Talking-up Scotland

Surely the Scottish Tories didn’t make this FoI request

FOI reference: FOI/19/00481
Date received: 11 Feb 2019
Date responded: 8 Mar 2019

Information requested

The number of disciplinary cases involving Scottish Government employees ‘blacking up’ and, a breakdown of outcomes of these cases, e.g. formal warning, dismissal.

Response
You have asked for information about Scottish Government employees.  This response therefore covers staff who are employed in the Scottish Government Core Directorates.

There have been no disciplinary cases involving Scottish Government employees ‘blacking up’.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-00481/

English Tories seem to have no problems with the idea:

Does anyone black up in Scotland? Well, this Scottish UKIP guy:

I caught the big eejit hiding from reporters in here.

We don’t know which opposition education spokesperson or correspondent took their turn to make this freedom of information request: 

FOI reference: FOI/19/00478
Date received: 13 Feb 2019
Date responded: 12 Mar 2019

Information requested
How many resignations have there been from the Teacher Panel in each of the last three calendar years?

Please provide any information regarding the resignations including the reasons for the resignation, any statements or letters providing the reason for resignation, and any comments offered by the person resigning.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-00478/

Oooh, mibbe they resigned in protest against that big Swinney brute?

The puir wee soul can only have been upset to get this news. Both head teachers had clearly improved their CVs by being on the panel thus enabling them to get better paid jobs. Still better luck next time smelly wee burrowers.

 

Who knows which of our opposition worthies made the freedom of information request in the desperate hope of revealing a flood of disgruntled, knackered GPs equally desperate to retire early?

 FOI reference: FOI/19/00535
Date received: 22 Feb 2019
Date responded: 12 Mar 2019

Information requested

In each of the past three years, how many GPs have successfully applied to take their pension early as a result of resignation/retirement in each health board area?

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-00535/

As of 30^th September 2018, there were 4 994 GPs in Scotland.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/General-Practice/Publications/2018-12-11/2018-12-11-GPWorkforce2018-Summary.pdf

So, between 1.32% and 1.42% of Scottish GPs have successfully applied to take their pension early in the last three years. Not exactly a flood so probably not worthy of a major research project to find out why.

However, just out of interest, I was able to find out in 2015, that there was no evidence of a massive problem of stress:

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2017/11/14/already-the-best-staffed-and-least-stressed-in-the-uk-scottish-gps-to-get-better-contracts/

 

 

Try Googling ‘chronic pain waiting times England’ and you get 10 reports, all relating to Scotland. The 14^th item was research done in the North of England and referred to the problem of long waiting times but gave no targets or figures.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Publications/2019-03-12/2019-03-12-Chronic-Pain-Publication-Summary.pdf

So, it looks like NHS England has given up the ghost on this too. Miles Briggs and the Herald, of course, care nothing for context.

NHS Scotland actually has chronic pain waiting times which are holding up despite fast increasing demand.

Referrals to pain clinics increased by 4.5% or from 4 991 to 5 219, in just one quarter, between Q3 to Q4 of 2018.

Despite this 70.8% were seen within 18 weeks in Q4 compared to 72.4% in Q3.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Publications/2019-03-12/2019-03-12-Chronic-Pain-Publication-Summary.pdf

 

From the BBC Scotland website yesterday:

‘Forecasts of how much oil and gas could be produced by the UK offshore industry have been revised upwards. The industry regulator now believes 11.9 billion barrels will be extracted by 2050, up from an estimate of eight billion four years ago.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-47516655

Brent Crude is currently sitting at $65 per barrel so that makes a total of $773 billion.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Brent-Crude-Hits-2019-High-At-65.html

If the UK Treasury taxes it at 19% (current rate), they’d take in $146 billion.

Around 90% of that income derives from Scottish waters.

https://www.niesr.ac.uk/?PublicationID=3179

Would they tax it? The precedents are not good. See this from Professor Richard Murphy:

 London is giving away Scotland’s oil revenues

Tom Mitro, who managed Chevron’s taxation and financial planning in the North Sea in the 1990s, said [a new tax] scheme could deprive the Treasury of more than £3bn in tax over the next decade.

“Overall impact on the Exchequer of [the transferable tax history scheme] could range from virtually zero to roughly [a] £3bn [plus] reduction in tax receipts over the next 10 years depending on oil prices and [the] number of asset sales and decommissioning [of North Sea platforms and pipelines],” he said in a research paper prepared for Global Witness, the non-governmental organisation.

But why does the Treasury care? If it assists the spin that Scotland cannot survive on its own, I suspect that’s considered a price worth paying. And I would not be at all surprised if that is part of the political motivation for this.’

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/09/03/london-is-giving-away-scotlands-oil-revenues/

 

 

It’s simple. If an economy is really growing and not just for the super-rich, unlike in those useless GDP figures, you can see it in increasing employment and rising wages. We’ve seen both recently in Scotland. You can also see it unambiguously in the demand for the property in which those additional workers will be housed. So, In Insider yesterday:

‘Buoyant demand saw Scotland’s office property sector deliver bumper returns for investors last year, according to new figures. The total return from capital and rental growth saw the sector achieve an 8.2% return compared with 5.9% in 2017 and outperform the wider UK. Scotland’s offices, retail and alternatives market – which includes property such as student housing and petrol stations – all significantly outperformed the UK. Industrials also had a strong end to the year, achieving the highest return of the three main sectors at 8.6%. Retail returned 4.7% compared to the UK’s -1.1%, and alternatives, which has continued to be the best performing sector in Scotland and the only one to achieve double-digit returns in 2018, achieved 10.6% compared to the UK’s 7.5%.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/strong-end-2018-commercial-property-14119317

Just going back to October 2018, here are some other indicators:

Scotland’s marine economy predicted to grow by 7 times

Yet more objective evidence Scotland’s economy healthy in SNP care

More objective evidence of a strong Scottish Economy in 2018

Scottish Government-funded GHA ‘boosts Scottish economy by £2bn’

Scottish labour market outperforms UK revealing more evidence of health in economy

Another umpteenth post on underlying strength in Scottish Economy: Edinburgh’s office investment up nearly 30%

Another case in the real story of Scotland’s economy: Big business failures in Scotland fall by 25%’

Another case in the real story of Scotland’s economy: Hospitality retail growth up 11%

 

 Based on recent BBC reports, I think we had hospital acquired infections ‘contributing’ to five deaths in January and February 2019. Were there more cases ignored? I can’t find any data on this. The health correspondents did seem to be in a feeding frenzy, so it seems unlikely there were more.

I wonder how does this compared globally? Are our hospitals relatively clean or dirty in this respect?

I found 2018 statistics for the USA, by far the biggest spender on health care, globally:

‘In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated roughly 1.7 million hospital-associated infections, from all types of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi combined, cause or contribute to 99,000 deaths each year.’

HAI Data and Statistics | HAI | CDC”. http://www.cdc.gov. 2018-01-10. Retrieved 2018-01-13.

So, 1 700 000 HAIs linked to deaths in 2018 or, for comparative purposes with our two-month sample, 280 000 cases. So, 56 000 times as many cases. Population of USA at 327.16 million or 60.58 times the population. To get a fair per capita rate, divide the 56 000 by 60.58 and get 924.

Deaths linked to hospital-acquired infections 924 times more common per capita in USA than in Scotland.

As for England and Wales, I could only find these for 2006:

MRSA caused or was associated with 1 652 deaths, which occurred predominantly in older people and women.
C difficile caused or was associated with 6 480 deaths, which occurred predominantly in older people.

http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/HAI.html

Now I know that there will have been other deaths linked to HAIs in Scotland but the absence of them in our NoMedia coverage, even during a feeding frenzy, tells us something.

https://www.health.org.uk/chart/new-data-on-nursing-student-numbers-released-by-ucas

We can see above the beginning of the Scottish Government response to the challenge of nurse supply which Brexit will almost exacerbate, with the biggest increase in acceptances for training across the UK and as the Tories in England show their customary callousness and incompetence.

A parliamentary question last Thursday by the always useful Miles Briggs reveals the continuing strategy in the subsequent year:

https://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/WA20190307.pdf

Making the contrast within the UK even more clear last October, the Nursing Times pointed out:

‘Across the UK, new student nursing numbers are down by 1.28% to 26,890. It is a fall of 350 students on last year’s figure of 27,240. While the number fell in England and Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales saw significant increases, including a higher number of mature students. The biggest drop was in England where the number of nursing students fell by 570 to 20,250. It is a fall of 2.73% from 2017’s figure of 20,820. By contrast, Scotland saw an increase of 140 nursing students taking the total to 3340, an increase of 4.3% on 2017. In Wales the number rose by 90 to 1720, an increase of 5.52% on last year.’

The threat from Brexit was also made visible by Nursing Times:

‘The number of students from the rest of the European Union fell by 20 to 400 – a 4.7% reduction – while the figure for overseas students from non-EU nations rose by 30 to 130, up 30%.’

https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/education/number-of-nursing-students-in-england-down-by-500-this-year/7026080.article

 

The above kind of headline has been all over our NoMedia for some time now, so when Lib Dem Expenses Champion, Tavish Scott, asked this parliamentary question last Wednesday, we can guess what he was hoping for. The answer may not have been to his liking:

https://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/WA20190306.pdf

 

The following table based on a parliamentary question by the Lib Dems, shows the prison population on 18^th February 2019, disaggregated by ethnicity:

https://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/WA20190301.pdf

This table shows the population of Scotland in 2001 and 2011 also disaggregated by ethnicity:

The percentage of the ‘white’ population, in and out of prison, is almost identical at 96% and 96.02%. The ‘Asian’ population is slightly under-represented at only 2% of those in prison and 2.66% of those in the general population. The ‘Black’ population is slightly over-represented at only 0.78% of the population but 1% of those in prison. Mind you those ‘others’ are clearly a bad bunch, 5 times more likely to be in prison than they should be?

The situation in England & Wales and, of course, the USA, is quite different:

‘Black people living in England and Wales are statistically more likely to be in prison than those living in the US, according to a report by the Labour MP David Lammy. Black people make up 3 per cent of the general population and 12 per cent of the prison population in England and Wales compared to 13 per cent and 35 per cent respectively, in the US, said the report on racial discrimination in the British justice system.’

https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/black-people-more-likely-to-be-imprisoned-in-england-and-wales-in-the-us/

I can’t think how the Lib Dems with even Reptilian Scotland’s assistance will make much of this.

BAME people in Scotland denied fair share of prison cells?