Talking-up Scotland

From the STV website yesterday:

‘Universities will share over £1.1 billion of funding, an increase of 1.2% from the investment made in 2017/18. The revenue budget for colleges will increase by 8.3% to nearly £600 million, with the college capital budget also increasing by nearly £30 million to a total of £76.7 million. The indicative allocations, published by the Scottish Funding Council, also show core student support funding increasing by £3.6 million, with an extra £35.2 million set aside for the implementation of the Independent Review of Student Support.’

https://stv.tv/news/scotland/1409167-almost-2-billion-funding-for-higher-education-announced/

This is in particularly good news, given the local colleges’ key role in widening access to higher education through their articulation arrangements with universities, significantly cutting the overall living and travel costs of students from disadvantaged areas. It’s worth remembering that UCAS itself acknowledges that this arrangement gives Scotland better participation rates [in HE] than elsewhere in the UK, contrary to the constant lies from our media. See this:

‘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

See this for more:

BBC Scotland and STV News attempt to mislead us on Higher Education application rates from ‘poorest areas’ and former mathematics teacher Iain Gray fails to add them up properly for them.

 

(c) Zoë Wilson/thescottishfarmer.co.uk

From Farmers Weekly yesterday:

‘Fifty new part-time starter farms are to be made available to new entrants in Scotland. The Scottish government has announced more than 1,000ha of public land will be let out as part of its programme to support young people who want to get into farming.’

In the same report, Rural affairs secretary Fergus Ewing said:

‘With the average age of Scottish farmers at 58 years, attracting new entrants to farming is vital for the long-term sustainability of the industry. New entrants drive innovation and best practice, improve efficiencies and contribute towards the overall economic vitality of the sector.’

https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/50-new-starter-farms-launched-scotland.htm

Although we know that Scotland has a massive trade surplus in food and drink with the EU and with rUK, this seems a wise move, to further strengthen the sector, as the possibility of a hard Brexit remains strong. See this worrying assessment from the Institute for Fiscal Studies:

‘If the UK and the post-Brexit EU fail to strike a free trade deal, it is likely tariffs would be imposed on EU imports into the UK, as the UK would be unable to impose zero tariffs on imports from the EU without also extending tariff-free access to all other WTO members. This would raise the price of food imported from the EU, which is the major source of food imports into the UK, accounting for 70% of gross food imports. Therefore, if the UK did not strike a free trade deal with the EU, food prices would be likely to rise significantly.’

https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/9562

I’d be happy enough to subsist on a diet of cheap locally-produced salmon, beef, potatoes, vegetables and whisky.

In their recent docudrama ‘Mind the Gap: Are Scotland’s Trains Fit for the 21st Century?’ and in today’s evidence-weak piece on the website, ‘Commuters feel the strain of taking the train’, BBC Scotland has attempted another attack on the competence of the Scottish Government. As in their repeated scare stories on NHS Scotland, their critique is of very poor tabloid quality lacking a credible research basis and placing counter-evidence from the Scottish government or ScotRail Abellio, below and after that from an imbalanced handful of anecdotal comments from individual passengers ready to say what they want to hear.

First, we see no sign of the objective and reliable findings which the National Rail Passenger Survey for Autumn 2017, published in January 2018, presented. They found that 96% of ScotRail passengers were satisfied overall with their journeys. This placed ScotRail 4^th (equal) out of 26 UK rail companies.

http://d3cez36w5wymxj.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/29201549/National-Rail-Passenger-Survey-%E2%80%93-NRPS-%E2%80%93-Autumn-2017-%E2%80%93-Main-Report.pdf

See this for more:

Misery for Herald readers as they imagine ‘misery for passengers’ on ScotRail, the 4th best out of 26 UK rail companies in terms of overall satisfaction, with a score of 96%

 Weighed against this evidence of 96% satisfaction from a scientifically undertaken survey, BBC Scotland make the case for their headlines with comments from just three customers. Just three! On what planet is this valid or reliable data?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-43142838

Finally, it turns out that the complaints are all to do with the number of carriages at certain times. How does an alleged numerical shortage equate to trains not being ‘fit’ in a wider sense? It doesn’t. It’s just simple propaganda.

An assessment of the value of the Borders Railway was published last year. It showed major benefits for the area. See this for more:

Regenerating Scotland’s economy by reopening rail lines

Now, in its second year, research by the Borders Railway Blueprint Group, reported on the BBC website, has identified continued benefits:

• overall travel on the line up 9.5% compared with year one
• the majority of commuters start or end their journey in Edinburgh
• 36 000 estimated car journeys saved annually
• evidence of the railway having an influence on people moving their house or changing job

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-43173456

The BBC report did, of course, mention one or two negatives, but I’ll leave them there.

The success of the Border Railway has prompted other proposals including this:

Why Scotland’s North-east railway line, from Aberdeen through Fraserburgh to Peterhead, should be re-opened

A feasibility study was mentioned last November but I’ve seen nothing since.

Based on research commissioned by Shelter Scotland and reported in Scottish Housing News today:

‘The Scottish Government’s target of 50,000 affordable homes is within reach over the period of this parliament, according to a first-of-its-kind independent report….The report says the £3 billion affordable housing programme is the biggest undertaken since the 1970s and is set to deliver a net increase of 25,000 new homes to Scotland’s social housing stock (after demolitions or other losses are included). This contrasts with a predicted net loss of 120,000 council homes in England, where tenants still have a right-to-buy their homes.’

http://www.scottishhousingnews.com/20022/housing-targets-within-reach-scotland-faces-biggest-increase-social-housing-since-1970s/

This report reinforces the earlier statement by the Scottish Government in Scottish Housing News on 13^th February 2018:

‘Social housing in Scotland continues to be more affordable than England or Wales, which is vital at a time when UK government welfare cuts are having a devastating impact on people across the country.  We are increasing funding for discretionary housing payments – which significantly benefit those living in the social housing sector – by 5%, to over £60 million in 2018/19. That will enable us to continue mitigating the bedroom tax and provide a lifeline for those who need extra help. Since 2007 we have delivered nearly 71,000 affordable homes, with almost 70% of those being for social rent. Over this Parliament we have a commitment to deliver 50,000 affordable homes, including 35,000 for social rent. We have put in place a number of measures to deliver that, in addition to ending the right to buy, keeping existing social housing stock in the sector and protecting it for future generations.’

http://www.scottishhousingnews.com/19825/marginal-increase-number-social-housing-tenants-scotland/

Yet another reminder that we are different enough to want to run our own show. Remember these?

8% of the UK population and 28% of living wage employers. More evidence that we are different enough to want to run the whole show?

SNP moves to finally put an end to foxes’agony being ripped apart by hounds as the English Tories plan a return to the unspeakable business. Different again?

Racial hate crimes increase by 33% in England & Wales while falling by 10% in Scotland: Who says we’re not different?

Scotland takes nearly 26% of Syrian refugees settled in UK with only 8% of the UK population

For more, just search the blog for ‘different’.

Based on a report by Inform Direct using data from Companies house and the Office for National statistics (ONS) and reported in Insider magazine on the 23^rd, more than 34 000 new companies were set up in Scotland in 2017. This represented growth of 5.7% as opposed to the UK average of only 4%.

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/business-growth-scotland-outstrips-uk-12076516

This is, of course, not a one-of indicator of health in the Scottish economy. See these examples from just this year (2018):

Scottish business confidence soars to three and a half-year high

And another: Scottish business community ‘increasingly confident.’

And another one: ‘Scotland Revealed as Top Place in UK to Launch New Business’

17% increase in number of Scots planning to start a new business as Scottish economy strengthens

Also, this is another objective measure of real economic confidence and growth unlike the useless GERS and GDP estimates, favoured by our media in attempts to undermine confidence. For more on this, see:

25 of the 26 GERS income figures are estimates and not the real figures!

As for GDP, even the DAVOS elite have turned against it. See this from 2016:

‘Three leading economists and academics at Davos agree: GDP is a poor way of assessing the health of our economies and we urgently need to find a new measure. Speaking in different sessions, IMF head Christine Lagarde, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson stressed that as the world changes, so too should the way we measure progress. A country’s GDP is an estimate of the total value of goods and services they produce. But even when the concept was first developed back in the late 1930s, the man behind it, Simon Kuznets, warned it was not a suitable measure of a country’s economic development: “He understood that GDP is not a welfare measure, it is not a measure of how well we are all doing. It counts the things that we’re buying and selling, but it’s quite possible for GDP to go in the opposite direction of welfare.”’

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/gdp/

Let me know if you see any sign of this report on our TV ‘news’.

I’ve already reported on this trend, to end March 2017, at:

Scotland’s homicide rate falls by 47%, is lower than the rate for England and Wales and has fallen faster than many other countries in the ten years of SNP government

Now Police Scotland have released figures for the period between 1 April and 31 December 2017 which show further reductions. Murder is down from 47 to 40 (15%) and serious violence is down from 3 069 to 2 992 9 (2.5%) in the same period.

Reported sexual crimes rose by 12%. However, Police Scotland welcomed this trend as evidence of greater confidence in coming forward.

You’ll see the Scotsman chose to come at these statistics from a different, gloomier, perspective, in the url below.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/violent-crime-increases-despite-fall-in-murders-and-serious-assaults-1-4695751

If we project the 40 murders in quarters 1 to 3 to the end of the year 2017/2018 we get 53.33 This gives Scotland (pop 5.404m), a murder rate of 0.98  per 100 000 people which is below Sweden at 1.14.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden

Based on a steady flow of free copy from the opposition parties, Scotland’s media have faithfully published a steady flow of distortion on the performance of easily the most effective NHS in the UK.

I’ve tackled several of them here already. See:

As already better-staffed NHS Scotland’s vacancies run at half the rate in England, ‘The extent of the [UK] Government’s failure to plan the NHS workforce is astonishing.’

NHS England ‘haemorrhaging’ nurses as 33 000 leave each year. NHS Scotland Nurse staffing increases.

Herald and STV able to cut staffing after outsourcing their Health Correspondent role on a rotational basis to Labour and Tories. NHS Scotland spending 0.46% of budget on overtime while English nurses do it unpaid!

Scotsman again acts as passive outlet for Tory misinformation as NHS Scotland spends only just over half the amount per head of population, as NHS England, on agency staff.

‘NHS England cancelling operations at three times the rate in Scotland!’ or ‘With 10% of the population to care for, NHS Scotland cancels only 3.3% of NHS England operations cancelled in January’

Today, we have these headlines from the Herald, Scotsman and STV:

‘Unfilled nursing and midwifery posts in NHS increase four-fold’

‘Nicola Sturgeon blamed as unfilled nursing jobs break records’

‘Huge increase in number of unfilled nursing posts’  

The reports are filled with indignant quotes from, especially, Labour, and out-of-date statistics but none of the contextual information by which we might be able to properly understand the situation.

First, see the actual situation with regard to the current trend in staffing in the chart above and the one below:

Note the overall upward trend in the first and the steady climb in staffing numbers, 5.6% in Nursing and the stable number in midwifery.

Second, how well-staffed is NHS Scotland in the first place? I know, some don’t like these comparisons when they show Scotland in a favourable light, but they love them when it’s otherwise. Comparisons between countries do have their limitations but they do help us put our statistics into context and scale.

How many nurses are there in Scotland? Well, in Nursing, excluding Midwifery, there were 56 468.2 FTE in September 2017.

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/data-tables2017.asp

In NHS England, the Kings Fund state:

‘The number of nursing staff (nurses and health visitors) has increased by 1.8 per cent from 281,064 FTEs in 2010 to 286 020 FTEs in 2017.’

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-staffing-numbers

The UK Government site says:

‘There were 314,966 Nurses & health visitors, an increase of 2,790 (0.9%) since 2014. There were 281,474 FTE Nurses & health visitors, an increase of 2,494 (0.9%) since 2014.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/511519/nhs-staf-2015-over-rep.pdf

So, Scotland with only 10% of England’s population, has 19% of the number of nurses or nearly twice as many per head of population.

Third, how do the vacancy rates compare? On 22^nd February the Independent wrote, based on official figures releases:

‘More than 100,000 NHS posts unfilled, reveal ‘grim’ official figures: Quarterly data released by regulator NHS Improvement today, for the year to December, shows the 234 NHS trusts in England “employ 1.1 million whole-time-equivalent staff but that they have 100,000 vacancies”. Health service bosses are saying the findings are “extremely worrying” and a sign of “astonishingly bad planning”.’

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-posts-staffing-recruitment-official-figures-healthcare-hospitals-a8221961.html

So, compared to 9-10% vacancies in England what are the levels in Scotland? Well there is no global figure but for nursing and midwifery, it’s 4.5% and for consultants, it’s 7.7%.

In response, the Scottish Government has increased training of nurses by 3.2% and doctors by 1.9%.

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2017-12-05/2017-12-05-Workforce-Summary.pdf?21445864440

If we have a significantly better ratio of nurses to population and a significantly lower rate of vacancies, might we be in quite good shape?

Scottish Labour has been quite explicit about its intention to ‘weaponise’ the NHS in anticipation of an election. See this from the Scotsman, yesterday:

‘The party says it will deploy hundreds of activists to target seats in Glasgow today, seeking to capitalise on months of damaging news on the NHS. The blitz [sic] is the latest in a new tactic across the UK under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, targeting national resources outside of election periods at marginal seats, using local messages. Similar NHS-based campaigns are expected across Scotland in the coming months, with Labour preparing for another early election.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/mhairi-black-among-snp-targets-in-labour-hospitals-campaign-blitz-1-4695717

It’s clear that though they have the facts to work with in England, they’re going to have to rely heavily on the Scottish media to make their lack of meaningful facts irrelevant here. The recent flurry of dodgy reports across the Scottish media, suggests that they can rely on them. We must make sure we use social media as intensively as we can to counter their propaganda and dispense with the kind of pointless navel-gazing and own-foot-shooting we see from Common Space:

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/12384/robin-mcalpine-how-much-it-will-really-cost-build-independent-scotland

When I saw the above, I just thought WTF! Use your energy and time to attack the Union, will you? Attack! Attack!

In an almost identical replica of their 9^th February report, ‘NHS spent almost £500K a day on agency staff, report shows’ the Herald gave us today:

‘Concerns raised over NHS Scotland’s £26 million bill for nurses’ overtime. Health boards across the country shelled out an extra £500,000 a week to keep wards properly staffed, figures show.’

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16045382.Concerns_raised_over_NHS_Scotland_s___26_million_bill_for_nurses__overtime/

STV news offered us:

‘NHS boards across Scotland paid out more than £26m in overtime to nurses and midwives last year, new figures have revealed. The figures were released at the same time Scottish Labour bosses launched a consultation on how to tackle the “workforce crisis”.’

https://stv.tv/news/scotland/1408987-overtime-for-nurses-and-midwives-cost-nhs-26m-last-year/

Once more, the texts were almost entirely made up of tabloid quotes from Tory and Labour representatives making the same scaremongering, context-free accusations of SNP failure to manage staffing in the NHS.

So, as they’re clearly too busy to research their story properly, I’ll do it, again. First, see this:

‘Almost half of the total operating costs (47.6% or £5.6bn) were accounted for by hospital and community sector staff, excluding laboratory staff.’

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Finance/Publications/2017-11-21/2017-11-21-Costs-Summary.pdf?60702151061

So, the £26 million on overtime is 0.46% of the total £5.6 billion staffing cost. Is that bad planning? Would it not be worse if more full-time staff were appointed such that no overtime was ever needed but the organisation was so overstaffed for much of the time that nurses had to play cards to stay awake? Isn’t this small amount of overtime the kind of lean efficiency and staff flexibility Tory businessmen love?

At least we’re paying for overtime as is only fair. I couldn’t find NHS England overtime payments. Perhaps this is why. According to more than one report, English nurses are doing hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime, each. See these 2017 and 2018 headlines from the Guardian and the Mirror:

‘Over half of NHS staff work unpaid overtime every week, survey finds’

‘Nurses are working over 200 hours extra per year in unpaid overtime to stop NHS collapsing. New analysis shows overstretched nurses and others are putting in £1.6bn worth of extra work’

This shared role of Health Correspondent is clearly not going to work as the Tory’s eyes light up at the above headlines and the Labour one groans miserably.

Back in October, I was able to report on Police Scotland officers demonstrating how to defuse dangerous situations with a knife-holding person. I was impressed. It was clear the NYPD officers would have shot the offender in every case. I felt relieved and proud of these Scottish officers. See this for more:

First New York Police and now Canada’s police come to learn from Scotland’s successes in tackling violence

Our mainstream media missed the story with only Sky TV news reporting it.

Now, I read that the London Metropolitan chief is to visit Scotland in the wake of a series of stabbings and murders in the city over the last year or so in the hope of learning how we have managed to reduce knife crime and knife possession dramatically in the last ten years.

Only the Guardian seemed to report the story. I could find no mention in Herald, Scotsman, or Record, nothing on the BBC Scotland and STV websites. I can’t bear to watch the TV news so perhaps readers will let me know if it was reported there. Here’s what the Guardian had to say:

‘Met chief, Cressida Dick, will visit Glasgow on Friday to learn more about Police Scotland’s pioneering work on tackling knife crime in the city once known as the stabbing capital of Europe. Dick told the London assembly at the beginning of January that it was time to treat knife crime as a public health crisis, an approach credited with dramatically reducing deaths in Scotland, which little more than a decade ago had the second highest murder rate in western Europe. Of the 39 children and young people killed with knives in the UK last year, not one was in Scotland. The Violence Reduction Unit was set up in 2005 to tackle Glasgow’s deeply rooted blade culture that had barely moved on since the Gorbals gangland was immortalised in the 1935 novel No Mean City. Since then all knife crime rates have been incrementally reduced. Assaults involving knives had fallen by a third by 2012 and there was a 69% drop in recorded incidents of people carrying knives by 2016, according to Police Scotland figures.’

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/22/met-police-chief-cressida-dickto-visit-scotland-for-ideas-to-reduce-knife

The Herald and the BBC website did have a Police Scotland story but preferred to focus on the alleged unlawful action by the Counter Corruption Unit (CCU) which they could blow-up into a scandal with tabloid comments like

‘Leader comment: Police Scotland in the dock again’

‘Police Scotland seems to stumble from one fiasco to another.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/leader-comment-police-scotland-in-the-dock-again-1-4694931

‘Durham chief slams Police Scotland ‘ineptitude’ over probe’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-43160133

The CCU story is of course worth covering but isn’t balance something that our media like to claim they practice?