Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above. The Scotsman today, front page claim – A&E system ‘in perpetual crisis’ as target missed again, is based on a statistically meaningless, one week variation, of only 0.4%, in a winter week of ice and snow, and fails to look at more meaningful monthly trends over years. Also, is any A&E system, in the world, hitting targets, post pandemic? Next post! From A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions 2025-26, 59.6% were treated in England’s Type 1 A&E departments, within 4 hours.1 In NHS Scotland, the equivalent figure was 63.5%.2 Remember that 3.9% difference means around … Continue reading As Scotsman’s unnamed ‘medical professionals’ dream up another NHS crisis how proper monthly statistics reveal NHS Scotland’s A&E is improving and how nearly THREE times as many emergency patients per capita wait 12 hours or more in NHS England than in NHS Scotland

Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above. BBC UK is headlining the above serious problem, crisis, in the funding of local pharmacies, often a lifeline service in some communities. BBC Scotland, as we’ll see below, cannot just mirror this story but had to find something, anything: BBC England, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have this story at all. It’s by BBC Scotland’s Glasgow and West reporter, Jonathan Geddes. Look how it opens: Supplies of prescription-strength co-codamol will be limited until the summer, the Scottish government has confirmed. A UK-wide shortage of the strongest form of the painkiller – … Continue reading Using the ‘Scotland’s’ co-codamol shortage to conceal how for three years now, England’s pharmacists ‘look to Scotland’ for flexible and sustainable solutions

Please Support Talking-up Scotland at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above. This is the second attempt by the Herald, based on unreliable statistical methods by the Daily Record (No surprise there) to misrepresent the level of ‘corridor care‘ in Scotland’s hospitals. Explicit figures are not published anywhere but there’s a good proxy for corridor care and that’s 12 hour waits in A&E. By definition if you’re waiting 12 hours after triage assessment and maybe some treatment before getting a bed, that is ‘corridor care.’ A fuller AI rationale for the use of 12 hour waits, based heavily on the views of the Royal College … Continue reading As Herald today misleads with unreliable methods on ‘corridor care’ figures, reliable transparent A&E figures suggest it is reducing

Please Support Talking-up Scotland at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above. Today, BBC UK present, uncritically, the suggestion that waiting lists are falling at the same time as they’re getting longer, in NHS Alice in Wonderland: BBC analysis shows more procedures and treatments are being carried out across the NHS in England, but still not enough to match the number of new patients joining waiting lists. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/l0057yrn This is just another attempt (more below) by NHS England to fiddle the figures on behalf of the Labour Government. The waiting list is the waiting list. Imagine BBC Scotland if NHS Scotland tried to … Continue reading Another attempt to hide the true NHS England performance as waiting lists in Scotland keep falling

Please Support Talking-up Scotland at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above. First thing today, on BBC Breakfast, we hear of a joint BBC News/New Statesman, external investigation into maternity care at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (UH Sussex) which has found: No government nor former government minister is associated, in the BBC Health report, with these horrific figures. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2n644l44o Starting with the last bullet point above but coming to all of them, we already know this about the relative performance of NHS Scotland, despite the continuous efforts by BBC Scotland, the Herald and Scottish Labour to pin a much smaller number deaths on … Continue reading BBC UK find ’55 babies who died may have survived with better care’ to add to police investigations into hundreds of avoidable baby deaths in NHS England but none in Scotland and NHS England pays out twice as much for maternity failings!

In the Guardian today: Helen Lambert borrowed £57,000 to go to university and began repaying her student loan in 2021 after starting work as an NHS nurse. Since then she has repaid more than £5,000, typically having about £145 a month taken from her pay packet. But everything she hands over is dwarfed by the £400-plus of interest that is added to her debt every month, thanks to rates that have been as high as 8%. Her total outstanding debt had ballooned to more than £77,000 by the end of November, and it is set to get a lot bigger as there … Continue reading As one student nurse in England faces £77 thousand in debt Scotland’s free training and bursary means TWICE as many train to then give us 50% more nurses in hospitals and lower mortality rates

I was going to write this myself and I will add some evidence of NHS Ayrshire & Arran’s health below but, you know, we’re busy here and frankly, it’s not worth it, is it? So Grok AI – ‘Is it accurate to refer to NHS Ayrshire Arran as ‘crippled?’ No, it is not accurate to describe NHS Ayrshire and Arran as “crippled” in any objective, factual sense, though the term has appeared in some sensational media headlines.The health board is undoubtedly facing very serious challenges, particularly financial ones, as highlighted by official audits and reports from late 2025: These issues … Continue reading The embarrassing gap in intelligence, maturity and credibility between the writing of Daily Record reporters and that of AI