What IS the ‘news’ today?
It’s the lead TV broadcast story chosen by an editor to be repeated all day and top of the website too. BBC Scotland News were fed this foul-smelling little story by Labour’s Lewis Macdonald revealing all the rank corruption and hypocrisy at the core of this wayward child of Keir Hardie.
Macdonald told the BBC:
‘The committee supports the principle that anybody in Scotland can access GP services or A&E departments free of charge when needed. However, we are concerned that NHS boards are missing out on vital sums of money to which they are due by not being able to identify those entitled to NHS care.’
Here’s what Macdonald dislikes in NHS Scotland:
‘The system in Scotland differs from that in England where providers of NHS treatment are required to make sure patients are eligible for free care – and to charge them up front if not.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-47189718
Now I knew Tories would love that but the image of the sick being left to suffer as they wait and plead to see if they’re entitled to treatment, is one I don’t want to see in Scotland. I had thought Labour across the UK shared this view, but I guess anything can be sacrificed in their bitter tribal war with the SNP.
‘Hundreds of thousands’ are apparently owed. The total NHS Scotland budget is around £13 BILLION.
Anyhow, of these thousand’s how many could we realistically expect those who turned up to be able to pay? The rich non-European is hardly going to turn up at an NHS unit.
Readers may remember Macdonald as the man who as Deputy Health Minister, in 2006, revealed both the incompetence and the heartlessness, increasingly typical of his branch, in choosing to shut Monklands A&E.
Readers may also remember that the decision was reversed by the current SNP leader when she took over at Health.
Returning to the choice of story to lead with, by someone at BBC Scotland, I must admit I can understand why they decided not to report any equivalent addiction crisis here:
Talking-up Scotland 
Ugh, so radio Scotland – what little I’ve heard, and no wonder hardly anyone is listening any more, they’ve made their reporting so toxic even the most hardened BritNat must be wondering if they should be subjective themselves to it – reported that the NHS needs to charge people (think they tried to sell this a few years ago did they not?) that are from forrin parts, then the NHS failed a strangely unemotional woman’s partner so they need to revise mental health care, then the justice system isn’t working for a few people and needs revised which it already has but they want public enquiry etc, then,,,
What a bizarre interviewing technique this was, chap was on saying that without Europol, policing will become a lot harder when criminals abscond abroad, having to rely on extradition treaties – that we don’t have with all European countries – will mean months will go by, instead of hours, before capture. That seems logical – but not to the interviewer who kept going on and on about how surely eu countries would still cooperate and everything would be the same as it is,,, what is wrong with people? Why do they think we have agreements and treaties and have membership of all these initiatives? Do they think it is window dressing? This bizarre idea that somehow by some mechanism of ‘goodwill’ on the part of other countries, nothing is going to change? What total weirdos. Is it in those other country’s best interest to do all this for free, meanwhile our goodwill should involve not giving medical treatment to their nationals? Wow, fantasy land, some idea of privilege because,,, because,,,
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Again cold and calculated, deliberate negativity. It’s a disgrace to all of us, BBC included.
The annual ‘estimate’ of cost through non-collection of foreigners’ payments is stated as around £700,000 which does seem a lot until a simple calculation shows that this is about five thousandths of one percent of total expenditure of NHS Scotland. The cost of collection is not mentioned, but is probably several times the amount to be recouped. Rounding errors in the accounting process probably dwarf the sums here being used for hysterical headlining.
A disgrace, I say again, and a deliberate insult to Scots’ intelligence.
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Although Good Morning Scotland gave this report the full fanfare with an extended report with Mr Lewis Macdonald MSP, on Reporting Scotland at 6.30pm, it was well down the running order and the headline figure was £700 000. It was given only one or two sentences.
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Scottish Labour and Scottish Tories.
2 cheeks one erse
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When BBC Radio Scotland first established itself, it was admired for its independence (from London), its willingness to put the news into a “Scottish focus”, and the diverse and interesting voices heard on its programming. Now it has been stripped of its “national” ambitions, preferring to be the equivalent of an English local radio station, broadcasting the exact same news items as originates in London/Salford whether of relevance to Scotland, our legal system, politics or is reflective of our broader culture. It also reflects the gross British nationalistic bias which is always just beneath the surface of the BBC. Its idea of balance is to have three British nationalists to one Scottish equivalent in every news/talk/discussion programme.
Before the 2015 election Nick Robinson, the right wing BBC political editor, revealed the BBC would be “closed down” in the event a Cameron win.
Cameron won, he had a meeting with the Director of the BBC, and the BBC has been in hock to the Tories ever since, in my opinion.
As part of the overall subjugation of the BBC, I think BBC Scotland has been stripped of any autonomy it might have enjoyed, independent-minded journalists were made redundant to be replaced with compliant yes-men/women (actually NO-men, but you know what I mean).
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When I switched on this morning a retired General was being fed prompts to support the forthcoming speech by the Defence Minister that BRITAIN will be prepared to use military force to defend itself against cyber attacks by Russia and China. There was no question about whether this was a wise thing to do or whether GCHQ in Cheltenham was not engaged in similar activities against other nations.
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We do have 5 gyms on the new aircraft carrier.
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Ahhh but, the best bit about that was that it was presented as ‘they just need to get digitalised’ and the chap said they just need a bit of money to get digitally up-to-date, then defence would cost hardly anythings at all. hahahhaha, I had a huge good ol’ laugh at that … cost hardly anything, heh, digitalised, heh heh. Who said radio scotland was crap? It’s hilarious! Good entertainment…
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Point is: if they aren’t digitally up-to-date, what the f_ck are they doing just now? ‘Our’ MoD is a JOKE. I watched committee meetings of compliant generals agreeing to strip away most of the professional personnel and replace them with TA…. the whole thing is a joke.
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….and replace them with TA…. A glimmer of hope for Ruthie’s career – Maybe???
And, did you hear the one about sending one of our shiny new aircraft carriers to the South China Sea to project Eng…, sorry, British power out there. Should be an interesting ten minutes or so!
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Oh aye the ‘presence in the Pacific’…. for ? for? I thought our entire platoon was tied up with some NATO action out surrounding Russia or something, guess they must have just sent a boat and a couple of ratings to be present then…
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Windows 95
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5 gyms but no sign of planes in the video
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hms-queen-elizabeth-pacific-brexit-military-strategy-china-russia-gavin-williamson-a8772916.html
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It is not just the absence of planes. Does the Royal Navy have enough ships to act as escort/protection vessels? We do have some destroyers but the last I heard they needed major work because they have problems operating if the water is too warm. Bit of a major disadvantage when the planet’s oceans are warming up!
Channel 4 Dispatches did a programme on the carriers a couple of years ago – Angus Robertson took part. One of the issues the programme raised was this issue of the lack of escort vessels. Apparently the MOD’s solution was that, if necessary, they would ‘hire’ vessels from our EU neighbours! I guess I don’t have to labour the problems with that.
Latest plan? Give the contract to supply escort vessels to Seaborne Freight?
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Late bid from CalMac!
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and 30 000 kettles?
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On topic.
The issue of the NHS recouping money from visitors/migrants has rumbled away in the background for a number of years but usually in relation to NHS England.
Health Tourism and cost to NHS NB most of these articles relate to NHS England
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-health-tourism-cost-nhs-billions
Recouping costs of healthcare
https://fullfact.org/health/how-much-does-uk-recover-health-costs-eu/
And from 2013 on the same topic
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/foreign-visitors-owe-nhs-2bn-factcheck
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Thanks for this. Delayed by WordPress because of urls?
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They all have that same look, just as Tory boys have an identifiable look, Labour has NI politician look.
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Totally off topic, and not related to any topic or Scotland, but found this website John, on Child Mortality – it doesn’t sound like a cheery subject, but it is jam-packed with world stats and lots and lots of lovely graphs, and fascinating info about how much child mortality has dropped hugely significantly in the past 100 or even 50, or even 20, years and some of the factors – fascinatingly, women’s education is one of the top reasons, and they give good evidence that decreasing mortality is quickly followed by decreasing fertility (so overpopulation scares are just that, to scare you). I can’t get the website or the interactive stuff to work on my device unfortunately, but some of the graphical stuff sounds fabulous – sliding bars to get a moving graph, world maps that change over the years,,, sorry, I find graphs rather exciting,
https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality
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Thanks. Will check out. They do sound lovely.
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Here is another fascinating concept for morning coffee reading:
Is neoliberalism terrorism? Here is a paper exploring it:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539153.2015.1009761
Extract of abstract:
“Thus, the conference sought also to stimulate research into the ways that neoliberalism could itself be understood as terrorism, asking – amongst other questions – whether populations are themselves terrorised by neoliberal policy. The articles presented in this special issue reflect the conference aims in bringing together research on the neoliberalisation of counterterrorism and on the terror of neoliberalism.”
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Here is another fascinating concept for morning coffee reading:
Is neoliberalism terrorism? Here is a paper exploring it:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539153.2015.1009761
Extract of abstract
“Thus, the conference sought also to stimulate research into the ways that neoliberalism could itself be understood as terrorism, asking – amongst other questions – whether populations are themselves terrorised by neoliberal policy. The articles presented in this special issue reflect the conference aims in bringing together research on the neoliberalisation of counterterrorism and on the terror of neoliberalism.”
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Wow thanks!
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