Talking-up Scotland

Gordon Brewer (c) penguinplacepost.wordpress.com

Following on quickly from the question in the title of my earlier piece today (15.1.17):

‘As Theresa May scapegoats English GP’s will Scotland’s Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA Scotland Branch now begin to show some respect for the Scottish Government?’

I was able to check the answer only hours later as BMA Scotland Chair, Peter Bennie, appeared on Sunday Politics with Gordon Brewer. Gordon did introduce the debate to follow with:

After weeks of headlines detailing problems in NHS England, what is the state of the NHS in Scotland?

‘Problems’ is put it a bit mildly but, anyway, Gordon left the question hanging, we never got an answer,  and asked Bennie the question he really wanted to be asked about funding stagnating. So, without presenting any statistics or empirical evidence whatsoever, Bennie launched into an extended list of claims of ‘staff stretched to breaking point’ and of unfilled vacancies contributing to that situation. Over the piece, we heard that phrase over and over (ten times?) without once being offered any indication of research demonstrating it to be true and not just anecdote from a trades union leader. Remember, despite the respect offered to him by people like Brewer, Bennie is no more to be trusted as impartial than the leaders of UNITE or of the RMT.

Brewer made no attempt to introduce the abundant evidence of superiority in the operation of NHS Scotland nor of the many pieces of research demonstrating it (see my earlier piece). He, astonishingly, given his opening comment, did not return to the horror stories emerging from NHS England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Instead Bennie was allowed, un-contradicted, to insist GP jobs needed to be made more attractive or they’ll all go abroad. What and give up on Scotland’s golf courses? Aye right. Also, he was able to say ‘the majority of staff are working way beyond what they ought to be doing’ without, again, being able to refer to any reliable source of the statement’s accuracy. Would the leaders of UNITE or the RMT be treated so respectfully? I doubt it.

A short debate between a Tory and SNP MSP followed. The SNP MSP pointed out that they had already invested an extra £500 million over inflation but this pretty important figure was not put to the BMA guy to challenge him in any way. The Tory just ignored it and Gordon treated him kindly as if he was a member of a completely different party from Theresa May. The Tory also repeated the scurrilous BBC tale of five women turned away from the Southern General and sent 7 miles away to the RAH. OMG, what a scandal! They think they have it tough in England?

I hope you’re grateful that I watched this for you!

I skipped by the Andrew Neil bit of course, keeping firm control of my squirming guts as he flashed by.

‘The Prime Minister has expressed frustration at the failure of more GP practices to offer extended opening hours, amid intensifying pressure on NHS [England] hospital services.

Downing Street warned surgeries in England which refuse to move to 8am to 8pm opening, seven days-a-week will lose funding unless they can prove there is no demand from patients.’ (Daily Mail, 14.1.17)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-4118956/Theresa-May-frustrated-doctors-failure-extend-opening-hours.html

There’s deep irony in the UK Tories turning on the English GP’s and blaming them for the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in English hospitals after the years of campaigning by the Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA, in collusion with the Unionist parties and media, to undermine the Scottish Government’s management of NHS Scotland and by implication the case for independence..

As far back as 2013, we could read this:

‘Chairman of the BMA’s Scottish General Practitioners Committee Alan McDevitt also said Westminster’s changes would have a “negative impact on general practice in Scotland”.

GPC negotiator Dr Chaand Nagpaul said:

“We would very much hope, even at this stage, that the Government will show English GPs the same respect as Scottish GPs have been afforded. We find it very hard to understand why GPs in England are being discriminated against [when] there is a deal that is acceptable north of the border, which is not an imposition.”

http://newsnet.scot/archive/bma-urges-uk-govt-to-treat-gps-in-england-with-same-respect-as-scottish-gps-are-afforded/

Despite this show of good will by the Scottish Government, of hard evidence that Scottish GPs are more content than most in the world and that there are more of them per capita than in the rest of the UK (see below), the RCGP and the BMA have mounted a long and weary campaign of misinformation and vague accusations against the SNP and found it well-reported in the Scottish Unionist media. Here are the links to the evidence of the second and third point above:

http://newsnet.scot/commentary/scottish-gps-satisfied-least-stressed-uk-possibly-world/

http://newsnet.scot/archive/faking-crisis-royal-college-campaign-mirroring-media/

So, the RCGP and the BMA in Scotland have much to be satisfied with especially in the light of recent attempts in England to scapegoat them for the failures of the Tory government there. Yet, they have repeatedly provided suspect, often just wrong, but headline grabbing stories for the Scottish media to enable the construction of a climate in which it seems the Scottish Government is failing to manage NHS Scotland.

In March 2015, I wrote:

‘This time it’s a crisis in GP numbers. There is a shortage, by the BMA’s estimation, of around 1 in 5 unfilled posts. Whose estimation? The BMA or British Medical Association like the Royal College of Nursing has a name saturated in goodness and authority, so we can trust them can’t we? No, we can’t. Remember what I said about the RCN? It applies to the BMA just as much. This is a just a posh trades union. The BMA says so on its website and acts in ‘the interest of its members’ aspirations’. That means the same as ‘wur members’ aspirations’ except the BMA aspirations are dizzyingly high compared to those of the average paid worker. I’m not saying there isn’t a shortage of GPs, but we don’t know what kind of shortage or how bad a shortage until we get independent research. Like a coal-miner or a railway-worker, they might be manoeuvring to get more money for shorter hours.

Finally are these research findings of a formal, reliable, nature or just impressionistic ad hoc surveying by partisan ‘researchers’? No such research report is published on the seriously reliable BMJ research journal site. The BMA doesn’t seem to have a research section at all and a search of their site reveals nothing. The BMA press release does indicate there was a 61% response rate but gives no other details that we might use to judge its quality. Of those practices who responded, 17% had at least one vacancy. Let’s have a wee second opinion using the BMA’s press release figures, on this patient arithmetic, shall we?
GP practices in Scotland                                             988
Responses                                                                               463
Actual response rate                                                  463/988*100 = 47% NOT 61%
Respondents with at least 1 unfilled vacancy            17% of 463 = 79 practices or 1 in 6
Or if non-respondents had no vacancies                    79/988 = 8% or 1 in 12 practices’

http://newsnet.scot/citizen/broadcast-news-16-doctors-unions-escalating-problem-with-numbers/

In early 2016, we had these headlines:

‘Almost nine out of ten Scottish GPs believe patient care is being jeopardised by a lack of resources, according to a new poll.’ STV News, 28^th April 2016

‘Top doctor blasts SNP for lack of funding as he warns of longer waits to see a GP and a future without family doctors’ Daily Record (Glasgow) 27^th January, 2016

Again at the time I wrote to demolish these claims:

‘Leaving aside the obvious difficulty in relying on a sample of 150 GPs out of a population of around 5 000 Scottish GPs (0.3%) and the RCGP’s frankly simplistic reading of the results, there are real problems with this reliance by ComRes: on self-assessed online surveys with sometimes leading questions, and all-to-predictable results.

Here’s just one example of a leading question.: The above headline: ‘89% of GPs say they worry that lack of resources is putting patient care at risk.’ was in response to a question, more of a prompt really: ‘I worry about lack of resources putting patient care at risk.’ Ask any health professional that question and who among them do you expect would admit to not worrying if such a thing were to be the case? Further, the headline omits the fact that only 42% ‘strongly agreed’ with the prompt while 47% only ‘somewhat agreed.’ Who wouldn’t ‘somewhat’ agree that a shortage of resources might ‘somewhat’ worry them? These are people ‘somewhat’ high in empathy according to psychopathy tests.

For those with other lives, I’ll sum up. Small sample, online surveys of ‘caring’ professional groups (teachers, nurses, doctors), based on respondents’ self-assessment of their feelings, to questions about how stressed and over-worked they feel, are damned near SFA-use and carry a big health risk (pun intended) if you intend to say anything confident about them. OK RCGP Scotland Region? Do pay attention.’

The above is only a small selection of my responses to BMA and RCGP Scotland branch over the last two years but to finish today, here’s an example of the astonishing kind of thing being said as recently as April 2016 by RCGP chair Dr Miles Mack:

‘England now has the security of knowing that its general practice service is safe and will remain. To give Scotland, birthplace of the NHS model, comparable security, we would need to see £270 million more invested in general practice in 2020/21 than there was in 2014/15. This is a defining election issue, right at the heart of Scottish life.’ Dr Miles Mack, Royal College of General Practitioners Scotland (RCGP) in the Herald (April 23^rd)

http://newsnet.scot/archive/trade-union-scottish-gps-actually-represent-members-views-nhs/

As we watch the English ‘NHS’ fall apart with, for example, repeated junior doctors’ strikes, appalling failures in A&E and health boards generally and attempts to privatise ambulance services, our first reaction to the Scottish RCGP’s suggestion (above) is likely to be disbelief.

In June 2016 we had this in the Herald and many others like it across the Scottish MSM:

‘Herald View: GP shortages point to perfect storm for NHS’

Even as recently as the 3rd January 2017, as NHS Scotland coped and the others collapsed, we saw this kind of thing in the Evening Telegraph:

‘A leading Dundee GP has likened the [Scottish] national doctor shortage to “a slow motion car crash”, saying things are going to get worse before they improve.’

I suspect Dr Mack now wants to forget he ever said the above. Goodness knows what the ‘leading’ Dundee GP is using for evidence. Hopefully the BMA and the RCGP in Scotland have ‘smelled the coffee’ and realise how lucky they are. Perhaps, now, they might desist from their naked Unionist propaganda?

‘Have you been affected by the death of journalism by lazy social media stalkers? Let us know your story.’ BBC Reporting Scotland’s desperate trawl for dirt on NHS Scotland

I’m indebted to a reader for the idea for this story and to a Twitter respondent to a BBC Scotland tweet for the headline above.  I’ve been writing for some time about BBC Scotland’s disgusting use of NHS Scotland as a weapon with which to attack the Scottish Government. After a grudgingly but complimentary piece comparing NHS Scotland favourably with NHS England’s current ‘humanitarian crisis’ on the 12^th, one reader sent me this:

I thought the most perceptive responses below the BBC tweet were these two:

Robertson Malt ‏@Robertsonmalt  22h

@joe90kane @BBCScotNewsdesk Have you been affected by the death of journalism by lazy social media stalkers? Let us know your story.

1 reply .60 retweets 93 likes

Lord of the Bings‏@joe90kane

@Robertsonmalt @BBCScotNewsdesk Impressive start in establishing public trust by Donalda’s new BBC Scotland regime

On the 13^th January 2017, at 6.30, BBC Reporting Scotland headlined with:

‘A Health board apologises to five pregnant women who were turned away from the maternity unit at Glasgow’s ‘flagship’ hospital because of a shortage of beds.’

Viewers who watched the UK News at 6pm before Reporting Scotland may well have been underwhelmed by the report that meant essentially:

Five pregnant women had to travel an extra 7.3 miles for a bed, taking as long as 19 minutes to do so. Those of us not living in an inner city area may well remember much longer journeys from our home to the nearest maternity unit, 30 or more miles away. Even a town as large as Ayr/Prestwick (>70 000) has no maternity unit and the nearest in Irvine is around 15 miles away. I did it four times not counting false alarms. Those who did watch BBC at 6 would have heard this kind of thing along with distressing images taking up much of the thirty minutes:

‘More than four in 10 hospitals in England declared a major alert in the first week of the New Year as they encountered unprecedented pressures. ‘Sixty-six out of 152 trusts raised the alarm as mounting bed shortages led to large numbers of patients experiencing trolley waits and delays in A&E. Data leaked to the BBC earlier this week suggested only one trust hit its four-hour A&E target. But now official figures have revealed more about the scale of the problem. The number of major alerts, which used to be known as red and black alerts, is the highest of the winter.’

In the face of this kind of catastrophe, you’d think BBC Scotland would either praise NHS Scotland or if they can’t bear to do that, just shut up. The above report is both pathetic and unethical. They should be ashamed.

After years of reporting fake news of crises in NHS Scotland, in a determined attempt to undermine the SNP Scottish Government and save the Union, BBC Reporting Scotland, last night (12.1.17) appeared to give ground for the first time with more than one phrase recognising the superior performance of NHS Scotland. It was of course grudging 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 these:

‘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.

If you need a reminder of how intensive their ‘weaponising’ of NHS Scotland has been in the past two years, see most pages in this below or search this blog for ‘NHS’.

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2015/04/29/propaganda-or-professionalism-on-pacific-quay/

Any way you look at it, this is a big surprise and it’s hard to explain why it happened. Are they embarrassed by watching the real crises unfold in England? Are they worried that their viewers are starting to make connections having first watched the English news from 6pm? Have they had lots of complaints about this? Was it to do with the staffing on the night? We had Sally Magnusson in the chair and new Health Correspondent, the kind of likeable and mild-mannered, Lisa Summers, in the field. I have no hard evidence, but I can’t imagine Jackie Bird and Glen Campbell or the former Health Correspondent, Eleanor Bradford, saying these things without gagging or fainting on the spot.

Of course, these were not headlined. The programme started off with ‘The First Minister is under fire over delays to new trauma centres’ and let Ruth and Kezia rant for the cameras about something they had clearly misunderstood. They did, however, give the First Minster enough time to clarify that we already have excellent trauma centres operating and that the delays are to further but not ‘life-or-death’ developments.

What do you make of this then?

Je suis estomaqué.

‘So not only are negatively valenced news broadcasts likely to make you sadder and more anxious, they are also likely to exacerbate your own personal worries and anxieties. We would intuitively expect that news items reflecting war, famine and poverty might induce viewers to ruminate on such topics. But the effect of negatively valenced news is much broader than that – it can potentially exacerbate a range of personal concerns not specifically relevant to the content of the program itself. So, bombarding people with ‘sensationalized’ negativity does have genuine and real psychological effects. Given this ‘cascading’ effect of negativity into people’s personal lives, should TV schedulers be required to consider such effects when preparing and scheduling programs containing emotively negative content?’ 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-we-worry/201206/the-psychological-effects-tv-news

This opening quote from Psychology Today in 2012, in some ways, makes the rest of my article redundant such is its impact but I want to go on to make more clear my critique of BBC Reporting Scotland’s current ‘weaponising’ of NHS Scotland. First though it’s worth dwelling on the word ‘valenced’ above.  What this tells us is that the way the report is phrased is very important. Where words like ‘crisis’ and ‘risk’ are used as they often are by BBC Scotland to dramatise the reports, this can exacerbate the negative effects beyond what a more restrained report on the same issue might do. BBC Scotland might claim it is their duty to report on problems in NHS Scotland but what is key here is how they do so.

Yesterday, I reported on what seems to to be a deliberate campaign by Reporting Scotland to develop largely inflated problems in NHS Scotland into invented crises designed to damage the reputation of the Scottish Government.

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2017/01/11/weaponising-scotlands-health-service-how-bbc-scotland-is-developing-a-new-project-fear-part-1-1st-to-10th-january-2017/

In this interim report, I revealed that over only seven days, Reporting Scotland reported seven problems in NHS Scotland potentially quite worrying for patients, relatives and those considering approaching the system with a worry about their health. Reporting Scotland has a fairly long track record in the use of this distasteful and potentially dangerous tactic. In the run up to the 2015 UK General Election, I monitored broadcasts over a four month period leading up to the election. In this survey there are 29 references to NHS scare stories adopted by Reporting Scotland as a major element in the agenda to undermine the SNP. NHS scare stories were the dominant weapon in their arsenal featured from pages 8 to 27 of a 29 page report!

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/propaganda-or-professionalism.pdf

I have tackled this issue before, controversially (?) at:

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2016/11/22/the-power-of-early-morning-nightmares-and-expectant-mothers-bbc-scotland-callously-undermines-the-morale-of-midwives-their-patients-expectant-mothers-and-their-relatives-with-highly-selective-and/

So, it’s clear that BBC Reporting Scotland is still using contrived NHS problems as a negative weapon against the SNP. What further evidence do I have that long-running and frequent reports of alleged crises can be damaging for both physical and mental health. Well, for the former, I only have today’s (12.1.17) Herald report of new research linking stress to heart attack and stroke:

‘The part of the brain linking stress to the risk of heart attack and stroke has been identified for the first time, researchers say. The findings could indicate that reducing stress has an important physical as well as psychological benefit, scientists said.’

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15018416.Stress_link_to_heart_attack_identified_by_experts/

However, with particular regard to the effect of news media and psychological distress, the evidence is extensive and should give editors pause for thought as I hope the opening quote would. There is more:

Also from Psychology Today in 2012:

‘Negative news on TV is increasing, but what are its psychological effects?’

‘We found that those people who had watched the negative news bulletin spent more time thinking and talking about their worry and were more likely to catastrophise their worry than people in the other two groups.’

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-we-worry/201206/the-psychological-effects-tv-news

Further this report from Psychiatry, based on research in Israel, is particularly concerning:

‘The results suggest that a vast majority (87.2%) of the population tuned in to the newscasts and the majority (76.7%) of viewers increased their news consumption compared to normal. Increased frequency of viewing newscasts was associated with reported anxiety reflected in uncontrolled fear, physiological hyperarousal, sleeping difficulties, and fearful thoughts. A regression model revealed that viewers watching the constant newscasts more than usual are 1.6 times more likely to report at least one anxiety symptom compared to those watching at the same frequency or less, standardized to gender and age…… Increased viewing patterns of televised traumatic content, as well as negative perception of such broadcasts, are associated with the report of anxiety symptoms or psychopathology.’

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26391834

The particular worries triggered by health reports as opposed to the more obviously traumatic images from war zones has also been demonstrated in Media Psychology in 2014:

‘Results showed that the report with mutilations caused by bacterial infection elicited more fear than the report with mutilations caused by land mine explosions. This effect was mediated by the dimensions of suddenness, unpleasantness, personal relevance, and coping potential.’

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2013.826588

To conclude, BBC Reporting Scotland, please think about the ethical basis for your current campaign against NHS Scotland. Surely, you do not want to be associated with this collateral damage from a narrow political agenda.

It’s only really been today (11.1.17) that UK Labour has started attacking, using it as a weapon, the Tory management of the disaster that is NHS England yet Scottish Labour have been digging furiously for the slightest thing that they can get BBC Scotland to turn into a ‘crisis’ for years now.

I’ve been keeping a note, for Reporting Scotland and STV since 1^st January 2017. I plan, of course to release a more full report later but I think there’s a place for interim reports so here’s the first. I’ll be comparing BBC and STV evening news broadcasts to use the latter as a kind of benchmark for what is reasonable and not openly anti-independence propaganda. I’m now fairly sure that STV have made a commercial decision not to drive away their many Yes-supporting viewers, in the interests of maintaining their advertising revenue.

January 1^st to 3^rd were left alone.

4^th:

BBC: Operations in Grampian cancelled due to a shortage of theatre nurses and patients not taking drugs properly.

STV: Nothing 

5^th:

BBC: Nearly 700 patients die in hospital waiting discharge: Labour FoI request; extended

STV: Same story but shorter 

6^th:

BBC: GP leaders call for more funding for patients in deprived areas

STV: Nothing

7^th:

BBC: 21 operations cancelled everyday: Labour FoI request

STV: Same story but set in context of only 2% of total 

8^th:

Nothing

9^th:

BBC: Glasgow Drug Fix Rooms (SNP policy) unlikely to reduce drug abuse

STV Nothing

10^th:

BBC: Call for more funding for research into Type 1 Diabetes

STV: A&E miss waiting time target for week ending January 1^st. 92% instead of 95%

So, in 7 days, that’s 7 reports with the potential to undermine Scottish Government management of the NHS, on BBC Reporting Scotland and only 3 on STV. Further, the STV reports have tended to offer more contextual information to put the reports into scale and perspective.

We’re off and running with an NHS scare nearly every day, creating a senses of crisis through repetition, on Reporting Scotland, and more than twice the rate of STV.

Here’s what BBC Scotland reported this morning (11.1.17) at 06:30am:

‘Most of Scotland’s small firms expect conditions to deteriorate according to research* (invalid, see note below) carried out by the Federation of Small Businesses. It found that business confidence was at a lower level in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK. A separate report from the Bank of Scotland suggests falling levels of entrepreneurship and a decrease in the number of new start-ups here.

I’ll come to the quality of the ‘research’ from the Federation of Small Businesses later but first here’s what the professionally executed research from the Bank of Scotland actually said:

‘Scotland has managed to withstand a sharp decline in the number of start-up businesses in the last five years. The findings of a Bank of Scotland study reveal that 3% fewer new businesses were started in Scotland in November 2016 compared to November 2011, while the UK figure dropped by 19%. (See table 1) Regionally, the data from BankSearch shows that Wales has seen the largest decline in new start-ups, falling by over a quarter (26%). England has also been hit hard, declining by a fifth (20%). As this is where the greatest volume of new start businesses are launched, this equates to nearly 100,000 fewer new businesses created in 2016.’ 

 and:

 ‘In contrast to England and Wales, the view in Scotland is much more encouraging, with almost half (14 of 32) of Scottish regions seeing growth in the number of start-up businesses over the last five years.’

 Here’s the table:

Quite a different story, I think you’ll agree. Now, back to the Federation of Small Businesses Scotland, I can find no sign of the ‘research’ on their site http://www.fsb.org.uk/standing-up-for-you/national-offices/scotland/press-releases

Until I can see the FSB actual report with its methodology, if it has one, I can’t say whether it’s reliable or not. If you can find it, please send me the link.

*Thanks to Broadbield – self-selecting samples therefore invalid:  http://www.fsb.org.uk/benefits/big-voice

http://dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2017/01/scotland-withstands-start-up-setback/

I’ve just been contacted by a recently-retired senior BBC England staff member to tell me confidentially of the collapse in audiences for BBC Scotland’s two flagship news programmes. Reporting Scotland’s audience has fallen from around 500 000 in 2014 to less than 200 000 while Good Morning Scotland’s audience is now less than 40 000.

According to my source these figures are evidence that even confirmed NO voters have become so depressed by the negative fear-based coverage on these two programmes that they cannot bear to watch.

It’s been coming for some time: BBC audience study shows Scottish viewers are most critical of all

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/scotland-blog/2016/may/20/bbc-audience-study-shows-scottish-viewers-are-most-critical-of-all

It is possible that my source is unreliable. If so, BBC Scotland will hopefully provide the figures they have.