Tag: fitness

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More than 500 avoidable baby deaths implicated in reports across 14 NHS England maternity services but not one in Scotland – here’s why

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Professor John Robertson OBA From BBC West Yorkshire today: An independent inquiry into “repeated failures” at an NHS trust’s maternity units has been announced by Health Secretary Wes Streeting, following potentially avoidable harm to babies and mothers. Earlier this year a BBC investigation revealed that the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTH) over the past five years may have been prevented. Streeting said a thorough investigation was required to understand what had “gone so catastrophically wrong” at the trust’s maternity units at Leeds General Infirmary and St James’s University Hospital. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gpxnk9n4po … Continue reading More than 500 avoidable baby deaths implicated in reports across 14 NHS England maternity services but not one in Scotland – here’s why

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Home visits in Dumfries and Galloway are being done much quicker, much sooner in the day, and therefore care gets started sooner, admissions to hospital get done faster, but that was quickly turned around to bad news just as research revealed they did over and over in 2014

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Professor John Robertson OBA From BBC Scotland‘s short insert in BBC Breakfast this morning: GPs are attending 45% fewer home visits in Dumfries and Galloway, after a trial scheme with the Scottish Ambulance Service. Paramedics can now attend routine home visits, after which they report back to GPs fro further action. It’s hope the scheme could be replicated in other rural areas. GP – ‘Historically you GP would do house calls at the end of the morning surgery or perhaps in the afternoon. But the busier we get, the later visits were getting done, so now the people are being … Continue reading Home visits in Dumfries and Galloway are being done much quicker, much sooner in the day, and therefore care gets started sooner, admissions to hospital get done faster, but that was quickly turned around to bad news just as research revealed they did over and over in 2014

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As BBC UK today reports charges of corporate manslaughter in Lancashire stroke unit news of the Scottish Government’s stroke improvement plan that has already saved 2 000 is kept from you

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Support Talking-up Scotland’s work to counter the lies and get you the facts, daily, at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/checkout/help-talking-up-scotland-tell-truth-about-scotland/payment/nBQxjVzq/details or by direct bank transfer method – Sort code 08-91-04, Account 12266421 Professor John Robertson OBA From BBC Lancashire, today the above and: Police are investigating potential corporate failings contributing to the death, ill-treatment or neglect of patients at Blackpool Victoria Hospital’s stroke unit, BBC North West has learned. Offences under consideration by Lancashire Police include corporate manslaughter, corporate ill-treatment and wilful neglect, and offences under the Health and Safety at Work Act. The investigation was launched in October 2023 after the prosecution of five health … Continue reading As BBC UK today reports charges of corporate manslaughter in Lancashire stroke unit news of the Scottish Government’s stroke improvement plan that has already saved 2 000 is kept from you

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The morning after Fiona Bruce’s barefaced lie about NHS Scotland, BBC Health offer you the awful truth of how bad NHS England is on the key life-or-death 18 week wait

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performing so poorly? Professor John Robertson OBA BBC Question Time last night and Fiona Bruce was in fast with the above uninformed claim to bias proceedings. The following morning BBC Health has: How is your hospital doing as NHS battles to bring down waiting times? and the opportunity to just enter your postcode and get performance on the 18 week waiting list. This is the key waiting list, unlike the 2 year list, as it concerns treatment for ‘acute‘ life-threatening conditions such as heart disease, stroke and cancers, as opposed to ‘chronic‘ non-life-threatening’ (life-limiting I know), such as arthritis. A … Continue reading The morning after Fiona Bruce’s barefaced lie about NHS Scotland, BBC Health offer you the awful truth of how bad NHS England is on the key life-or-death 18 week wait

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More than 300 published studies prove that safe drug injection facilities reduce mortality and crime in surrounding areas but Reporting Scotland find a handful of locals to claim otherwise.

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….about the number of discarded needles that are being left outside it. Now the council have introduced bins to try to address the problem Professor John Robertson OBA BBC Reporting Scotland tonight reporting for the area around the pilot safe injection facility in Calton in Glasgow, now six months in operation, are uncritically accepting a few local residents’ claims that it has increased drug taking in the area. No reliable figures are offered. The report, typically, has no balance and lazily does not refer to the large body of existing published evidence on such facilities. From 8 years ago: The … Continue reading More than 300 published studies prove that safe drug injection facilities reduce mortality and crime in surrounding areas but Reporting Scotland find a handful of locals to claim otherwise.

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Does Northern Scotland really have one of the highest rates of Huntington’s disease in the world?

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Yesterday we had: BBC Scotland and STV today have short reports on the higher level of Huntington’s disease in the North of Scotland but with no useful content to inform and to educate readers in the manner they often claim to do, leaving readers with just another ‘Scotland is ****’ story that they can quietly associate with 18 years of SNP-rule. In response today from JB: The above is based on a new study by the University of Aberdeen who state that… “The study, published in Neuroepidemiology, confirmed that Northern Scotland has one of the highest rates of Huntington’s disease in the … Continue reading Does Northern Scotland really have one of the highest rates of Huntington’s disease in the world?

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English media misinterpret A&E waiting times* to let Labour of-the-hook and conceal gap with NHS Scotland treating 11 000 more on time, every month, than would have been treated in NHS England

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Professor John Robertson OBA In the Guardian today: In emergency departments, 75% of patients were seen within four hours last month [March], up from 73.4% in February. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/10/hospitals-in-england-to-get-unlimited-incentive-payments-for-patients-taken-off-waiting-lists This is a common, sometimes confused, sometimes intentional, misrepresentation of the facts to suggest A&E in England is performing better than it is and, in BBC broadcasts, to suggest it is performing better than in Scotland. In the above NHS England table, you’ll see that for Type 1 emergency departments, only 60.9% were treated within 4 hours. What is Type 1? Type 1 A&E department = A consultant led 24 hour service … Continue reading English media misinterpret A&E waiting times* to let Labour of-the-hook and conceal gap with NHS Scotland treating 11 000 more on time, every month, than would have been treated in NHS England

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Return of the Creepy Uncle

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Professor John Robertson OBA Thanks to Jim Draper for alerting me to this. On STV News at 6 last night: An eight-week-old baby is in critical condition after he was given ten times the correct dose of paracetamol at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. The Shadow Health Secretary is Sandesh Gulhane MSP but, as often before, Anas Sarwar is wheeled out to suggest a crisis in one hospital on the basis of one dosing mistake. Find a Scottish hospital, a baby made very ill or dying, one will do, and he is by magic quickly onscreen to imply … Continue reading Return of the Creepy Uncle

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BBC Kent do not ask Labour Government, Health Secretary or local MP why A&E patients sit in their faeces for up to 50 hours – Imagine that in Scotland?

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Professor John Robertson OBA From BBC Kent today: Frail patients ‘told to soil themselves’ at A&E – Frail patients at a Kent hospital emergency department were “told to soil themselves” because there was no one to take them to the toilet, staff have said.Patients at the Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham faced waits of more than 50 hours with no access to wash facilities, with some left “sitting in their own faeces“, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was told. An inspection by the CQC in February 2024 rated the emergency department as “requires improvement” and issued a warning notice for … Continue reading BBC Kent do not ask Labour Government, Health Secretary or local MP why A&E patients sit in their faeces for up to 50 hours – Imagine that in Scotland?

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As England-only research is presented as evidence of a child-obesity crisis ‘across the UK’, how the Scottish Government has been turning the tide

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By Professor John Robertson As the Guardian headlines UK children shorter, fatter and sicker amid poor diet and poverty, report finds based on a Food Foundation report explicitly titled A NEGLECTED GENERATION: Reversing the decline in children’s health in England, I’ve struggled to access the full data or to directly comparable Scottish data from the same period. However in December 2022, only 18 months ago, I had: Dramatic fall in number of children at risk of obesity In just one year after the effects of the pandemic in increasing the risk, NHS Scotland and Government programmes, schools and children themselves … Continue reading As England-only research is presented as evidence of a child-obesity crisis ‘across the UK’, how the Scottish Government has been turning the tide