Talking-up Scotland

(c) UWS

Key points from the Inpatient Experience Survey 2018:

• People were generally positive about their admission to hospital, with 83 per cent rating it as “excellent” or “good”.
• Eighty-nine per cent rated the overall care and treatment they received in A&E as “excellent” or “good”.
• Eighty-eight per cent of people rated the hospital and ward environment as “excellent” or “good”.
• Nine out of ten people were positive about their overall care and treatment whilst in hospital.
•  Overall, people were very positive about their experiences of hospital staff, with a slight increase in the overall positive rating, to 91 per cent.
• Seventy-eight per cent of people said that they were always treated with compassion and understanding during their hospital stay, which is an increase of four percentage points from 2016. Three per cent said that they were not.
•  86 per cent agreed that they were given an explanation they understood, which is four percentage points more than in 2014.
• Of the people who needed care or support services after leaving hospital, 82 per cent were positive about the care and support that they received.

https://news.gov.scot/news/inpatient-experience-survey-2018

 

The demand on NHS Scotland has increased, since 2012, by 43% in the number of patients waiting for a first outpatient appointment. Despite these increases:

‘New Outpatients at 30 June 2018: 75.1% of patients waiting for an appointment had been waiting 12 weeks or less. This compares with74.9% at 31 March 2018 and 74.6% at 30 June 2017.’

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Publications/2018-08-28/2018-08-28-WT-IPDCOP-Report.pdf?79291933775

In NHS England:

‘[T]he number of patients now [April 2018] waiting longer than they should has topped 500,000 for the first time since 2008, although some trusts have had problems reporting data in previous months which has kept the figures lower than they were in reality.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-44445303

In Scotland, according to the same ISD report, around 18 000 had been waiting more than 12 weeks in April 2018.

Scotland has 10% of the population of England. Thus, if the problem was comparable in Scotland to that in England, there would’ve been 50 000 waiting for beds in April 2018. Therefore, the waiting times problem in England is nearly three time greater.

 

 

From the NHS Information Services division today:

‘In June 2018, 82.8% of patients across Scotland were reported as being seen within 18

weeks. The figures for April and May were 80.9% and 82.6% respectively.’

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Publications/2018-08-28/2018-08-28-WT-18WksRTT-Report.pdf?97575014830

This has been achieved against the background of an increase since 2012, of 35% in the number of patients waiting for treatment and of 43% in the number of patients waiting for a first appointment. See:

 

       

(c) Daily Express, Strathclyde University, BBC, The Krays London, Coindesk

Reliable sources have revealed a dastardly, multi-tentacled conspiracy linking House of Fraser, the Fraser of Allander ‘Institute’, the BBC’s Douglas Fraser, ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser and the brains of the operation, Murdo Fraser.

Spawned in Russia, the Fraser Quadrangle is a cunning scheme, using Russian organised criminals’ drug money, laundered through House of Fraser, to fund attacks on the credibility of the UK. The decision to link all parts of the scheme with the name ‘Fraser’ was the inspired if over-confident idea of Murdo Fraser, born Murderpolisky Stalin, in Georgia. The Fraser of Allander’s role was to come up with arguments against Scottish independence but only those easily open to ridicule by anyone over 16. Douglas Fraser was blackmailed into joining the group and tasked with presenting these arguments at length, parroting Murdo’s tweets, and, on the days before elections or referenda, putting older voters to sleep with his trained voice and gloomy stares to camera.

At first, Tory MP Ross ‘Thumper’ Thompson, was thought to be an obvious party to the scheme but Murdo insisted in his confession: ‘That stupid C***! He’s too thick even for this scheme!’ Murdo’s comments seem a little harsh given that my source also suggests that Ross is, allegedly, maybe, the unwanted lovechild of Murdo and, maybe not, Emma Thompson. Ms Thompson has already said she’ll sue the balls of anybody else saying that.

The exposure of the scheme by my source was triggered by her massive disappointment at the closure of the store, her favourite, and then synchronistically reading quotes by Murdo, Douglas and the ‘Institute’, in quick punishing succession, before joining up the blobs. The store collapsed, of course, because the Russian oligarch charged with running it and extracting cleaned currency had allegedly, maybe, employed ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser as a consultant.

Footnote: I’m short of hard stories and addicted to writing something, anything, so worry not.

    

Leask(i) and his Russian minder David(ski) ‘Novochok’ Torrance(kova)

(c) Herald                                                                        (c) Torrance

Sources have revealed to me that, David Leask, Chief Reporter at the Glasgow, Wigan and Irvine Herald, is operating as an agent provocateur in Scotland’s political culture. Though at first sight seeming to be working against the independence movement, his bizarre interventions are actually designed to provide easy targets for lazier activists such as those working for the allegedly formerly Nazi sympathisers and more recently, EU-funded activists, at Fliegen Uber Schottland and Indyrefzwei.

Earlier hints of Leask’s Russian associations were revealed to illuminati, such as myself, in his name which is a not too clever shortening of Leaski. The Leaskis arrived in the UK in 1906 from the Constantiewaski Leaski Ovelest in Russia. Leask’s twitter ID is also, tellingly, @LeaskyHT. The HT refers to Hostile Takeover, the code-name for Putin’s strategy to penetrate Scottish Unionist media.

Footnote: The German word for agent provocateur is agent provocateur. I don’t think the French have a word for it. The Russian word is провока (pronounced ‘Murdo Fraser’)

Footnote: I have checked the BBC’s royal charter and just saying ‘sources’ is enough for any claim. Jenni Marra (skovich) has also kindly confirmed this for me.

Police Scotland’s new chief constable said today of the national service’s performance:

‘That approach has brought benefits. For example, we can now say with certainty that every homicide in Scotland is dealt with to the highest possible standard. Every domestic abuse case is treated in the same way regardless of where the victim lives.’

These are important, newsworthy achievements which BBC Scotland mention only in passing at the end of the website report and not at all in the broadcast. Instead BBC Scotland essentially lie with a headline twisted from the chief constable’s words:

‘Police chief admits mistakes made in setting up national force’

What he actually said was:

‘I acknowledge that we didn’t get everything right at the outset of Police Scotland.’

The word ‘mistakes’ was not used. Now some might argue that they’re saying the same thing but the decision to drop the actual words, insisting by implication that the majority was correctly done, to a new phrase leaving out that implication for an open-ended possibility of only mistakes is to shift the meaning, for no good reason, to suit a particular agenda, that of failure by  Police Scotland and, by association, the Scottish Government.

  

As you can see from the above, our Unionist media have chased the story, drooling and sniffing for blood. They have distorted the evidence in their usual attempt to frighten the sick and the elderly into that generalised fear of change which they hope translates into a vote to remain in the heartless bosom of Theresa May’s UK.

A new system of prioritising the sickest patients, even though that may lengthen waits for less urgent cases, has massively improved survival rates for cardiac arrest patients. According to a spokesman for the Scottish Ambulance Service:

‘We have changed the way we respond to calls and are now deliberately prioritising the sickest, most seriously ill patients in Scotland. As a result, we have almost doubled survival rates for cardiac arrest patients since 2013. For less urgent cases, our call handlers now spend more time understanding patient’s clinical needs to ensure we send the right, not necessarily the nearest resource. The result has been slightly longer response times for patients whose lives are not immediately at risk – but consequently, last year we saved the lives of an additional 62 patients who had suffered an out of hospital cardiac arrest.’

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: ‘We’re all in the gutter but our journos are happy face-down and sniffing the British stench.’

In the Times today:

‘Opposition politicians have questioned the use of “efficient” contracts to finance new schools and hospitals, amid evidence they cost Scotland £224m last year — more than double the previous year.’

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/pfi-replacement-costs-scots-taxpayers-dear-x07rzfrgl

£224 million seems a lot to you and me, certainly to me, but how does it compare with the PFI schemes?

In the Guardian in December 2015:

‘Scotland’s PFI boom means £1.3bn a year bill is in the post. New roads, hospitals and public buildings are being built now, but latest Treasury data shows government repayments will peak in 10 years’ time.’

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/15/scotland-pfi-boom-public-spending-holyrood-snp

As usual, a little perspective helps.

In the Sunday Times today:

‘One in three bobbies on the beat in England and Wales have been axed in just three years as violent crime has surged. A Sunday Times investigation found more than 7,000 traditional neighbourhood police officers, who protect communities and gather intelligence, have been reassigned to other duties or left jobs altogether since March 2015.’

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/bobbies-onbeat-slashed-by-a-third-2gtg28f3f

Wow, I thought. How bad is it in Scotland? Have our bobbies been slashed too? When I say slashed, I mean…..Anyhow, here’s the answer, well, their kind-of answer, from the Scotsman in May this year:

‘The number of police officers in Scotland is at its lowest level for nine years, new figures have revealed. In the first three months of year, Police Scotland had the equivalent of 17,170 full time officers, according to Scottish Government statistics. The last time the number of officers was lower was in the first three months of 2009, when the total was 17,048. Officer numbers increased after the SNP came into power in 2007, with the party committed to putting 1,000 extra police on the streets. That commitment was first met in March to June 2009, with the number of officers having remained at above or about 17,250 since then. But the total for January to March this year dropped by 86 from the 17,256 recorded in October to December 2017.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-police-officer-numbers-at-lowest-level-in-nine-years-1-4733321

So that’s a cut of 86 or 0.49% of the 17 256 and not being ‘slashed by a third’, at all, like in England? So that’s about one sixty-sixth of the cuts in England?

That SNP! Don’t you just hate the way they’re so capable and trustworthy?