Talking-up Scotland

Scotland early this morning: Child abuse, hospital infections, children with special needs and prisoners claiming benefits but no time for Scottish Conservatives split or civil war?

They only had two or three minutes. but they managed to get these depressing and of course untrue images in in:

Child Abuse

‘Two families have spoken out after being wrongly suspected by the same doctor of fabricating or inducing illness in their children. Families [2] are calling for a review of the child protection system and say a growing number of parents are being accused and then cleared.’

So, ‘families’ really means just two. We then saw one parent complain and there is only one more in the full report on the website, but of course no actual evidence of a wider problem that might have turned this case into news in the public interest.

Hospital Infections

‘An investigation was announced following a series of infection outbreaks including the deaths of two people.’  

The supposed ‘series’ was in fact two or at worst three incidents. In the Southern General case, neither died from the infections. BBC website at the time said:

‘The health board said one of the patients was elderly and had died from ‘an unrelated cause’. The factors contributing to the death of the other patient are being investigated.’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-46953707 So in neither case did the patient die ‘from’ a rare fungal infection. One clearly died from ‘an unrelated cause’ and the other’s death was still being investigated.’

We later heard from Lisa Summers that the infection had only been a ‘contributory factor’ in the second case.

Pupils with special needs

‘Parents of pupils with additional support needs are demonstrating outside council offices across the Highlands alter. They’re campaigning against plans to cut the number of classroom assistant and specially-trained teachers.’

There was of course no sign of just how many patients and so no suggestion of a wider problem worth reporting in public interest

Prisoners

And finally, prisoners being trained to claim benefits. SNP soft on criminals again? Ask Ruth?

What happened to the Tory leadership campaign? What does Ruth think?

Anyhow, now that you’ve had that dose of misery, how do you feel about constitutional change? Fancy a referendum on independence? No? just want to lie down?