From the BBC UK today: The NHS in England faces paying out £4.3bn in legal fees to settle outstanding claims of clinical negligence, the BBC has learned through a Freedom of Information request.This figure includes all current unsettled claims and projected estimates of ones in the future. Estimates published last year put the total cost of outstanding compensation claims at £83bn. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51180944 The above is a bit puzzling when the Law Society puts the bill at only £442 million for 2018/19. https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/nhs-spending-on-claimant-legal-costs-drops-by-24m-in-a-year/5070986.article And in Scotland? Well, the Daily Express told us gleefully in 2017: Lawyers cost NHS Scotland over £30million … Continue reading Is NHS Scotland paying far, far less in legal fees because it does a better job?

Reporting Scotland have a thing about food. They’ve been feasting on stories of obesity for a year or more now and regularly confusing both themselves and the viewers. Yesterday, they were off interviewing one or two individuals who had learned to eat less and using their advanced mathematical skills to count how many eateries there were in a long street. There were lots! Ooooh, we feel so informed, said a sample of two viewers. Wait, wait! What is the trend? What is the SNP Government doing to reduce obesity? You don’t know? You’re not really that interested? Oh, maybe that … Continue reading Scottish Government policy initiatives and resource allocation hold back tide of obesity according to academics but Reporting Scotland have a different tale to tell

From reader, anandprasad I understand your point [suggesting no conspiracy at BBC Scotland] and agreed with it until this last year. Now i am highly suspicious that there isn’t either a high up influence by the intelligence agencies or an extremely biased executive with a planned anti Independence agenda.The attacks have just been too focused and consistently anti SNHS and education to fit with Manufacturing Consent. Elsewhere, in a national newspaper like The Guardian half of the Scottish articles are by Severin Carrell who is obviously a unionist (and also a terrible journalist), Libby Brooks seem to be more balanced … Continue reading Are Robertson and Chomsky wrong about fake news?

I return to this theme often as my latest evidence of BBC bias is attributed to a paranoid conspiracy culture which I embrace. Like Chomsky, I have never pointed to any media conspiracy and like him, I know you don’t need one to get the kind of biases prevalent in our MSM. Anyhow, ‘everybody’ tells me that the folk at BBC Scotland are all paranoid about me and some other bloggers conspiring to get them. Well we are but we never plan anything. I’m in a ‘deviant’ subculture, like the mods or the punks, along with Wings, the Wee Ginger … Continue reading Like Cryptococcus neoformans in or around every hospital there is still a sickening sub-culture in Pacific Quay

Today on BBC Scotland and to be returned to until the blood is drained from the story. Only weeks ago and all day long. And a 99% English story to fill in when required. Only last November and repeated daily till we despaired of our NHS. None of these stories informed us about the world out there in a way which would help us understand it, as it is in the lived experience of almost all of us. Tell us something useful and true! Continue reading Yet another single case of a mum and a child to exploit your emotions, to make you doubt the government and to distract you from the real news as it affects all of us in nasty fragmenting Britain.

Ludo Thierry Meanwhile – the eminently sensible and joined up anti period poverty policy (and programme) of the SNP Scottish Government is now being rolled out across state schools and Colleges throughout England. Link and snippet from BBC health page (somehow or other BBC Scotland managed to miss this story – can’t imagine how that happened – can you?): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51167487 State schools and colleges in England can now order free period products for students as part of a government scheme to tackle period poverty. Tampons, pads and menstrual cups will be available for primary and secondary institutions to order if … Continue reading Scottish anti-period poverty policy rolled out across England

On schools, reader Legerwood offers us headlines from the Guardian last year: Schools ask BBC’s Children in Need to cover funding gap. Some English schools cannot afford to teach 5 days per week. More than 300 English primary schools forced to become academies. ‘Vanity Project’: debts pile up for English free schools scheme. Sats results show 39% of primary pupils failed to meet standard More than 6000,000 pupils in England taught by unqualified teachers 40,000 children trapped in zombie academy schools. More than 49,000 pupils ‘disappeared’ from English schools Sunderland school suspends more than half its pupils in a year. … Continue reading Tory England’s schools and hospitals crises: Two readers’ views

Official: Pigeon droppings have killed no one at all. It’s exactly one year since Reporting Scotland began a long series of inaccurate reports on hospital deaths ‘after’ fungal infections ‘caused’ by pigeon droppings. This is what they said on the 20th January 2019: ‘Two patients have died after contracting a fungal infection caused by pigeon droppings.’ Only six sentences later did we hear, quietly inserted, that one patient had died from ‘an unrelated cause’ and that the other’s death was ‘being investigated.’ That the pigeons caused the infections was never explored. The results of the investigation carried out by international and national experts are now … Continue reading BREAKING: Flagship hospital far cleaner than Pacific Quay! Reporting Scotland fails to apologise for misleading public

Based on a Freedom of Information request by the Lib Dems, fed to Reporting Scotland’s intrepid investigative reporters, we hear that there were almost 30 000 ‘attacks’ on teacher in the last three years. So, that’s about 10 000 per year. We don’t get a reminder of their report on the 29th December 2019: ‘More than £100 000 for teachers attacked by pupils’ which, to my surprise revealed that there had been only 3 cases in 2019. Three out of 10 000 suggests that many of these ‘attacks’ may be the product of formulaic record-keeping of, in many cases, the … Continue reading Lib Dems tell BBC Scotland who then tell us there were more than 30 000 ‘attacks’ on teachers but NOT why only 3 sought compensation

At Holyrood on Friday, Ross Greer asked the Scottish Government whether it would provide details of the consultation that it undertook to establish appropriate measures on the poverty-related attainment gap. John Swinney gave a long answer but it’s less interesting than you deserve. See it at: https://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/WA20200116.pdf This gives me a reason to remind everyone that there is already evidence of good progress and contrary, of course, to the media rhetoric of imaginary failure in Scotland’s schools: ‘94.4% of pupils had a ’positive destination’ including work, training or further study within three months of leaving school last year, official statistics … Continue reading Mind the gap Ross! Green MSP asks question for which answer already exists