The Scottish media are all over this, as they love to do, with NHS Scotland ‘crises.’
No sign of a ‘tsunami’ yet. Here are the actual data on calls to the new NHS Scotland Whistleblowing Alert and Advice Line:
From 13 to 24, that’s nearly a 100% increase! No, it’s not 200%, Scottish Labour! Yeh, I know it’s nearly twice as many but that doesn’t mean a 200% increase. The increase is the same as the first figure so it’s 100% of the first figure? See? Oh god…….
But, why is it not a spike or a surge? Because it’s absolutely too fnn wee! There are around 138 000 people employed in NHS Scotland. 24 of them contacted the line. That’s 1 in every 5 750 or 0.017%.
https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce//Publications/data-tables.asp
The increase after only one-year is almost certainly just a factor of greater awareness of the system and remains only a tiny damp spot.
Talking-up Scotland 
Is it artithmetical ignorance or is it wilful misrepresentaion?
13 to 26 is just short of an 85% increase, but, as yo have pointed out, when dealing with small numbers percentages are grossly misleading if there is no context.
A lot of the Nomedia shock horror stories whether about the NHS or other areas have tended to focus on the more sparsely populated areas of Scotland and because of the small numbers fluctuations when converted to percentages always tend to be large.
There are many interlinked reasons why their are such problems in the sparsely populated parts of Scotland and we need to try to address these, but, it requires creative thinking and the transfer of resources from the more densely populated areas to the sparser.
Norway has managed to do this successfully, because it established a sovereign wealth fund. But with Labour perfidy and Thatcherite greed Scotlands oil and gas wealth vanished into the rapacious maw of the City of London. Such investment in the longer term increases rural population and enables a more sustainable economy to evolve and, this of itself, will go a long way to dealing with the persistent problems.
Yesterday I was speaking to two women, one of whom was a Shetland GP and the other a qualified GP, who had given up the job to concentrate on her real love – music. It was an interesting and informative conversation about the complexities of the issues. These are well-educated and articulate people and are used to discussing such nuanced matters, BUT SO ARE MOST PEOPLE! This is the huge failure of NOmedia – they rarely deal with the complexities of situations and help the discourse find provisional solutions (All human things are ‘provisional’ – until we find something (provisionally) better.
What NOmedia love is BLAMING. Fire in Grenfell Tower – find someone to blame – problem solved, Pigeon droppings in QEUH – blame the Minister – problem solved. Trains not running on time – blame RMT – problem solved. Cannae get a Brexit solution – blame MPs – problem still not solved!!
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Oh well I suppose they have to have a daily gripe about the SNP , it doesn’t matter if they have proved to be a good deal better at running things than every other country England – Wales – Ireland , this can’t happen, or as that well known labour lord said ” and they are doing in on purpose ” I kid you not that’s exactly what the drunk lord said .
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