Isn’t breaking a record a good thing? Doesn’t this headline imply they did better than the record with more than 95% being seen in 4 hours? Wow! Wait, nope, it’s bad: The worst ever performance figures have again been recorded by hospital A&E units in Wales, reflecting the enormous pressure on emergency care in the NHS. Oh, How would BBC Scotland do this? BBC Wales is a very different creature form BBC Scotland. Apologies to regulars. See this: From BBC Wales this morning: As lockdown restrictions have eased ambulance staff are having the busiest summer of their lives. Some have … Continue reading How the Welsh break records?

By Alasdair Galloway: A few days ago I sent a letter to the Herald about Blair McDougall’s piece which they ran at the weekend (to be fair at the same time as a piece by Blair Jenkins). Whether my letter was worth publication or not, it was one of several I have put in over the last couple of weeks which have ended up on the spike. However, in reviewing the most recent letters I have sent, published or not, one thing became clear. Since 16th August, I had sent three letters critical of something or other written by Tom … Continue reading You have to be nice to Uncle Tam

I know lots of otherwise intelligent folk can be a bit blindsided by graphs but the above appears to be complete Scheiße. Let’s just take one they want us to be shocked by – nearly 2 000 waiting more than 8 hours in April 2021. I was shocked too but: During April 2021, 1,181 (1.1%) patients spent more than 8 hours in an A&E department. https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/ae-activity-and-waiting-times/ae-activity-and-waiting-times-month-ending-30-april-2021/ Even by May 2021, it’s still less than 2 000, at 1 782. Hmm Continue reading BBC Scotland faking the graphs too?

Apologies to regulars but I’m just going to repeat the evidence I posted at around 2am this morning. My health, now there’s a real crisis! Also, after that, the facts on the army ambulances: So, first, there’s a shortage of beds and the evidence is a graph of bed blocking which stops in March 2021! How about these more useful and recent ones: Hospital admissions only one quarter of what they were in February. Far more beds per head of population than other parts of the UK. Second they tell us NHS ‘staff absences spiked in September.’ Even sticking with … Continue reading Looks like a media construct, feels like a media construct: yes Alison, it’s a media construct

This Official Statistics bulletin presents information on the number of crimes and offences recorded by the police in Scotland during August 2021 and offers comparisons with the same month in 2020 and 2019. I appreciate that these data are almost certainly an under-estimation of actual crime levels but the trends remain of interest. Given that August 2020 was unusual, a period of lockdown, it seems more informative to use the comparison with August 2019. Reported crime in almost every category has fallen since 2019. you can read the full detail at the link above. Perhaps most encouraging are the 13% … Continue reading Significant fall in reporting of almost all types of crime in Scotland

Being shared by Lisa Summers but uncredited, this is typically selective and often hopelessly out-of-date in an effort to construct this ‘crisis’ for us. It opens: Scotland’s Health Secretary Humza Yousaf says the NHS is facing the “biggest crisis” of its existence. There’s a shortage of beds, the demand for ambulances is soaring and waits in accident and emergency departments are getting longer. On top of that, Covid-19 admissions have been rising fast as the number of infections in Scotland spiralled at the end of the summer. Here are five charts illustrating the enormous pressures currently being felt by NHS … Continue reading BBC Scotland’s ‘biggest scare’ in five charts

The above quote comes from Jo Healey, author of “Trauma Reporting: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories” (Routledge)  Do your job, do it well, do no harm  These BBC Scotland reports do harm. Rather than foregrounding the professional evidence of what happened and in particular the lack of certainty in cases where several factors were contributory to a death or to harm, BBC Scotland has foregrounded, headlined, the traumatised outbursts of a statistically tiny group of parents, understandably broken by the experience but not, in any way, reliable opinion for any news report. One says: She said she believed NHS Greater … Continue reading BBC Scotland: ‘Do your job, do it well, do no harm’

From a sample of 99 responses to a twitter poll running all day today, only 2 indicated that they had seen an Army ambulance. It’s not clear from any official announcement, just how many ambulances will be deployed with the roughly 100 soldiers. In February 2021, in a similar poll, with 557 respondents, we found that only 0.5% had been vaccinated by a soldier. There are reasonable grounds, it seems, for describing these ‘bring in the Army’ initiatives as more propaganda than anything else. Continue reading Only 2% witness Army ambulances

Absence due to Covid outbreaks in schools is now only 2.9% of possible attendances. Absence due to eternal factors such as exclusion, ‘plugging’ or ‘dogging’ and going to Spain with your parents, remain at a steady 8%. The opposition parties have yet to blame the SNP for this. Continue reading School absence due to Covid falls for 13th week in a row to 2.9%

The absence rate among NHS Scotland nurses and midwives has fallen again in week-ending 21st September to just over half that at the most recent peak in January 2021. Absence among care home staff has fallen sharply, to 857 in week-ending 14th September after peaking at 992 in the previous week. I’m not questioning how busy all are, just how much of a crisis we’re in. Could it be, ever so slightly, media constructed? Continue reading Nurse absences due to Covid fall for second week to half that in January