Talking-up Scotland

From the above published today:

‘The child health programme is offered to all children in Scotland. The programme includes screening for specific medical problems, provision of routine childhood immunisations, and a series of child health reviews. Health Visitors usually provide reviews for preschool children. The reviews involve assessment of children’s growth and development, and provision of advice and support for children and their families. A review for children aged 27-30 months was introduced in Scotland in April 2013.’

This report published today, tells us that the percentage of children recorded as having any developmental concern has declined steadily from 19% in 2013/14 to 15% in 2017/18.

Most dramatic and encouraging has been a decline in children with a concern about their emotional/behavioural development in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, from 14% to only 8%.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Child-Health/Publications/2019-04-09/2019-04-09-Child-Health-27m-review-Report.pdf?

Why is this happening?

Poverty lies at the hearty of problems in the care for children’s development

In 2018, The Joseph Rowntree Foundation had this to say about the Scottish Government’s intentions to reduce child poverty:

‘The Scottish Government’s commitment to building a social security system that has dignity and respect at its core and offering routes into employment for those currently excluded from the labour market, could change the family incomes and prospects of thousands of children for the better.’

 

Differences with non-Scottish Parts 1: Less vulnerable to benefits cuts

‘The IFS found that low-income families in Scotland currently have a higher proportion of their income coming from earnings than low-income families in some (but not all) parts of the UK, so have a lower proportion of income that is vulnerable to benefit cuts compared with some of the hardest-hit regions of the UK.’ (Hood and Waters,2017). 2

 

Differences with non-Scottish Parts 2: Fewer large families

‘In addition, one key change to UK benefit policy – the two-child limit on tax credits and Universal Credit– will particularly hit families with three or more children born after 6 April 2017. The IFS analysis found that Scotland has proportionally fewer families with three or more children than elsewhere in the UK, and around half the proportions found in Northern Ireland and the West Midlands.’ (Hood and Waters, 2017). 3

 

Differences with non-Scottish Parts 3 and 4: Higher increases in median income and less relative poverty

Note: The predicted dramatic increases above neglect impact of further welfare devolution to SNP Government:

‘Many of the key drivers of changes in poverty have been felt UK-wide. However, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has supported some research that showed a clear rise in Scottish median incomes relative to the rest of the UK from around 2003/04 and a relatively bigger improvement in the relative poverty rate from 2004/05.’ (Bailey, 2014).

Persistent poverty refers to children who have been living in relative poverty in three out of the last four years – a measure of the number of children who have been in poverty for a prolonged period of time.

 

Differences with non-Scottish Parts 5 and 6: Stronger decreases in poverty rates and increases in employment

‘The research identified strong decreases in poverty rates for the working-age population compared with the rest of the UK, alongside improving employment rates, especially for families without children. Over the period from 2000/04 to 2008/12, Scotland saw a bigger reduction in out-of-work families compared with the rest of the UK and similar growth as the rest of the UK in ‘intermediate work intensity’ (‘partly working’ families). 8

 

Differences with non-Scottish Parts 7 and 8: Affordable rents and mortgage costs

‘The analysis also pointed to more affordable rent and mortgage costs relative to income than in England, with social rents being 20–25% lower in Scotland by 2012/13. As a result, poverty after housing costs, compared with before housing costs, rose by a smaller amount than in England.’ 8

 

SNP Government Initiatives

‘In the coming months, the Scottish Government will launch two strategies that could make a crucial difference for our society. The first is an action plan on halving the disability employment gap, and the second is an action plan on the gender pay gap that is due to be published by the end of the year. This could be transformational for tackling poverty.’ 9

https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/poverty-scotland-2018

 

March 15^th 2019, we hear of the ongoing commitment of the SNP government, despite the Westminster constraints, to go beyond words and to act:

‘Vulnerable families are set to benefit from new funding to support households in financial hardship. Seven projects aimed at tackling child poverty will receive a total of £450,000. The money is a part of the ‘Every Child, Every Chance’ Innovation Fund, which is jointly supported by the Scottish Government and The Hunter Foundation. The fund aims to support innovative approaches which could have an impact on reducing child poverty by 2030. The projects range from job training and a befriending service, to school-based mentoring and support for lone parents. One of the successful projects is Stepwell, a social business based in Inverclyde, which provides support to people in the local community with health and finance issues as well as training and employment opportunities.’

https://news.gov.scot/news/funding-to-tackle-child-poverty

 

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Quality-Indicators/Publications/2019-04-09/2019-04-09-Breast-QPI-Report.pdf

Note: These are the latest such figures published today.

As Reporting Scotland determinedly attempts to shake NHS Scotland to death, like a demented Border Terrier (other breeds are available), reliable statistics emerge to paint a different picture. You can see from the above table:

1. A reduction to only 3 out of 17 targets not met.
2. Targets exceeded in 14 of 17 cases.
3. Incredibly high, near 100%, performance in the diagnosis and assessment phases.
4. Performance improving year-on-year in 12 cases.
5. The final target with worsening performance is pointless*.

*On further investigation (5), it appears that the increasing percentage is a function of a decreasing population, already very small, of those for whom home-based palliative care is not possible and for whom life beyond the 30-day target is less likely. The number treated in hospital has decreased by 25% from 2006 and the number treated at home has increased by around 20%.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Cancer/Cancer-Statistics/Place-of-Death/

See this:

‘The percentage of patients dying within 30 days of receiving palliative chemotherapy from breast cancer has increased from 7% in 2015 to 11% in 2017 which is above the target of <5%. It should be noted, however, that the number of patients in this category was relatively small in each year.’

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Quality-Indicators/Publications/2019-04-09/2019-04-09-Breast-QPI-Report.pdf

Recent reports on related facts:

NHS Scotland hits 31 day cancer waiting time target for third time in a row despite massive demand

In the quarter ending December 2018, 94.9% of patients started treatment in 31 days from decision to treat, hitting the demanding 95% target. The 0.1% deficit is not statistically reliable and should be rounded up using BBC Scotland’s editorial…

Scottish Government invests £100 million in cancer strategy even as incidence falls

Thanks again to list MSP Annie wells for exposing the Scottish Government’s £100 million investment in cancer treatment despite falling incidence of the disease, their encouragement of preventative strategies such as in the reduction of alcohol consumption and smoking and…

NHS Scotland beats 95% target for cancer treatment despite 6.6% increase in demand

For the three months ending September 2018, 95.1% of patients waited 31 days or less for first treatment after diagnosis. In the previous quarter the figure was 95%, also meeting the target. This was despite a 6.6% increase in demand…

As NHS England cancer treatment wait statistics ‘set to be worst on record’, NHS Scotland’s success is ignored

 

And it’s Dreghorn’s Favourite by two lengths as Nodding Richard falls and Rolling Ruthie’s lack of fitness shows!

This poll, in swing seats, for Politico, is mainly concerned with the two-nag battle between UK Labour and Conservatives on issues such as competence but allows the SNP in for some comparisons. I doubt Politico could be described as SNP-friendly, but I suspect they’re populated with the usual ‘centrist’, post-Blairites who despise Corbyn and Rees-Mogg almost equally and not that interested in them.

It hasn’t been getting much attention in Scotland due, I think, to the Scotsman scooping it and putting many readers off, so from TuS, one of the most trusted centres for citizen journalism in Ayrshire, here are some of the relevant graphics.

At first sight, because the questions are negative, the SNP peaking can look like slumping, to the lazy reader (yes you, wake up!) so, for impact, I turned one of them upside down for my header. Clever?

 

So, roughly speaking and with a wee bit of presumption, in Scotland, just over 20% of people think the Tories ARE in touch and only about 30% think Labour are BUT 60% think the SNP are in touch. That’s a massive lead.

And, 70% think the Tories ARE only for the rich, more than 20% think Labour are only for the rich (20%! Anas, Kate!) while only 10% think the SNP are.

On competence, the SNP streak ahead at over 60% with Labour considered competent by less than 40% and the Tories under Carlaw at a miserable 30%. Labour will be pleased by that win over the Tories.

On support for average wage-earners, Labour close the gap on the SNP and the Tories do better than expected.

https://www.politico.eu/article/poll-brexit-distracted-tories-lose-voter-trust-on-core-issues/

For likely swing seats surveyed, see:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-39666275

A poll for the Times today suggests that:

‘More than half of Britons want a “strong leader willing to break the rules”, a new Times survey on the state of parliamentary democracy has found. In findings that suggest large parts of the country are ready to entertain radical political change, nearly three quarters of people felt that the British system of governing needed “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of improvement. More than four in ten thought that the country’s problems could be more easily solved if ministers “didn’t have to worry so much about votes in parliament”.

It’s a deeply worrying trend with echoes of 1930s Germany or Italy….or 21^st Century USA?

Meanwhile in the People’s Secular Democracy of Scotland, the utterly democratic SNP surges in popularity:

With particular regard to trust, this research report seems to have gone awol:

That was this morning. Now it seems to have gone altogether. If you can get it, please share.

Scottish Tory parliamentary question today:

The ‘research’ report used by BBC Scotland News, on 25^th September 2018, to generate the headline:

‘Over a third of children with autism have been unlawfully excluded from school in the past two years’

is unsound on the basis of both a predisposing bias and a fatally flawed methodology leading to the headline being essentially a lie.

Artlessly, the researchers signal their predisposition to condemn Scottish schools catering for autistic children, by naming their report ‘Not included, not engaged, not involved’ and then peppering the text with more than forty melodramatic and sometimes redundant references to ‘unlawful’ exclusions.

Off course, if the methodology used had been able to scientifically demonstrate the existence of practice in schools warranting these accusations, then the criticism would have only been of lack of taste. However, the methodology as designed and implemented is utterly inadequate for that purpose.

The researchers tell us (p14) that they surveyed only parents and carers of children. 1434 chose to respond with some forms incomplete but still included. We are told that this represents around 10% of the pupils with ASD in Scotland. If the sample was random then it might be valid but given that the respondents were self-selecting, we cannot tell whether they meaningfully represent the total population or whether, as is more probable, they represent only those who perceive problems. For all we can tell, a strong majority of parents and carers may be satisfied with practice in schools.

The authors seem to acknowledge this but then go on to write their findings as if they had forgotten it. Worse still, the level of non-completion of parts of the survey further reduces the sample to a very small number of responses. For example: ‘[Only] 37% of the 478, [only], who answered this question (p19) indicated that their child had been excluded without formal recording’. That’s only around 160 pupils out of their sample of 1 434 and out of a possible total population of 10 000. How on earth do you get from those data to the researchers’ own conclusions? Even worse, the headline by BBC Scotland saying: ‘over a third of children with autism have been unlawfully excluded’, becomes frankly dishonest?

Furthermore, to only interview parents and carers and to fail to access school documents reporting absence or to interview head teachers, is to thoroughly weaken the research – triangulation anyone? We only know, from this research, what a perhaps unrepresentative sample of parents THINK schools are doing with regard to recording informal exclusions. We do not actually know what even a sample of schools IS doing in terms of recording.

Finally, the researchers make the astonishing assumption that percentages should be calculated from those responding to any question and not from the total sample. For example (p23):

When asked whether their child had been placed on a reduced timetable on more than one occasion, 63% (n=248) of parents told us that they had.

This sentence is utterly inaccurate, bananas, and should use the full sample to give the percentage – 17.2% (only)! This practice is repeated throughout to suggest that problems are more common than they are – astonishing incompetence or naked bias?

This research was commissioned, paid for, by Children in Scotland, the National Autistic Society Scotland and Scottish Autism. As you might expect, the researchers have clearly known from the outset what was expected of them.

The ‘researchers’, notengaged.com have no published track record as researchers. Does their name suggest that they, like their funders, are campaigners and not really researchers?

https://www.notengaged.com/download/SA-Out-Of-School-Report.pdf

I wrote to BBC Scotland to complain and they apologised.

Here’s the BBC response:

Dear Professor Robertson

Reference CAS-5101273-HLBVZ3

Thank you for your correspondence. Your comments were passed to the Editor of Reporting Scotland, who has asked that I forward her response as follows:

“Thank you for being in touch about Reporting Scotland on the morning of 24th September. You have raised concerns which I share about a report on a survey of parents and carers of autistic children. In retrospect we should not have carried this story in the way that we did and I apologise for that. I am taking steps to try to ensure that we do not do so again with similar stories. I believe that this was an honest mistake and that there was certainly no intention to mislead our audience, but that does not detract from the fact that we got it wrong. I am grateful to you for taking the time and the trouble to explain the reasons for your concern.”

No doubt Mr Swinney will want to be a bit kinder than I have been, but bad research is to be condemned.

From the Express in January 2018

Despite angry words in Holyrood aimed at winning popular support for the Tories, widely reported across the Scottish media, only 5 people wrote to the Scottish Government to complain about ‘scrapping’ short sentences. Two were very angry and seemed to agree with the Tories that the SNP actions would release a torrent of slavering violent psychopaths into their midst. The other three letters came from Advanced Modern Studies students researching the topic for their projects.

Hoping, I’m guessing, for a bigger sack, some ‘opposition’ politician or cub-reporter made this FoI request. The letters are published today at the link below:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-201900000791/

Folk seem less anxious about crime than some might hope:

https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/issues-index-concern-about-crime-reaches-seven-year-high

After a long period with the sub-polls reporting SNP support steady at 41%, clearly unaffected by the ‘SNP Civil War’ following ‘Salmondgate’, we’ve had a run of 6 sub-polls with 5 suggesting SNP support at 45% to 50% and one back at 41%. Sub-polls are unreliable but with more than 700 people sampled in these collectively, they begin to reasonably suggest a surge.

Now from BMG, online, based on the period 2^nd – 5^th April, we get:

Conservative      30%

Labour                  15%

Lib Dem                2%

UKIP                      7%

SNP                        42%

https://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/bmgs-westminster-voting-intention-results-march-2019/

Across the 7 sub-polls from Ipsos MORI on 15^th to 19^th March, we have a healthy average of 46.14%, enough to wipe the board.

While the final throes of Labour are clear, the mini-surge for the Tories is to be regretted. I cannot believe that 3 in 10 Scots are Tories, yet…..

 

83 people wrote to complain about lack of punctuality and other problems on Scotrail services. Out of context, I suppose it seems quite a lot but there were 97.8 million passenger journeys in 2018. Even if we generously estimate the total number of passengers to around that figure divided by 300 (everyone on the train 300 days a year), we still have around 326 000 passengers.

https://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/28195/scotrail-factsheet-1718.pdf

If only 83 of them were mad (angry) enough to write to the PM after a highly publicised invitation and media campaign to demonise Scotrail, that’s a miserable 0.025%!

Most people who are content with a service will never write-in to say so. If they did, might they say this kind of thing?

‘99.75% of passengers content or very happy with Scotrail services!’

 

Remember this old joke?

In Insider yesterday:

‘Further growth in permanent staff appointments were signalled by Scottish recruiters during March, extending the current upturn to 26 months. The latest data revealed a stark contrast to the trend at the UK level, where permanent placements dipped moderately. Meanwhile temporary billings growth in Scotland was sharp, having accelerated from the previous month. Relative to the UK as a whole, Scotland overperformed, as the expansion at the national level eased.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/scotland-outperforms-uk-permanent-job-14236540

Why do I suggest that good governance will have played a part in this sign of strength in the Scottish economy when neither Insider nor BBC Scotland would? Well, only because it’s obvious and had Labour been in government, you can be sure they’d have got some credit. However, some more explicit evidence is available in these earlier reports:

Unemployment in Scotland 13% lower than UK and wages higher AFTER SNP government gives businesses more than £4 billion in rates relief

Unemployment in Scotland nearly 13% lower than in UK!

Further evidence of better employment practices in Scotland

Unemployment in Scotland below UK level and employment better paid

Or see below the merciful other reality of employment in modern Scotland?

Should read: ‘after BBC attack’

In fact, the department looks ‘average’ and by no means ‘dysfunctional’. See the statistics below.

On the evening of April 1^st, Reporting Scotland said of NHS Tayside’s Oncology Department at Ninewells in Dundee:

‘The report today pointed to the possibility of a dysfunctional department. ‘Detectives’ spoke of pharmacy and nursing staff who said they had concerns about the change of procedures, but they felt they were not being listened to.’

Only Reporting Scotland used the word ‘dysfunctional’. The BBC website and all the papers I looked at (8) did not use the term. Though only 14 out of the 304 patients (4.6%) who received the reduced-dose therapy, to reduce terrible side-effects, are being investigated, NHS Tayside have been bullied into a review just as NHS Glasgow were over pigeon poo-related infections.

Reporting Scotland did not think to look for any contextual evidence to support their accusation of the department being dysfunctional. Given the potential anxiety-inducing consequences for hundreds of patients of using that term, I suppose they didn’t care.

Some time ago, I had an exchange with a Reporting Scotland editor who told me it was all very well for academics go on about peer-reviewed sources of evidence. I just didn’t understand journalism. Maybe he felt they were working so fast and to tight dead-lines, that it was unreasonable to expect them to spend hours poring over the evidence. This took me ten minutes to find.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Cancer/Cancer-Statistics/Breast/#cancer-of-the-breast

There are three useful ways of measuring these rates, used by scientists world-wide. In all three, NHS Tayside has an average rate of mortality per 100 000 persons, for its breast cancer patients and lower than for some other (dysfunctional?) health boards:

Measure          NHS Tayside    Scotland          NHS Grampian  

EASR                  18                            17.5                   19

WASR                8.3                             7.8                   8.6

SMR                   101.1                        100                  108.4

These are not statistically significant variations in a total sample of 424 deaths, in NHS Tayside, over a period of 5 years.

So, NHS Tayside is just average, but BBC Reporting Scotland can only dream of such success.