Talking-up Scotland

 

(c) common space and pinsdaddy

07.22am today and those are the opening lines of the only reader comment under an article by Kevin McKenna. The headline is:

‘Scottish NHS is facing a crisis that affects us all’

The long rambling piece is full both of ‘respect’ for the First Minister and recognition of the SNP’s good health. Kevin is, of course, after a dramatic conversion on some quiet, no witnesses, ‘road to Damascus’, a confirmed supporter of independence. Kevin is also a confirmed and active critic of the SNP and a champion of Roman Catholicism. I know, he’s entitled to criticise the SNP. I criticised Nicola’s very odd (naïve?) support for the war criminal Hilary Clinton and her recommendation that we read the work of the war criminal, Henry Kissinger, but I know that only the SNP have the muscle and the drive to push this thing through with the rest of the movement providing the ideas, the songs, the noise and the drama.

Kevin spends much of his time criticising SNP polices such as the named person thing and, mostly commonly, whinging, evidence-free, about the NHS in Scotland. Coincidentally, it’s the same target that BBC Scotland have clearly identified as the one they can most effectively scare the elderly and the infirm with, thus bolstering the anxious No vote. He protests his love for the idea of independence but spends little time working directly to undermine its enemies.

He reminds me of a Rangers supporter who insists he’s now for independence but, when pressed, says that that hope has to come second to Rangers winning the league again! What would Kevin take before Scottish independence? I’m guessing but, would a counter-reformation be nice?

Might the list of preferences be, actually, infinitely long because Kevin is a fake supporter? I’m not saying he is an actual ‘mole’, ‘run’ and funded by MI5 (or is it 6 because we’re still ‘foreign’?), but I am saying that his writing, like some others on the ‘critical’ wing of the Yes movement, has the undermining effect of a mole. Maybe he’s a ‘blind mole’? The floating Yes/No voter is unlikely to be affected by too obvious, exaggerated and direct attacks on the SNP but more subtle pieces, equally wrong and usually free of evidence, and, crucially, laced with wee bits of praise for Nicola’s maturity, for the SNP’s strength or for the vague nobility of the cause, will be insidious and more effective, like all good propaganda.

What is Kevin’s agenda? I think he wants a good income from his writing, special treatment for Catholicism and a more caring sort of social democratic society. On a purely pragmatic basis he now thinks independence might be his best bet for that but, if Labour look like returning to power in Westminster, watch him.

Oh, yes NHS Scotland. Here’s some of the evidence, just that going back to March 2018, which, Kevin didn’t use:

NHS Scotland survives summer heatwave despite SNP failure to control London Met Office

NHS Scotland chronic pain waiting times hold steady despite 3.26% increase in demand and while NHS England figures mysteriously disappear

SNP blamed for standing by as NHS England vacancies run at more than three times those in NHS Scotland

SNP Government acts early to prevent NHS winter crisis in 2018/19

NHS Scotland Psychological Therapies waiting times almost maintained despite major increase in demand

Six consecutive years of NHS Scotland staffing growth

Looking south only, NHS England is ‘left behind Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Japan’ but Scotland is both ‘just behind’ and well ahead of them!

91% satisfaction with NHS Scotland staff! Patients even more satisfied than before

NHS Scotland maintains waiting times for Outpatients despite soaring pressures and unlike the crisis in non-Scottish parts

NHS Scotland sees more patients within 18 weeks as demand soars

Major achievement by NHS Scotland as operations cancelled due to capacity or non-clinical reasons fall dramatically by 31%

Is BBC Scotland exploiting patients with mental health problems to construct an ill-founded attack on NHS Tayside?

At 78% level of satisfaction with NHS Scotland is impressive 36% higher than for the NHS across UK

NHS Scotland misrepresented!

Anger over Scotsman’s call for Miles Briggs to be listened to…at all as NHS taxi costs fall 14% in one year

NHS Scotland first to be 100% Baby Friendly

Updated: The Scotsman colludes with Labour and Tories to fake another crisis in NHS Scotland

NHS England sees 35% increase in patients waiting more than 18 weeks while NHS Scotland reports a fall of 0.2% despite a 14.6% increase in demand

Scotsman, Herald and Tories collude in another laughable attempt to unseat Scottish Health Secretary using NHS Scotland’s success stories

NHS Lothian ‘bed-blocking’ remains much lower than average in NHS England

Scotsman under fire over dishonest reporting of four-doctor protest, against NHS England, but at Holyrood (?), in latest round weaponizing NHS in proxy war against SNP

NHS Scotland A&E performance is more than 10% better than NHS England though BBC Salford mislead viewers by using wrong figure

NHS Scotland: 27% increase in kidney transplants including 10% increase from living donors as ‘UK’ level falls to eight-year low

Bed-blocking in NHS Scotland falls by nearly 10% in one year as the rate in NHS England surges to nearly 500% higher, per capita, than that in NHS Scotland!

National auditors find two very different NHS systems in the UK. Someone tell Theresa today.

 

 

(c) tour-scotland-photographs.blogspot.com

I’m genuinely chuffed to be able to pass on this good news from Insider today. I don’t think I’ve reported on Fife before, after numerous attempts to talk up Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Edinburgh. So, even though still in your baffies, see this:

‘Fife has been named the UK’s most enterprising region in awards recognising business innovation. The Enterprising Britain Awards are part of a Government drive to increase entrepreneurial activity in the UK. As well as winning most enterprising region, Fife Council came out top in the Promoting Entrepreneurial Spirit category for supporting young people to develop skills and get into education, training or employment.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/fife-council-enterprising-britain-awards-13283272

Previous reports on Fife:

Not enough data….

From Scottish Housing News today:

‘Social landlords are maintaining a strong performance across all standards and outcomes set by the Scottish Housing Regulator. Results from the latest Annual Return on the Charter (ARC) revealed that 9 out of 10 tenants are satisfied with the homes and services their landlord provides, proving that social housing is a great place to live. The results also show 84% of RSL tenants are satisfied that their rent is good value for money and 89% of RSL tenants are satisfied with the quality of their homes, both figures up on last year. Some 94% of homes also now meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard.’

https://www.scottishhousingnews.com/23536/blog-social-housing-one-of-scotlands-best-kept-secrets/

Any other good news about housing in Scotland? Just these:

92% of Scots happy with their housing!

SNP Government builds affordable/social housing at almost twice the rate of Tories in England

Scotland increasingly ‘streets ahead’ of England on affordable housing delivery

Scottish social housing more accessible and cheaper than in rest of UK

Good news on affordable housing from the Scotsman despite unnecessary quotation marks, a wee ‘despite’ and a ‘but’

Once more, an East Renfrewshire social rent housing project in Scottish Housing News forgets to credit the huge Scottish Government subsidy

Care Inspectorate rate Shetland housing association 100%

Social Housing spending in England collapses under callous Tories while the SNP pushes on

Scottish Government increases supply of affordable housing and builds at more, perhaps much more, than twice the rate as in England

 

(c) travelocity.com

In that well know Marxist/Nat business mag, the Insider, today:Bottom of Form

 ’The Glasgow hotel sector is growing faster than any other UK city, with the average cost of an overnight stay in Scotland’s largest city climbing 7.5 per cent in the first half of 2018 and occupancy rates growing by more than 79 per cent. Big Four accountant PwC’s latest Hotels Forecast shows that the average daily rate climbed to £73.41 rom £68.31 while the key revenue per available room benchmark (RevPAR) was plus 8.2 per cent to £58.08 – eight times the pace of growth in the UK as a whole.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/glasgow-hotels-prices-pwc-report-13274119

Other good news about Glasgow has been positively flowing here:

Massive increase in spending by international visitors to Glasgow

‘Edinburgh and Glasgow in top five cities to work in UK’

More real economic strength revealed as demand for Glasgow office space increases dramatically

‘Glasgow named top convention spot for a record 12th year in a row’

Glasgow’s lower costs and supply of technology graduates tempting financial services firms away from London

One more indicator of economic well-being as Investment in Glasgow office property surges four-fold and Scotland ‘very much on the wish list’

Glasgow only UK city to make New York Times top ten cities to visit. Dundee makes CNN’s most design-savvy list with Tokyo and Paris

 

Here’s the headline:

‘SNP ministers struggling to deliver hit 100% superfast broadband’

It’s a bit of an SNPBad parody this one, with ‘SNP Government’ replacing ‘Scottish Government’ more than once and ‘SNP Minister’ replacing ‘Scottish Government Minister’. These choices of terminology reveal ideology. The writer’s clear agenda is to attack a political party rather than report factually or objectively.

Anyhow, the main issue here is ‘Where does the responsibility lie for the delivery of superfast broadband?’

It’s a very long piece with space for Jamie Greene MSP to suggest again that ‘Scotland has fallen behind England.’

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16889319.snp-ministers-struggling-to-deliver-hit-100-superfast-broadband/

What’s wrong with the piece is, first, its failure to include any consideration of the UK government’s role in this. Nearly a year ago, The Ferret did a fact check on this and found in the end:

‘While the Scottish Government has some measure of control over broadband projects, telecommunications including broadband infrastructure are ultimately still reserved by Westminster, limiting the level of decision-making available to Scottish ministers.’

And, second, missing from the Herald piece was this key contextual factor:

‘Scotland has unique difficulties in rolling out coverage to rural areas, with BT stating that the country has the “most significant geographic challenges in the UK, and arguably in Europe, when it comes to deploying fibre [broadband]”.’

https://theferret.scot/theresa-may-scotland-broadband-powers/

Why would a Scottish newspaper, with a sale or two in the Highlands and Islands, not want to discuss these unique difficulties? Aren’t they needed in giving readers a full account?

After reading the headline:

‘More Scots going to university as gap between rich and poor narrows’

I read on in the full expectation of a few ‘ifs and buts’ but found nothing much at all that could bring storm clouds on the horizon of the SNP. Opening with:

‘More Scots are now getting to university. Record numbers of Scots have secured a place at university with progress on those from the poorest backgrounds, new figures show. A report by university admissions service Ucas found 33,530 Scottish students got a place in higher education – up two per cent on the previous year. The number of students from the poorest 20 per cent of neighbourhoods getting a place also hit a 10-year high after a three per cent rise. And the gap between the richest and poorest 18-year-olds getting a place is at a ten-year low.’

The report is fair and balanced. They can do it if they want to or if they can’t find negatives or if they don’t have the time to look for them or if they need one or two of these to throw back at critics – ‘We do report good news! Often!’

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16889910.more-scots-going-to-university-as-gap-between-rich-and-poor-narrows/

I suppose it would be expecting far too much to expect the writer to have been reminded of this from UCAS

‘The problem is that there is rather less sub-degree HE in the non-Scottish parts of the UK than in Scotland but most of what there is appears to be recruited through UCAS; meanwhile in Scotland there’s a much larger amount of HE provided in FE colleges, pretty much all at sub-degree level, which is not recruited through UCAS at all…. Indeed, it’s the HE provided in colleges which gives Scotland the edge in overall participation rates.’

https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/jan-16-deadline-application-rates-report.pdf

 

I’m 67 and since I turned 50, I’ve been struggling with four problems – joint pain, acid reflux, sleep apnea and benign prostatis. Sleeping badly and tired all day, I sought help in drugs, surgery and machines. I got some relief but almost always paid a price of some kind.

I was overweight, 5′ 10″ and over 14 stones. One GP did suggest losing a bit of weight would help but it seemed easier to try the drugs, the surgery and the machines.

Nearly two years ago, for different reasons, I began to lose weight and noticed the joint pain fade a bit. Then the acid reflux stopped completely. Months later, as my neck thinned, the sleep apnoea seemed to disappear. Only weeks ago, I noticed my nights becoming less interrupted by the many visits to the loo for a pee. I did a quick internet search and found weight reduction one of the best ‘alternative’ remedies for an inflamed prostate gland.

I’m 12 stones now and plan to get down to around 11 though I seem to be stuck for the moment at 12.

For an ex-professor, I’ve been a damned slow learner.

I write this just in case even one of you, or someone you know, might get something out of reading it.

The diet I’ve adopted is here:

The Robertson Diet with Limited Thought Control Required

Best wishes

Dr John the Less-often Night Tripper

BBC Scotland at 1.30, today, reported:

‘Scotland’s economy grew by just half of one percent.’

Why ‘just’ I wonder and why not consider, now and again, how these small increases add up over quite short periods like, say, around four years? The Scottish Government report said:

‘Scottish growth pulls ahead of the UK. In the first half of this year, Scottish GDP grew by 0.8% compared to 0.6% in the UK. This growth in the first six months of 2018 is greater than the 0.7% growth forecast made by Scottish Fiscal Commission for 2018 as a whole. Scotland’s strong growth has been supported by the Production sector which grew by 4.6% over the past 12 months, the sector’s fastest rate of growth since 2014.’

https://news.gov.scot/news/scottish-growth-pulls-ahead-of-the-uk

It looks pretty good, but these small steps can look quite different if you step back and look at them, combined in the growth, in billions of pounds, over three and a half years. See this:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/348395/gdp-of-scotland-quarterly/

This graph from Statista shows Scottish GDP climbing steadily from £34.4 billion in 2014 to £40 billion by mid-2018. That is a 13.99% increase in less than four years. Inflation has stayed low over this period, so the graph suggests a robust economy despite the political constraints on it.

Headlined today in the Independent:

‘Teachers in England have lowest job satisfaction of all English-speaking countries, study finds’

The Independent tends to be quite careful and inclusive when it comes to virtually any minority but seems to have forgotten that we do try to speak the Inglis – ‘woht err yoo twyin to zay, Johk?

Anyhoo, here’s what the researchers found:

‘Teachers in England have lowest job satisfaction of all English-speaking countries, new study finds. Of 22 comparable countries, none have a lower level of job satisfaction among teachers than in England, according to UCL Institute of Education (IoE) research. Teachers in English-speaking countries – such as New Zealand, Canada, Australia and America – are more satisfied. Only Latvia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic had job satisfaction as low as England, the report finds.’

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/teachers-england-job-satisfaction-shortages-ucl-study-workload-pay-us-a8543621.html

Can’t seem to access the full report to check whether the Welsh and the Irish were allowed in.

Ah, but are they comparatively happy?

I used to be a teacher, then a teacher educator (Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach teachers?) for decades. I was then part of the most-moany profession there is, incubating their woes in the staff room every day. So, I think I can be allowed to be a bit skeptical especially when there’s research to back me up. See this from University College London, in March 2018:

‘The study, presented at the Royal Economic Society’s annual conference at the University of Sussex in Brighton today (28 March 2018), analyses data collected in the Workplace Employment Relations Surveys for 2004 and 2011. It finds that school staff are more satisfied and more content with their jobs than comparable employees in other workplaces, a difference that is accounted for in large part by the perception of higher job quality in schools.’

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news-events/news-pub/mar-2018/school-staff-more-satisfied-jobs

And this from the Daily Telegraph in 2013:

‘Teachers are the happiest workers in Britain, says survey’

Top 10 happiest professions:

1. Teacher
2. Secretary
3. Engineer
4. Accountant
5. Driver
6. Shop Assistant
7. Caterer
8. Tradesman e.g. builder, plumber, carpenter
9. Lawyer / solicitor
10. Customer care / call centre

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10025085/Teachers-are-the-happiest-workers-in-Britain-says-survey.html

Aye but, what about Scottish teachers? Ooor bairns are tough

See this on probationary (beginner) teachers:

83% satisfied or very satisfied! Try that with any other occupation.

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/163230.pdf

See this for more experienced Scottish teachers:

Only about 25% not to happy and, within that, only about 5% really pissed sir.

https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/c5738dce-f321-424c-911e45b25112aaf0.pdf

So, are Scottish teachers more content/satisfied/happy than English ones? Probably but even if we werenae, we’re no whinging poms, but, ken?

As Storm Ali approaches, I read in today’s Herald:

‘Storm grows over £45 loan to Sturgeon’s adviser’s ferry firm’

It’s fitting that the Herald headline writer should go for the stormy metaphor though it seems to have blown a million off the headline. The error was still there two hours later. Staff shortages due to low pressure depressed readership figures?

Tom Gordon tells us:

‘The row over a £45m government loan to a struggling business owned by an adviser to Nicola Sturgeon has intensified after the Finance Secretary changed his justification for it and confirmed Holyrood was kept in the dark for seven months.’

I read on to find a storm growing or a row intensifying but could only find a wee puff of wind from Tory MSP Jamie Greene. Wasn’t he one of Robin Hood’s buddies? Mind you, Robin Hood, Tories, seems unlikely.

‘Funds from the rich, tax cuts for the rich, robbing hoods, robbing hoods!’

There’s no sign of even a rustling of leaves from the Labour gang in the Greywood. Mind you, Labour criticise a Clydeside shipbuilder creating jobs there, not going to happen.

So, the storm is just a media construction to try to blow the SNP down. Nicola’s bump-cap hasn’t even twitched.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16887130.storm-grows-over-45-loan-to-sturgeons-advisers-ferry-firm/

I had to laugh at a Tory fighting ‘government lies and corruption’. I case you haven’t seen them, here are two quick reminders of just what kind of people they are:

https://medium.com/the-jist/a-list-of-alleged-conservative-lies-corruption-and-incompetence-ba1bc753e340

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/brexitinc/adam-ramsay-peter-geoghegan/dark-money-driving-scottish-tory-surge

The list is HUGE!