Talking-up Scotland

According to the Scottish Information Commissioner’s (SIC) records, in the last three years (2005 to mid 2007), of the Labour/Lib-Dem coalition, BBC Scotland made only three FoI requests of Scottish Government departments. It would have been surprising if they had made more because a public service provider depends on government for its funding and so is unlikely to try to expose any flaws in any of its departments. Don’t bite the hand as they say. Again, according to the Scottish Information Commissioner’s records In the last three years of the SNP government (2014 to 29 November 2016), they made twenty-six! The SIC does not receive all the requests made and does not know of any made directly by the BBC to local governments or health boards. According to the Scottish Government’s Strategy and Constitution Directorate, BBC Scotland has made a total of 160 FoI requests since January 2008!

I’m still waiting for a response from the English equivalent to the SIC to see how many FoI requests BBC England has made. I’m also still waiting on a response to my FoI request to BBC Scotland.

Readers of Wings over Scotland will remember their August 2015 request under the Freedom of Information Act for the viewing figures for Good Morning Scotland and the 2015 post-news debate programme. As Wings put it the BBC reply was ‘None of your damned business!’  The Rev then correctly interpreted this as, ‘taxation without representation.’

I was driven to make these requests by the recent disgusting scare story on Scotland’s maternity wards broadcast by Reporting Scotland and proudly claiming credit for their own FoI-base investigative journalism. My response is at:

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2016/11/24/stress-and-anxiety-could-cause-early-death-says-bbc-scotland-could-exaggerated-melodramatic-and-distorted-reports-on-health-care-failures-be-contributing-to-tho/

The last three FoI requests made of the Labour/Lib-Dem coalition were unlikely to have cast any shadow on that Scottish government while all of the last 26 made of the SNP government were about NHS Scotland on topics such as:

‘Cancelled operations’

‘Personal injury compensation claims’

‘Waiting times’

and:

‘GP Practice list cleansing.’

 Talk about ‘fucking ambulance chasers!’  You can see what they were after.

I’ve said it before and I’ve been criticised for supposed exaggeration and poor taste but I’ll say it again:

BBC Reporting Scotland’s often daily serial NHS scare stories are almost certainly putting some patients of attending, causing increased anxiety even abject fear in others, and so, causing unnecessary deaths. It must be heart-breaking for NHS Scotland employees to go home and watch this. Have BBC Reporting Scotland no shame?

I know they want to prevent Scottish independence but have they no shame? The might as well join Rupert Murdoch’s stable.

Footnote: I’m currently receiving NHS Scotland care, in Ayr, and it’s bloody marvellous!

 

Reporting Scotland and the opposition parties scream out ‘crisis’ and reveal just how little they know about education, especially international comparisons. Here is the truth of the matter in ten statements which I’ll elaborate a bit below:

1. Some tests just suit some countries’ education systems. Doing well in one test doesn’t make that country’s overall education system better than that of lower rankers and in some cases, especially in East Asia (China, Korea, Singapore), it is evidence of them being worse in many ways.
2. The PISA results are based on unreliable estimates with huge scope for error and thus, I quote, ‘useless.’
3. Summarising a country’s education system in just three numbers is, I quote, ‘madness.’
4. Comparing countries with radically different cultures and educational structures is meaningless.
5. PISA does not measure curriculum knowledge just general skills, so the so-called successes of Finland and South Korea or the middle-rank ‘failure’ of Scotland are not based on the quality of their teachers, their schools or their curriculum.
6. The Finnish system is not that successful in other ways that PISA does not test.
7. The highly authoritarian, ‘industrial’ East Asian systems are a form of child abuse we surely do not want to see in Scotland.
8. The East Asian systems are not at all successful in developing the creativity, originality and innovation needed for future success in developed societies.
9. The East Asian systems, in most cases, brutally abandon children with learning difficulties.
10. The Scottish system is highly successful in feeding its universities with ever more and better qualified students, it is inclusive, caring and explicitly promotes creativity, originality and innovation.

 

Some tests just suit some countries

The Finnish system, used to do badly and you could argue they now teach toward the tests to get good results with an emphasis on developing general problem-solving skills rather than curriculum knowledge which, perhaps, the Scottish schools do better? The East Asian schools, as we’ll see below, force-feed their children with highly intensive and long days with disturbing side-effects, but high scores in PISA and in other tests like TIMSS.

Unreliability

With PISA methods only a small number of pupils in each school answer the same set of questions, with these results then used to estimate students’ ‘latent’ ability. According to Professor Spiegelhaller of Cambridge University, this creates a huge scope for error and make the results useless.

Summarising

Dr Hugh Morrison of Queen’s University, Belfast says bluntly: ‘There are very few things you can summarise with a number and yet PISA claims to be able to capture a country’s education system in just three of them. It can’t be possible. It is madness.’

Comparisons

Given the huge range and diversity of educational practice, values, cultures, economies and parent behaviour across countries as alien to each other as, say, Scotland, China, Peru and Tunisia, making comparisons is pointless and perhaps damaging.

Finland and South Korea’s ‘Success’

Finland and South Korea seem quite different at first sight yet both are successful in PISA. Closer examination, however, reveals they have two identical features which make it easier for them to win at the game of PISA.

First, in both languages, words are written just as they are said unlike in other languages especially English. This means language acquisition happens quicker and more successfully across all pupil abilities than in other countries giving their systems more time, earlier, to build on these language skills to develop general problem-solving skills. Notice the English-speaking USA and UK are only middle achievers in PISA.

Second, both cultures are very homogeneous with few migrant groups with other first languages pulling down the scores as they struggle with a new language. It’s for this reason that the otherwise very similar Swedish system appears to do much less well because it has 10 times the immigration rate of Finland.

Why the Finnish System is not so successful

 Like South Korean children, Finnish pupils are at the bottom of the tables in assessments of happiness in school and rarely answer yes to ‘I am happy at school’. Perhaps the Finnish emphasis on group-work and general problem-solving is not so ‘child-centred’ as many in the UK think?

Also, Finland does much worse in the wider TIMSS tests of wider and valuable mathematics knowledge coming 95 points behind China though it is only 2 points behind in PISA.

Child Abuse 

The East Asian systems in South Korea and Shanghai/China are based on gruelling programmes with 13 hour days and only 5.5 hours sleeping time. Social time is not mentioned at all. Professor Zhao of Oregon University has described them as:

‘Glorifying educational authoritarianism and romanticising misery.’

In 2014, the New York Times described South Korea’s system as ‘an assault on children’ and suggested that South Korea:

‘..produces ranks of over-achieving students who pay a stiff price in health and happiness. The entire programme amounts to child abuse.’

Pupil suicide rates are high in East Asia and low in the UK.

Creativity, Originality and Innovation

 Developed and developing countries need innovators along with cadres of skilled workers who can replicate current standards. East Asian companies often have to buy-in Western innovations, staff and start-up companies from places like Scotland. In 2014, The Harvard Business Review said:

‘China’s examination hell; how can students so focused on test scores possibly become innovators?

 Even Finland’s success can be overstated. Its economic innovations have been in the context of only one company, Nokia, and it is now in decline.

Leaving ‘special’ children to languish and fail

According to teacher’s chat-room evidence (the only kind allowed out of these countries), very few East Asian schools make arrangements to support children with conditions such as ADHD or autism in their race for high test ratings and the status that comes with them and that our Labour and Tory politicians shamefully seem to believe.

Scotland

The Scottish system is not perfect. All educational systems are infinitely improvable. It is however, caring, inclusive, and successful with ever greater numbers of exam passes and, critically, for the future, has an explicit commitment to creativity from its government:

‘Creativity is very clearly at the heart of the philosophy of Curriculum for Excellence.’

 Scotland has a long and strong record of innovations, some of them sold to China recently.

Despite Scotland’s frankly more humane, more future-oriented system, it still does respectably well in international tests of little real value. Dips and rises in these, mean little or nothing at all.

Why doesn’t Reporting Scotland tell us any of this? They fail my test.

Comparing the two reports of the First Minister’s trip to Dublin offered no surprises for those of us familiar with BBC Reporting Scotland. As you might expect, there were differences, as once more BBC Reporting Scotland in the person of Glenn Campbell, had to remind us that Westminster is still the boss and that we should remember we’re really too wee and unimportant to count in European Affairs. Here’s how STV opened:

A number of senators in the Upper House of the Irish Parliament have voiced their support for Scottish Independence. The calls were led by the former Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic. Today NS became the first serving head of a foreign administration to address the Upper House of the Irish Parliament.

So two clear successes for the First Minister but Reporting Scotland could only mutter:

‘Nicola Sturgeon tells the Irish Senate that Brexit is deeply unwelcome. As leader of the devolved Scottish government, the Speaker of independent Ireland’s parliament has honoured her with an invitation to speak.

Notice the grudging tone, the patronising reminder of our lesser status should we forget it and the, of course ‘accurate’, vocabulary in the BBC’s opening comments. In the STV report, Sturgeon was given time to speak at length directly to the viewer but for the BBC, Campbell clearly felt it better to further reduce her/our substance by putting it in his own words. That’s arrogance. You see how to let someone speak for themselves in special surroundings can make them seem important? We don’t want that do we?

When we move on to hear the senators respond, STV give us:

‘For this country, independence has become a remarkably and completely transforming thing and I have no doubt that the genius of the Scottish people once released through full independence will achieve the same thing for Scotland.’

From STV reporter Bernard Ponsonby:

‘And then Senator after senator voiced support for the central goal of the SNP, that of Scottish independence.

Then on with four more senators:

‘I welcome the debate that you bring around the whole issue of nationalism, that’s not an insular thing.’

‘What can Ireland do to help Scotland achieve its full potential and to achieve its independence?’

‘When will you make the decision to ask the Scottish people to vote again for an independent Scotland?’

‘The nationalism that you espouse is very similar to the nationalism espoused by the women and men of 1916.’

But, over to BBC Scotland and Glenn Campbell clearly saw little of this and reported:

‘And from some in this house, support for the independence option.’

‘It wasn’t to be your day in 2014 but I know Scotland’s day will come and I know you will succeed in the future.’

‘I wholly and unambiguously support Scotland in its movement for national independence.’

So STV thought five senators were representative of the gathering while assuming Glenn was there, two were enough to show that it was only ‘some’. Actually, shouldn’t ‘some’ mean that at least one senator actually was unsupportive? Notice the word ‘option’? It’s only an option. Remember 2014, eh?

Glenn reminds of the British ambassador being in the audience. It’s as if they need to keep, reminding us that we’re still in Britain. We haven’t forgotten. Then Glen sums up with

‘Nicola Sturgeon has been well-received in Dublin but she knows only too well that the approach to Brexit will not be decided here but by the Government in London.’

He doesn’t of course, at that point, mention the Supreme Court decision that the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments will have a say.

Back to STV and Bernard Ponsonby, clearly more impressed by events, summed up:

The words were warm, the applause warmer. This was a mutual love-in. In some respects the contributions today during the open session were truly extraordinary. Senator after senator rose in their place to argue for Scottish independence. All of this,  from parliamentarians in a foreign country.

Glenn won’t be finishing that way thank you very much. He has something up his sleeve and it looks like Ruth Davidson:

‘And of course, in terms of independence, the Scottish Conservatives tonight have said the FM should take off the table talk of another independence referendum because that would cause more division and upheaval. The First Minister is not prepared to do that even though it seems at the moment she has more support for the concept in the Irish Senate than she does in the Scottish Parliament or in the wider Scottish public.’

Remember the trip was about Brexit. When propaganda is so explicit, so hypnotic, you wonder if it might actually fail. I wish.

 

 

‘Department of Health [England] figures showed that the number of bed days accounted for by someone with a primary or secondary diagnosis of malnutrition rose from 128,361 in 2010-11, the year the coalition came to power, to 184,528 last year – a 61% rise over five years.’ (Guardian, 25^th November)

Do I know for certain that the same is not happening in Scotland? Well not 100% but only 99.9% certain, because there are no recent reports, but I’d put money on it because of three really good bits of evidence.

First, if you search the Scottish media for any combination of words suggesting malnutrition in hospitals, at any level, anywhere in Scotland, in the last ten years, you find just one story from 2015, repeated over and over across the Scottish media in a feeding-frenzy (sorry) of righteous indignation and condemnation of the Scottish Government. Here’s how the Daily Record sensitively captured it: ‘Patient left to starve for EIGHT days: Shocking discovery found during spot-check at super-hospital.’ If there was any evidence at all of a similar situation in Scotland, even another single case, you can be sure our MSM would be all over it.

Second, a proper, empirical study published in 2014 suggested that the Scottish situation was better then and that the Scottish Government was already well ahead of the game in putting further protective measures in place:

‘The overall mean prevalence of ‘malnutrition’ in patients admitted to hospitals in the UK was 29% but there was variation between the nations, with the highest in England (30%) and lowest in Scotland (24%).

‘In addition unlike the UK as a whole, and the other nations of the UK there was improvement in the proportion of hospitals with access to a Nutrition Support Team, which are important for the management of complex nutritional conditions and which were available in over 7/10 participating centres in 2011.’

‘At the start of the surveys many hospitals in Scotland had already made improvements to the organisation of nutritional care following the publication of the NHS QIS standards in 2003 so not all items were found to improve significantly during the survey period. However, there was a consistent trend towards improvements over time particularly. Unlike the rest of the UK there was a marked increase in the number of hospitals that had access to a nutritional support team. There is room for further improvement but the Scottish NSW data are very encouraging.’

Third, the English media have known about this looming crisis since long before the Guardian article today (25^th November 2016). See this from the Mail in 2010!

‘50,000 people die from malnutrition a year in NHS hospitals,’ claim Tories’

Yes, that’s the Tories blaming Labour for malnutrition. Is that funny or just a bit sickening?

See this from 2013:

Nearly 1,200 people have starved to death in NHS hospitals because ‘nurses are too busy to feed patients’

I rest my case. When BBC Scotland get wind of this they’ll………………………just ignore it.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/25/huge-rise-in-hospital-beds-in-england-taken-up-by-people-with-malnutrition

http://www.bapen.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/377-bapen-publishes-results-of-biggest-malnutrition-survey-ever-undertaken-scotland

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287332/Nearly-1-200-people-starved-death-NHS-hospitals-nurses-busy-feed-patients.html#ixzz4R2xBLSqL

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253795/50-000-people-dying-malnourished-NHS-hospitals-claim-Tories.html#ixzz4R2xzoTDy

I’ve been researching and writing for some time now in an attempt to counter the imbalance in BBC Scotland news reporting. I’ve been especially concerned with their apparent willingness to concoct or to exaggerate problems in NHS Scotland as part of an agenda to undermine the reputation of the SNP Scottish Government. Their utterly unprofessional, cheap tabloid, report on maternity wards has set a new low for them and has reminded me of the risks for the health of their viewers that they are prepared to take in the pursuit of an ideological goal. Reporting accurately on problems in NHS and, of course, balancing that with reports of successes in the same service, would be a public service and professional journalism. However, their constant diet of fear, anxiety, incompetence, death and betrayal must be having some effect. The effect on midwife morale can only be guessed at.

 See this from BBC Scotland in 2012:

‘The largest ever investigation into low-level mental health problems suggests it can shorten life expectancy. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and University College London studied data from 68,000 adults. They found that even small amounts of stress and anxiety could lead to an early death.’

 See this from fearof.net:

‘News, media reports or TV/Movies about hospital mishaps are also likely to lead to the phobia [of hospitals]. Unfortunately, this concern is not totally without basis- today medical malpractice and errors have become fairly routine occurrences. Even advanced countries are known to have mistakenly administered wrong drugs/treatments/procedures despite their best efforts. For people with nervous mind-sets or adrenal insufficiency or those already suffering from other phobias, such reports can induce a permanent fear of hospitals.’

Here’s the text of my complaint today to the BBC on their coverage of their own FOI request regarding maternity care in Scotland:

The headline phrase ‘reveals the scale of deaths of mothers and babies’ is both inaccurate and likely to suggest a crisis when there is no empirical evidence for such. Use of the word ‘scale’ requires either a ratio or a percentage figure to be used. None was. There were 284 456 live births in Scotland from 2011 so examples given must be set in the context of that for them to be meaningful and informative (your purpose).

So, when the reporter refers to 3 mothers, 79 stillborn and 26 baby deaths, the viewer needs to hear also what ratio or percentage these are of the total. So, presented properly we should have at least heard how many live births there were (284 456) and to be professional, that these represented only 0.001%, 0.027% and 0.009% of the total births.

I know the stillborn and baby deaths are not in the above total. Adding them would of course only make the percentages even smaller!

While the minister was able to mention, late on, ‘falling levels’, why did we not see the data showing an actual fall over the five years, from 5.1%, 4.7%, 4.2%, 4% to 3.8% for stillbirths and from 4.1%, 3.7%, 3.3%, 3.6% to 3.2% for infant deaths as this would have informed (your purpose) the viewers of evidence of a steady and encouraging fall.

We also heard of shortages of midwifery staff being ‘related to almost 500 incidents’. Do you mean that these shortages caused deaths? If so why not say so? Here’s what the RCN said this year: ‘services were not currently under threat, but may not be safe in future.’ Also, why did you not also contextualise and inform (your purpose) with this from Quality Watch: with Scotland having the lowest rate of 3.3 in 2013; Northern Ireland with 3.5 in 2012; Wales with 3.6 in 2013 and England with 3.9 in 2014? (Sources on request)

Finally, do you think that by these distortions of reality you may be reducing staff morale, increasing expectant mother’s anxiety and perhaps in only a few cases, causing unnecessary deaths?

As for yesterday’s good news on hospitals – Scottish hospital admission deaths fall 7% over past two years, new NHS figures reveal – there’s no sign of it on BBC Scotland. Might that news reduce hospital phobia?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19077299

http://www.fearof.net/fear-of-hospitals-phobia-nosocomephobia/

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottish-hospital-admission-deaths-fall-9308341

Do the BBC Scotland bosses have a date for Indyref2? They’ve launched a barrage of negative stories which could easily suggest that the people of Scotland are living in some kind of hell-hole and the SNP by implication is to blame. As in 2014, they seem to be in full propaganda mode. In particular we’ve had the extended horror story on ‘the scale’ (miniscule) of avoidable deaths in our maternity wards. Based on a tiny number of exceptional cases they have suggested, again, a crisis in NHS Scotland. I’ve written already to put this in some kind of intelligent context 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/

This is some of the most disgusting propaganda I’ve ever seen. Running stories of such anxiety-inducing distortion suggests strong evidence of psychopathic tendencies in BBC Scotland’s New and Current Affairs staff. They have also mounted a campaign against the Transport Minister, Hamza Yousef, pretending they are merely reflecting the protest of opposition parties. Did none of them ever do a media studies module and learn that media representations create reality as much as they reflect it? Are we going to get a story of a miscarriage due to a delayed train? I’m only half-joking.

They’ve even turned SQA Geography into a story of failure by the Scottish Government!

What they didn’t report, last night at 6.30pm, today at 1.30pm or tonight at 6.30 pm, is this good, very good, news from the Scottish Government (ISD) website yesterday (22^nd) about NHS Scotland:

Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios

• The HSMR for Scotland has decreased by 7.0% between January to March 2014 (first quarter after new baseline) and April to June 2016.
• No hospitals had significantly higher standardised mortality ratios in April to June 2016 than the national average.
• Eight of the 29 hospitals participating in the Scottish Patient Safety Programme have shown a reduction in excess of 10% since January to March 2014

Back in August, 2016, they did slip in a wee bit of good news for NHS Scotland, to the lunchtime report, but they were too busy with bagpipes and the Celtic game to repeat it later at 6.30pm.  Jackie Bird brought us this great news:

‘Meanwhile fewer people are dying in Scotland’s hospitals. Between 2014 and this year, hospital mortality fell by 4.5% which is 3 000 fewer deaths than predicted.’

So, they managed a wee mention of a 4.5% improvement at 1.30pm but not in the main report at 6.30pm and yesterday’s 7% gets no mention at all. Yet, a report based on the distortion of a tiny number of ‘adverse events’ in maternity wards is positively drooled over.

And, you’d never know it from the broadcasts but as Shona Robison Health Secretary pointed out on their website in August:

‘Scotland was the first country in the world to implement a national patient safety programme and is the only UK country publishing and driving improvement in our NHS through the use of mortality data in this way.’

Sources:

http://www.isdscotland.org/publications/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-37164244

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottish-hospital-admission-deaths-fall-9308341

 

Image: Twitter-Getty

Important Note: I wrote this quickly in my own brief  ‘surge’ of energy. Regular readers will know that I can stumble over numbers. So, be gentle with any errors you spot. I have checked it to my own standardzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I admit it. I used the word ‘trump’ as ‘clickbait.’ That, at 65+, I even know the word ‘clickbait’ is awesome, man, don’t you think? Anyway, back to the topic. The idea that at least a significant number of those former Labour voters, remaining after the flood of Yessers to support the SNP in 2014/2015, are actually prepared to support the Tories, as opposed to just abstain, because of their undying loyalty to Queen and Country is common in social media and in some mainstream media reports.

We had one, just one I admit, wee bit of evidence recently with this defection:

‘Scottish Labour hopeful defects to Tories over failure to back Brexit and push UK union. Braden Davy, who took on Alex Salmon (sic as the Romans say; something fishy here?) in his Gordon constituency last year, said he had become disillusioned with the Labour Party since then. He revealed he resigned from the party after the EU referendum.’

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/714241/Braden-Davy-Labour-defection-Conservatives-Scotland

David Cameron clearly thought there was scope, in March this year (2016), in pushing the Unionist thing to attract voters in Scotland. He applied to register the Tories as the ‘Conservative and Unionist Party’ just before coming up to speak to the Scottish Conservative Conference.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14320263.Tories_apply_to_become____Conservative_and_Unionist_party____across_Britain/

Is there, however, hard, empirical evidence that former Labour supporters are prepared to vote Tory just because they put the Union above other criteria such as progressive policies like fair taxation or benefits? Well, there is this recent YouGov poll which does seem to suggest that is the case but the waters are muddied by Brexit. I’d argue, though, that British Unionism and EU Leave sympathies commonly overlap in the same people. Here’s how the Express reported it:

‘Labour is being ABANDONED by Brexit voters for Conservatives. LABOUR is being deserted by supporters who backed Brexit – with hundreds of thousands of them turning to the Tories, a new poll showed today. Around 35 per cent, some 3.3 million, of the 9.3 million people who voted Labour in the 2015 election voted Leave in June. Some nine per cent – around 297,000 people – have switched to the Conservatives.’

This was a UK-wide poll with a sample size of 3285 GB adults and fieldwork was done between 19^th and 21^st September 2016. There is no Scottish breakdown of the figures so I suppose we can say little about the Scottish participants really.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/713849/Brexit-voters-abandon-Labour-Conservatives-new-poll

The related factor, sometimes used to further support the notion of Unionist former Labour voters switching to the Tories, is the so-called Scottish Tory ‘surge.’ I say ‘so-called’ because I’ve had ma doots right from the beginning about this ‘surge’. I’ll come back to this below. Some in the SNP clearly believe there has been such a thing:

‘George Kerevan: There’s no third way in Scottish politics after the Tories’ surge’

http://www.thenational.scot/comment/14865468.George_Kerevan__There___s_no_third_way_in_Scottish_politics_after_the_Tories____surge/

Not surprisingly, the Scottish Tory Leader absolutely believes in it literally, no inverted commas required:

‘Ruth Davidson hails Scottish Conservatives’ election surge’

http://stv.tv/news/politics/1353110-ruth-davidson-hails-historic-tory-breakthrough-at-holyrood/

Right, let’s get seriously factual now. Here are the results of the recent Glasgow Garscadden election. Any sign of a ‘surge’ for Ruth?

Party	2016 votes	2016 share	since 2012	since 2007
SNP	2,135	42.6%	+15.6%	+19.6%
Labour	1,944	38.8%	-22.8%	-17.8%
Conservative	510	10.2%	+7.6%	+4.9%

So that was a swing from Labour to SNP of 15.6% and to the Conservatives of 7.6%. Labour lost 22.8% so roughly two thirds went to the SNP, even at this stage two years after the post-Referendum flood of Yessers, and one third went the Conservatives? Not so much a surge as a wee wave?

https://ukgeneralelection2020.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/council-by-election-result-6th-october.html

What about the Dumfries and Galloway – Annandale North results? Here they are:

Conservatives 2,041 (56.9 per cent, +11.4 on 2012) 

Scottish National: 749 (21.1 per cent, +11.7)

Labour: 611 (17.2 per cent, -8.2) 

Green Party 152 (4.2 per cent, -7.5)

 So that was a Conservatives ‘hold’ (Kind of like those dirty holds 60’s wrestler Mick McManus used to do?) with Labour losing 8.2% yet with both the Tories and the SNP increasing by more than 11%. So, even in the heart of Scotland’s only Tory stronghold, there’s nothing you could call a surge. Even if the entire constituency’s tiny Labour-voting population had gone Tory, there wouldn’t have been enough to produce a visible ‘surge.’

http://www.conservativehome.com/localgovernment/2016/11/council-by-election-results-from-yesterday-105.html

I know, let’s also have a look at the 2016 Scottish Election results. The Tories did get more seats even if they were all for coming in second and third place in the constituencies:

Parties		Additional member system										Total seats
		Constituency					Region
		Votes	%	+/−	Seats	+/−	Votes	%	+/−	Seats	+/−	Total	+/−	%
	SNP	1,059,897	46.5	1.1	59	6	953,987	41.7	2.3	4	12	63	6	48.8
	Cons	501,844	22.0	8.1	7	4	524,222	22.9	10.6	24	12	31	16	24.0
	Lab	514,261	22.6	9.2	3	12	435,919	19.1	7.2	21	1	24	13	18.6

So, in the constituencies that’s a surge of 8.1% and in the also-rans it’s 16%. In the constituencies, it’s still less votes than the collapsing Labour vote and in the also-rans it’s less than 4% more than Labour. Isn’t this really a very modest, flat calm, achievement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament_election,_2016

It’s even more modest and accurate if you look at the UK General Election 2015 where voters were reminded that Ruth and her pals were actually in the same ‘nasty’ party with the same policies as George Osborne not to mention the creeps hiding in the right-wing then, but now emerging into power in the UK.

Party		Seats	Seats change	Seats contested	Votes	Votes, of total (%)	Change (%)
	Others	0	0	11	2,649	0.1
	CISTA	0	0	8	1,807	0.1	N/A
	Conservative	1	0	59	434,097	14.9	1.8
	Labour	1	−40	59*	707,147	24.3	17.7
	Liberal Democrat	1	−10	59	219,675	7.5	11.3
	National Front	0	0	2	289	0.0	N/A
	Scottish Christian	0	0	2	1,467	0.1	0.1
	Scottish Green	0	0	32	39,205	1.3	0.7
	SNP	56	50	59	1,454,436	50.0	30.1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015_(Scotland)

Even in apparent decline, Scottish Labour attracted nearly twice as many voters as the Scottish Tories when revealed as part of their UK association! That was a 30% tsunami for the SNP and actually a 1.8% FALL for the Scottish Tory vote! They didn’t even gain one seat. Some surge eh?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results/scotland

Here’s how a Prof’s revealing explanation was presented in the Guardian:

‘The Tories claim they succeeded in part by targeting blue-collar unionists, Labour voters who put defending the UK first. There is scant evidence for that. Professor Michael Keating, of the Centre for Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh and with the University of Aberdeen, said jumping straight from red to blue was an unlikely transition for a Scottish voter. While in some seats the 10% fall in the Labour vote and a 10% rise in the Tories suggested a direct link, it would be wrong to assume so, says Keating. Voting patterns suggest instead that Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, triumphed (sic) by attracting centre-right voters who once backed the Liberal Democrats – particularly in Aberdeenshire and southern Scotland, and by re-energising slumbering Conservatives who were never interested in Holyrood elections (until the tax powers came along).

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/scotland-blog/2016/may/09/scottish-tories-benefit-and-labour-flounder-as-snp-vote-shifts-to-cities

Finally, Rangers FC, what part have they played in any Tory surge? SFA (good eh?) is of course my quick answer to prevent online abuse.  Some social media commentators are in the habit of damning all Rangers fans as unthinking Unionists. Not me!!!

Like all good researchers I should ‘surface’ myself. I was a Rangers supporter from the ages of 5 to 12. In my primary school, we were all Rangers supporters, or else. I was a Labour supporter too until Neil Kinnock. I didn’t need to wait for Tony Blair to get the message! I am now a Falkirk-supporting SNP member, OK?

Here are the results from a poll by Panelbase for the Daily Record in May 2014:

The poll looked at voting intentions among the support of Scotland’s top clubs for the first time. Although the results are not scientific, the snapshot suggests that 48 per cent of Celtic fans will vote Yes, compared with 40 per cent planning to vote No. The rest are apparently undecided. Among Rangers fans, support for independence was placed at 45 per cent – with 41 per cent likely to vote No.

See?

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/old-firm-united-both-celtic-3598872

Back to the opening question: ‘Has loyalty to ‘Great’ Britain trumped progressive policies for fleeing Labour voters and produced a Tory surge?’

There is absolutely no evidence of any value, for either notion. I rest my case and ease my worried brow.

 

I’ve just posted this (snailmail) separately, blind, to the heads of BBC News and the Scottish Government civil service:

Gary Smith

Head of News and Current Affairs

BBC Scotland

Pacific Quay

Glasgow G51 1DA

 

Leslie Evans

Permanent Secretary

St Andrew’s House

Regent Road

Edinburgh EH1 3DG

 

22^nd November 2016

 

Dear…..

 

Freedom of Information Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide me with details of all Freedom of Information requests made by the BBC Scotland News and Current Affairs Department, of all and any Scottish Government departments, from 12^th May 1999 until the present day, ie the date of the arrival of this letter in your hands.

Thank you in anticipation,

 

 

John W Robertson, Professor (Retired)

 

 

At 06.26am on Tuesday 22^nd November, still dark outside, BBC Reporting Scotland opened with:

‘A BBC Scotland investigation has found that thousands of incidents have taken place in Scotland’s maternity wards since 2011 ranging from minor mistakes to major errors leading to the deaths of mothers or their babies.’

Just imagine how you’d feel hearing that if you were a midwife or an expectant mother or even a close relative or friend of either? If that’s evidence of a real crisis, then urgent action is needed. If it’s not, then BBC Scotland should pay a heavy price for the most disgusting piece of scaremongering ever.

Amongst the many things the TV broadcast report at 06:26am, did not mention, crucially, is actually on the BBC website version of the story:

‘The Scottish government pointed out that in 2015 the country had recorded its lowest level of stillbirths. Health Secretary Shona Robison also said that there were fewer neonatal deaths and fewer maternal deaths.’

These comments above came after a BBC Scotland Freedom of Information (FOI) request into the number of “adverse events” taking place in maternity units. Crucially, the BBC has put together no formal report here that we can examine. There are no comparative statistics telling us anything meaningful about maternity care in Scotland just sensationalist rotten cherry picking of the kind you’d expect from the Daily Mail.

In this period from 2011, there were ‘serious cases’ (‘adverse events’?) with 26 deaths of newborns, 79 stillbirths and three mothers died. BBC Scotland did not mention that these awful events happened within a total figure of around 250 000 births, in the same period (http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2014/01/8489/8). So even if we combine the deaths of newborns and the stillbirths we have a mortality-rate due to ‘adverse event’ of 0.042%.

The website version also gives us these salacious details but they are not set in the context of the overall number of births and thus percentage figure. I have.

• A pregnant woman involved in a “radiation incident”; 0.0004%
• A newborn baby died due to a spinal cord injury following a forceps delivery; 0.0004%
• Five reports of staff behaving inappropriately or in a hostile manner; 0.002%
• Three occasions in 2013 at one hospital when medical equipment “failed” during an operation; 0.0012%
• More than a dozen [how many then?] medication-related events at one health board including instances where the wrong medication was given, the wrong dosage was administered, and where the medication wasn’t administered at all. 0.0048%

Presenting these incidents as somehow indicative of a wider crisis rather than what they really are, incredibly rare, unavoidable in any system, freak incidents, is utterly irresponsible and so far from any kind of professionalism it beggars belief. I’ve been accused before of suggesting that BBC scare stories about NHS Scotland might actually be putting vulnerable people off approaching reportedly very busy and highly stressed staff and consequently causing deaths. You’ll know that fitness for work testing has now been shown to have caused many suicides amongst disabled people. So, has BBC Scotland’s merciless scare-mongering and flawed reporting, over several years now, about NHS Scotland, caused deaths? Almost certainly it has. As for morale amongst midwives, I can only wonder.

For a reminder of how bad news in the early morning is the most effective propaganda, see:

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2016/09/22/the-power-of-nightmares-waking-up-to-early-morning-bad-news-on-bbc-scotland-and-fearing-the-unknown/

 

 

 

Image: play.google.com

BBC Reporting Scotland, STV News and most of Scotland’s newspapers are alive with hysterical accounts of a crisis in Scotland’s railway system after a single incident in Edinburgh last Thursday. Already the First Minister has felt obliged to apologise and Transport Minister, Humza Yousef, has faced calls to resign from Unionist politicians. Needless to say the mainstream media reports have been utterly devoid of facts or context. Look at the table below and you’ll see that the commonly used measure of train punctuality ‘also known as PPM (public performance measure) means trains arriving at their terminating station within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 minutes for long distance services’, for ScotRail, has actually been better than the average for the UK as a whole and has improved on the figure for 2015/16.

_________________________________________________

 Performance by train operator

 The table below shows the average PPM for Britain as a whole and by train operating company. The moving annual average is calculated over the 365 days to 12 November.

Train Operating Company	PPM % period 8, 2015/16	PPM % period 8, 2016/17	PPM Moving annual average (MAA)
Abellio Greater Anglia	86.0	86.8	89.2
Arriva Trains Wales	90.1	88.6	91.7
c2c Rail	96.5	93.3	95.0
Caledonian Sleeper	83.2	87.4	86.2
Chiltern	92.8	93.2	93.1
Crosscountry	85.1	86.5	89.6
East Midlands Trains	89.5	87.5	92.2
First Hull Trains	78.3	82.4	83.2
Transpennine Express	75.0	88.1	87.6
Govia Thameslink Railway	74.2	69.9	75.6
Grand Central	83.3	85.9	84.7
Great Western Railway	85.0	85.0	89.1
Heathrow Express	90.1	90.6	90.9
London Midland	83.6	85.7	89.1
London Overground	92.5	94.8	94.7
Merseyrail	93.4	94.5	95.3
Northern	84.3	88.5	91.2
ScotRail	83.3	87.0	89.8
Southeastern	82.3	84.4	86.3
Stagecoach South West Trains	86.8	85.5	88.3
TfL Rail	94.8	94.9	94.2
Virgin Trains East Coast	80.3	80.9	82.7
Virgin Trains West Coast	86.4	90.5	87.1
Total England & Wales Performance	84.3	85.1	87.9 *

*The total label above is just another piece of Anglo-centrism by some anonymous website data entry assistant and is the UK figure as indicated at the top of the table.

Strangely, the Secretary of State for Transport, Chris Grayling, has not been called upon to resign despite the appalling record of Westminster’s local line, Govia Thameslink Railway, with only 69.9% of trains arriving on or near on-time. ‘Govia?’ What does that remind me of? Is the Right Dishonourable Michael Gove on the board there?

Source:

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/about/performance/