Talking-up Scotland

(Thanks to Ludo for alerting me to this)

In the last year alone, shares in publisher Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) have dropped 28%. That rate of fall, if maintained, leads to oblivion in three or four years. The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Metro owner reported pre-tax profits down 13%, again in one year.

 

http://www.insider.co.uk/company-results-forecasts/daily-mail-general-trust-shares-11613821

The Scottish Daily mail had a circulation in December 2009 of 113 771 and in 2014, the UK circulation was 1 708,006. I can’t find 2017 figures, but I think we get the picture looking at the steep decline in the graph above (for the Sun too!). Extending the line for two years and the UK version (total?) looks like getting very close to just over 1 000 000 in 2017 and utterly non-viable in another two or three. As for the Scottish version, assuming the same pattern, they lost around 70 000 just in the last two years. Given that we only have the 2009 figure, eight years ago, how low might their sales be now? This is the end of times for many in the mainstream media and if the decline persists the Scottish Daily Mail disappears from our stands in two to three years!

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

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!

(c) nationalhealthexecutive.com

Last year at this time, Scotland’s Unionist media and politicians were all gleefully predicting a crisis in health care as Scotland’s hospitals failed to meet, they hoped, with the increased winter demand. Here are just two of the stories from the Daily Record and the Daily Express:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/745815/Patients-Scotland-A-E-crisis-NHS-SNP

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/health/nhs-crisis-1200-hospital-beds-5226300

Reporting Scotland ran happily with these stories in December and early January, as I remember, but then realised there hadn’t been any crisis in Scotland despite what the Red Cross described as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ in NHS England. See:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/06/nhs-faces-humanitarian-crisis-rising-demand-british-red-cross

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nhs-british-red-cross-hospitals-volunteers-land-rover-winter-pressure-emergency-a7514526.html

On the 12^th January 2017, they seemed to realise the ba’ was on the slates and backed off if a little grudgingly with a report in which more than one phrase recognised the superior performance of NHS Scotland. It was of course a bit quiet and qualified with more than a few ‘buts’, but, nevertheless it was an absolute shock for those of us who have been monitoring them since before 2014. Read and be amazed that they said:

‘We’ve heard a lot in the last few days about the NHS crisis (emphasised) in England. I think it would be fair to say the picture in Scotland looks better…’

If we look at the figures for A&E, the figures show we’re better off, as the First Minister said, we’re 10% better off…’

‘In terms of social care, we are doing some good work on the ground….’

‘We’re maybe (!) not using the term ‘humanitarian crisis to describe the state of the NHS in Scotland….’

Now, I know all the above were followed by a ‘but’, but what followed was never a piece of evidence to cast serious doubt on the preceding good news. Mostly it was a vague comment about vague, unquantified, future challenges or the failure to meet the Scottish government’s own very high targets.

Now what’s happening this year. Are they scared this time round to predict a crisis in NHS Scotland? I searched thoroughly and could find nothing at all really predicting that NHS Scotland would struggle this winter. All my search threw up was this:

‘Will extra cash be enough to stave off a winter crisis in the NHS in Scotland? Scottish Health Secretary Shona Robison has announced an additional £5m to support winter planning across the NHS in Scotland. Although she said the Scottish NHS was well placed for winter, Ms Robison conceded that there was no room for complacency, and that the new money would give health boards and their partners an extra boost. The money is in addition to funds already allocated to tackling waiting times for treatment and A&E waits. Some of it will be used to pay for additional staff to allow more patients to be discharged at weekends.’

https://wilmingtonhealthcare.com/scottish-government-announces-funding-boost-to-meet-nhs-winter-pressures/

You’ll see the headline’s question is not tackled at all in the short text. Wonder why? No evidence perhaps?

Moving to NHS England and Winter 2017/18, the media picture is quite different. A search throws up numerous scare stories predicting another crisis this year. Here are only five from many more:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/02/nhs-warns-of-dangerous-beds-shortage-this-winter

https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2017/oct/06/winter-coming-situation-nhs-desperate

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/12/nhs-operations-could-cancelled-months-winter-senior-medics-warn/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/03/nhs-faces-another-winter-crisis-without-350m-emergency-bailout/

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/nhs-managers-explain-fear-winter-13580690

You’ll see in my previous post the threat to drop targets as one way of hiding any crisis. Perhaps worse, the astonishing idea of banning patients from going to A&E without prior permission has been floated:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/13/patients-could-barred-going-ae-without-doctors-note/

So, you feel you might die, make an appointment with your GP, s/he sends an email authorising your visit, but you don’t make it?

Why did NHS Scotland cope so much better than NHS England last winter? It wasn’t higher spending. Here’s a reminder of the main reasons identified by the Nuffield Trust:

Scotland has a unique system of improving the quality of health care. It

focuses on engaging the altruistic professional motivations of frontline staff

to do better, and building their skills to improve. Success is defined based

on specific measurements of safety and effectiveness that make sense

to clinicians.

 

Scotland’s smaller size as a country supports a more personalised, less

formal approach than in England. The Scottish NHS has also benefited

from a continuous focus on quality improvement over many years. It uses

a consistent, coherent method where better ways of working are tested on

a small scale, quickly changed, and then rolled out. Unlike in the rest of the

UK, this is overseen by a single organisation that both monitors the quality

of care and also helps staff to improve it.

 

Scotland faces particular issues of unequal health outcomes, and very

remote areas. There are pioneering initiatives to address these, like the

Links worker programme and Early Years Collaborative to support

people in very deprived areas, and use of video links for outpatient care on

remote islands. These should be considered in other parts of the UK facing

similar issues.

 

There is much for the other countries of the UK to learn from this. While

comparing performance is very difficult, Scotland has had particular

success in some priority areas like reducing the numbers of stillbirths.

Scotland’s system provides possible alternatives for an English system

with a tendency towards too many short-term, top-down initiatives that

often fail to reach the front line. It also provides one possible model for

a Northern Irish NHS yet to have a pervasive commitment to quality

improvement, and a Welsh system described as needing better ways to

hold health boards to account while supporting them in improving care.

Scotland has a longer history of drives towards making different parts of

the health and social care system work together. It has used legislation

to get these efforts underway while recognising that ultimately local

relationships are the deciding factor. There is much for England and Wales

to learn from this.

Research Report, July 2017, Learning from Scotland’s NHS at: https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/files/2017-07/learning-from-scotland-s-nhs-final.pdf

In the Guardian yesterday:

‘Ministers are warned that key targets including A&E treatment and cancer care must be scrapped because of underfunding. NHS [England] bosses have warned ministers they will have to tear up treatment waiting time guarantees and deny patients new drugs next year because they have given it too little money to do its job.’

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/30/nhs-bosses-waiting-time-targets-abandoned-next-year

When you look at the graph above showing the crisis in NHS England A&E, their decision becomes understandable. However, there’s more to it than lack of money given the continuing quality of NHS Scotland. Look at the graph below for A&E Scotland:

Equally under pressure of funding, NHS Scotland have benefitted from good, respectful, consultative, non-gimmicky, governance, from the SNP. See:

‘Scotland has a unique system of improving the quality of health care’ says the Nuffield Trust: Looking at the full report and not the Labour/BBC Scotland extracts in July

NHS Scotland spending on private healthcare falls year-on-year to a five year low as NHS England spending on private health care rockets by 33% to 100 times the Scottish figure! Mind you, 68 English MPs have personal income from private health companies

New Scottish GP contract rated far superior, by BMA, to English equivalent as Scottish GP numbers hold steady and NHS England loses 1 000 in one year!

Despite massive increases in demand, NHS Scotland maintains performance levels extremely close to the most rigorous of targets and patient satisfaction is at an all-time high. Audit Scotland say: ‘There were no significant weaknesses in the overall quality of care being provided.’

To quote the first reference above:

‘Scotland has a unique system of improving the quality of health care. It

focuses on engaging the altruistic professional motivations of frontline staff

to do better, and building their skills to improve. Success is defined based

on specific measurements of safety and effectiveness that make sense

to clinicians.’

 

A survey for Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, of 95 companies, found the following:

• 60% believe the downturn has reached its bottom
• 29% believe the worst has already passed
• 48% of contractors said they were more confident for the year ahead
• Bottom of Form
• Top of Form
• Bottom of Form
• 83% expect to be involved in decommissioning work in the next 5 years
• 54% predict they could be doing more in renewables

http://www.insider.co.uk/news/north-sea-oil-companies-report-11612524

This is good news but pretty hesitant and slow to appear, I’d say. We’ve had strong indicators of a Third Wave of prosperity from key players for many months now. See, for example:

International Energy Agency forecasts big increase in demand to give North Sea producers cause for optimism

‘I feel good about the North Sea’

With shortages and price increases on the near horizon, Scottish North Sea oil field start-ups reach a 10-Year High

An additional 900 million barrels in the North Sea by raising recovery factor from only 42%

An Edinburgh University Professor says North Sea oil and gas has only ten years left while the Wall Street Journal describes it as an ‘oil hot spot’ and Oil and Gas UK doesn’t recognise his figures. Who’s right?

If you search this blog for ‘North Sea’ you’ll get many more optimistic reports on the prospects for the North Sea and evidence that it has at least another 3 decades in it.

 

(c) sky.com

Ignoring his whip, Douglas Ross, MP for Moray, voted with the SNP to defeat the Government in a debate on the case put forward by the WASPI group, on the pension entitlements, or lack of, of women born in the 1950s, thinking they could retire at 60 and then being told more recently they would have to work years beyond that. The decision is, however, not binding and the Government can simply ignore it.

Ross said, after listening to the motion from the SNP leader:

‘I agree with a lot of what my Hon. Friend says, both now and in previous debates on this issue. More can be done. There is a lot we can discuss and debate, and I have put myself forward to be a member of the all-party parliamentary group on state pension inequality for women.’

http://www.insidemoray.com/douglas-ross-votes-with-the-snp-in-westminster-debate-on-waspi/

Ross does, of course, need to improve his public image after being caught missing a parliamentary committee to referee a Champions League football match in Portugal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-38078341

There have been other, sometimes serial, Tory rebels before, but they typically come from the extreme and often eccentric, right-wing fringe of the party who feel that it is being too compassionate on something.  Peter Bone (56 rebellions) was perhaps the best example. Described in the Guardian as:

‘An MP since 2005, Essex-born Bone (59) is best-known for quoting the breakfast-table remarks of his wife (“Mrs Bone”) to David Cameron at PMQs, as representing the solid good sense of Middle Britain. A company accountant who once paid a teenager 87p an hour, he also said the NHS would “not be out of place in Stalin’s Russia” – but supports homeopathy and an abortion limit of 12 weeks. He was seen as one of the “mostly cantankerous old farts” on the backbench 1922 committee, but he lost his seat in this month’s elections.’

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/may/28/top-six-rebel-mps

 

A 100% community-owned whisky distillery? What a dram fine idea?

The new Glen Wyvis Distillery in Dingwall has just opened and as well as being 100% community-owned, it’s powered by 100% renewables-based energy. The distillery has 3 150 backers who contributed variable amounts after two crowd-funding campaigns.

http://www.insider.co.uk/news/historic-day-100-community-owned-11610460

https://glenwyvis.com/

This is particularly good news given that, at the last count, only 29 out of 102 distilleries were owned by firms based in Scotland and of those only three are big sellers – Macallan, Highland Park and Glenfiddich. Almost as many are owned by London-based firms like Diageo with brands like Talisker and Lagavulin. France’s Pernod Ricard have 13!

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13199861.Revealed__only_a_quarter_of_our_distilleries_are_owned_by_Scots_firms/

See this on the distillery’s environmental credentials:

‘At the distillery, all energy will be produced using the renewable technologies – hydro, wind and solar – that are already used by The Flying Farmer on the farm. An advanced heating system will be powered by chip biomass. This follows extensive research and a study that was part-funded by Highland and Islands Enterprise to prove the most economical and environmental heating system for the distillery. The preferred option, the chip biomass heating system, will be used for the production process and will benefit from the current Renewable Heat Incentive over a period of 20 years. A separate report is available that details the full findings of the study.

Environmental benefits: Minimise carbon emissions:

• From 15,000KWh (year 1) to a maximum of 67,000 KWH of non-thermal energy will be provided by on-site renewables
• The thermal energy used for distilling will be produced by biomass on-site
• Some 100,000kW of clean green energy is already exported from the site and would be available’

https://glenwyvis.com/invest/downloads/glenwyvis-share-offer-document.pdf

 

Scottish government funding of £58.5 million to allow local authorities to make Discretionary Housing Payments has already been spent by up to 90% in an effort to offset the effects of Tory attacks on the poor. The money has been used to compensate for the introduction of the benefit cap, the “bedroom tax” and reductions in Local Housing Allowance.

https://news.gov.scot/news/discretionary-housing-payments-4

This, the previous report on a fairer tax system and earlier reports such as those below, remind us that we have a government of wholly different nature from the callous, corporation-friendly, affluent individuals who make up the UK Government.

Scottish care workers to receive Living Wage for ‘sleepover’ hours while English care workers receive only the National Minimum Wage.

SNP to bring in free personal care for disabled under-65s by April 2019

Scottish public sector to put poverty and inequality at heart of decision-making despite UK Government’s abandonment of the principle

Scottish Government fights to protect against the effects of Tory austerity cuts.

Scottish Government to fight alongside UN to defend disabled against Tory cuts.

The supposedly impartial, apolitical, National Audit Office issued incorrect figures last month suggesting that more than half a million Scots would pay more income tax than those in England on comparable incomes. The Scottish government is committed to a more progressive and fair taxation system which spreads the burden more equitably but the NAO release to the media seriously overstated the number and this was used by the Unionist media and politicians to create a storm which has done damage that their grudging, almost invisible, withdrawal will not be able to compensate for.

The issue concerned the SNP decision to freeze the 40p threshold at £43 000 pa while the threshold in England and Wales was lifted to £45 000, meaning Scots on this salary or more, would pay up to £400 per annum, or about £8 per week, more.

The Scottish Tories even tried to suggest the SNP had bullied the NAO! I doubt that’s possible.

The SNP figure was 366 000 out of 2 600 000 taxpayers (14%), the initial release by the NAO was 507 000 and they have grudgingly revised it down to 386 000. Either way they really got it wrong and this casts serious doubt on their competence and/or impartiality.

The NAO then issued a huffy, dishonest, wee withdrawal pretending they’d noticed the mistake themselves and leaving that to the very end of the notice:

‘The NAO identified this at a late stage and immediately took the decision to postpone the report’s publication.’

https://www.nao.org.uk/report/scottish-rate-of-income-tax-2016-17/

They didn’t even have the common decency to mention their mistake in the title so it’s by no means the deserved apology. I expect no apology from the Scottish Tory’s Arithmetic Correspondent (Failed), Muddled Fraser. Here’s what he said:

‘Once again we see this SNP government trying to bully anyone who they disagree with. It is clear that they have pressurised the National Audit Office into this climb-down, simply because the SNP didn’t like what they were hearing. This was an independent report that rightly highlighted that a huge number of Scots will be paying more tax thanks to the decisions of the Scottish Government.’

This is the man whose Unionism is so fanatical and mind-warping that he thinks Rangers FC are her majesty’s team:

Rangers 5 Celtic 4 – The Queen’s 11 deliver Her Majesty the perfect Birthday present #ScottishCup #GSTQ

https://twitter.com/murdo_fraser/status/721694551770034176?lang=en

A new four-turbine platform built in Peterhead is to be tested in the Connel Sound near Oban. The Connel Sound as many of you will know is suitably turbulent and will give the equipment a thorough going over.

Once tested it will be moved to South-East Asia to help small communities currently relying on unreliable fuel powered generators.

The device was built by JBS Group (Scotland) in Peterhead. This is a positive development in two senses with the platform being designed and built in Scotland as well as being used to help in less developed parts of the world.

https://www.energyvoice.com/otherenergy/157425/four-turbine-tidal-platform-installed-obans-connel-sound/

No specific link was made with the pioneering single turbine operating in Orkney or with the giant plant in the Pentland Firth but perhaps we can assume some insights derived from the experience of building and installing these earlier examples:

Orkney’s giant tidal turbine is the world’s most powerful

As world’s largest tidal energy plant in Pentland Firth generates 1GWh which is enough for 700 000 homes, will Scotland become the most energy-rich country in Europe?

Tidal devices have tremendous advantages over other technologies:

1. A Very Predictable Energy Source: Ever since the beginning of time itself, the oceans have had tides. Massive amounts of water move in extremely predictable patterns. This makes it very easy to harness the energy that these tides can generate, because we can predict their movements as far as years ahead.
2. An Inexhaustible Source of Energy: There will be no shortage of tides anytime soon. They are controlled by the gravitational pull between the earth, sun, and moon. This means that as long as the earth is being orbited by the moon, the tides will continue to be there producing energy.
3. Very Low Costs To Operate: Once the initial constructions costs are done, there are very few additional costs to keep the tidal energy plant up and running. Little maintenance is required, and minimal personnel as well.
4. Effective Even at Low Speeds: Since water is much denser than air, the amount of movement needed to generate power is very low. It has been proven that tidal energy can still be harnessed even if the water is only moving at 3 feet per second.
5. Can Last Forever: Okay, maybe not literally forever, but a very long time! Tidal energy plants are very simple, and made of durable and simple materials that can withstand the time very well.
6. Completely Green: There are no carbon emissions from tidal energy plants, making it an energy source that does not negatively affect the global environment.

http://thenextgalaxy.com/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-tidal-energy-power/

(c) visitscotland.com

We’re used to winning something but this year we got two awards. We’ve previously won the most beautiful country and of course still are. This year we got the top award of ‘Number 1 Destination’ ahead of Iceland:

‘Previously, you named it the most beautiful country in the world – but it’s not all about appearances. This year the Edinburgh Fringe Festival celebrated its 70th year and Glasgow emerged as a foodie destination to watch. Whether you’re exploring the capital or discovering Scotland’s little-visited corners, you’re guaranteed a memorable trip.’

(c) scotlandhour.com

In addition, Scotland won ‘The Most Welcoming Country’ ahead of Canada:

‘Ever a favourite with Rough Guides readers, Scotland came out top as the world’s most welcoming country. Sure, Scotland has some pretty epic scenery and some buzzing cities to boot, but it’s the people that are the real drawcard here. Whether you’re propping up a bar in Edinburgh or trekking the hills of Glen Coe, you’re sure to feel a warm Scottish welcome from whomever you meet.’

https://www.roughguides.com/special-features/rough-guides-reader-awards-2017-the-winners/

Tourism surged in Scotland by 27% against the UK figure of only 18% in 2017. The above two awards suggest two factors in that difference. For a suggestion of others see:

Tourism spending in Scotland surges ahead of UK figure