: Englanti Greek: Αγγλία (Anglía) Many others: Anglia / Angliya / similar variants (from “Angle” root). Source: https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/england So, … Continue reading Eurovision – When they see ‘United Kingdom’ they think ‘ENGLAND’ and ‘nil point’

By stewartb The Scottish Parliament Information Service (SPICe) has compiled time series data on the performance of NHS Scotland against the following target: ’90% of young people should begin treatment for specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health services within 18 weeks of referral.’ See https://spice-spotlight.scot/health-performance/ In graphs with data back to Quarter 1, 2025, SPICe shows that the poorest performance for Scotland overall was in Q2 2020 when just 61.7% of referrals began treatment within 18 weeks. Since then there has been steady improvement: in line with the main blog post, during Q4 2025 (the latest period charted by SPICe), the Scotland … Continue reading Here’s an NHS target achieved which they won’t tell you about – 90% of young people now begin mental health treatment on time in Scotland – 100% in Glasgow!