Talking-up Scotland

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/General-Practice/Publications/2018-12-11/2018-12-11-GPWorkforce2018-Summary.pdf?18748110533

There are now 75 more GPs in Scotland than in the previous year and less than one third of them are over 50. However, the major growth has been in the number of women in the profession. This is very good news as there is convincing evidence that women doctors tend to be more effective than their male counterparts.

First, in a Canadian study of GPs:

‘Female doctors provide a better quality of care than their male counterparts, according to a new study. Canadian research found that female GPs tended to spend longer with patients, were more likely to prescribe recommended medication and referred more patients for further examinations.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2465797/Women-doctors-provide-better-care-men-male-GPs-productive.html

Note: The Daily Mail is the preferred source, bedtime reading and guide to writing for BBC Reporting Scotland staff.

Second in a US study of hospital doctors:

‘Patients treated by women are less likely to die of what ails them and less likely to have to come back to the hospital for more treatment, researchers reported Monday. If all doctors performed as well as the female physicians in the study, it would save 32,000 lives every year, the team at the Harvard School of Public Health estimated.’

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/female-doctors-outperform-male-doctors-according-study-n697876

Third, with particular regard to the treatment of older patients:

‘In a study that is sure to rile male doctors, Harvard researchers have found that female doctors who care for elderly hospitalized patients get better results. Patients cared for by women were less likely to die or return to the hospital after discharge. Previous research has shown that female doctors are more likely to follow recommendations about prevention counseling and to order preventive tests like Pap smears and mammograms.’

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/19/506144346/patients-cared-for-by-female-doctors-fare-better-than-those-treated-by-men?t=1544691564237

Fourth, in the bloody domain of the, sometimes, narcissistic, risk-taking, macho surgeon:

‘But in the latest report, it turns out that the patients of female surgeons tend to have lower death rates, fewer complications and lower readmissions to the hospital a month after their procedure, compared to the patients of male surgeons.’

http://time.com/4975232/women-surgeon-surgery/

 

Last year, by this time, the State Broadcaster’s Reporting Scotland team had predicted a winter crisis for NHS Scotland. None came to pass. There is no definitive evidence that some reporters and presenters prayed for increased injuries that year.

Renowned media analyst and visiting research fellow at the Vidkun Quisling Centre for Critical Collaboration Studies, in Oslo, Professor John Robertson, has challenged the State Broadcaster’s team to come with up a campaign of misinformation designed to suggest a crisis in NHS Scotland this winter.

The evidence for a crisis in NHS England is already apparent and the State Broadcaster’s team in England has already launched its campaign:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46514094

Though BBC 1 News at 1.30pm yesterday misled by suggesting 87.6% of A&E patients were seen within 4 hours, the number seen in the Type 1 departments, those actually comparable to Scottish departments, saw only 81.1% in that time. This is a regular ‘mistake’.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/12/Statistical-commentary-November-2018.pdf

In November 2018, the average for Scottish A&E departments was 90.15% seen within 4 hours.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Emergency-Care/Publications/index.asp#2317

Further, NHS bed occupancy has entered a critical situation early:

‘Hospitals in England are so overcrowded ahead of Christmas care is being put at risk, experts say, with some places having to turn away ambulances because they cannot accept any more patients. NHS England’s first weekly report of the winter shows nearly 95% of beds are occupied. Anything above 85% is unsafe.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46514094

There is no sign of a comparable crisis regarding bed occupancy in Scotland. The more advanced social care arrangements in Scotland may be preventing this from happening. If there was a crisis, we’d know all about it. Indeed, there is evidence, at this stage of NHS Scotland having enough beds to subsidise NHS England capacity problems. See:

NHS Scotland compensating for serious bed shortages in England

Should a genuine crisis emerge in NHS Scotland, comparable to that in England, Professor Robertson, following Scotsman guidance, will make a small apology at the bottom of page 14 of the print edition of TuS.

 

From Insider today:

CBI Scotland

We welcome the fact that the Finance Secretary has listened to CBI Scotland and other stakeholders on business rates, scrapping the unhelpful out-of-town levy, capping the poundage rate and confirming the switch from RPI to CPI for the duration of this parliament.

FSB Scotland

This is a mostly savvy budget proposal that should give smaller firms some much needed stability.

KPMG

Positively, Mr Mackay capped the increase in business rates at 2.1%.  This is a welcome change, not least for small and medium sized businesses and the struggling Scottish high street.

EY

As such the Scottish Finance Secretary’s plans to support; parents on lower incomes remain in work, 2,000 women return to work after a career break, continued investment in apprentices and people on lower wages upskill through the Digital Start Fund all represent a positive direction of travel to boost Scotland’s labour market and productivity.

Scottish Council for Development and Industry

SCDI’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs Matt Lancashire said: “We welcome announcement of £130 million to support the creation of the Scottish National Investment Bank, which will deploy patient capital to back long-term investment in business scale-up and innovation and could have a positive impact.

Federation of Master Builders

FMB Scotland said Derek Mackay’s statement provided positive measures that would help Scottish builders “deliver the homes we need. The Government should therefore be commended for its ambition to safeguard the vitality of our high streets. All in all, this was a good budget for Scottish builders.

Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors

Providing a more favourable tax regime for Scotland’s commercial properties, and significant commitments to capital investment in infrastructure, are welcome steps to boost Scotland’s economy. Introducing a reduction in non-residential LBTT for two-thirds of Scotland’s commercial properties, and reducing business rate increases, will be welcome news for those operating in Scotland’s commercial sector.

The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations

The Scottish Government’s commitment to 50,000 affordable homes over the course of the current parliament is impressive. Housing associations, as the main providers of new build affordable housing, have stepped up and are delivering high quality affordable homes.

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/scottish-budget-business-derek-mackay-13725252

 

(c) theengineer.co.uk

In Energy Voice today:

‘Scot Gov return-to-work pledge ‘keeps women in sector’, Aberdeen energy lead says. The £5 million initiative to get 2000 women back to work proposed within Scottish finance secretary Derek Mackay’s draft budget could certainly provide benefits for the energy sector. Getting women to remain in oil and gas after having children is essential to the current evolution of our industry, as Equinor has shown by offering equal male and female parental leave. We’ve seen different return to work schemes and we as an organisation think they’re a great idea. When women return, the technology might have changed, how we work might have changed and even our outlook on life changes, so we’ve seen returnships work and make a difference. In the energy sector we need to retain good people so anything like this is a positive step.’

https://www.energyvoice.com/opinion/188228/scot-gov-return-to-work-pledge-keeps-women-in-sector-aberdeen-energy-lead-says/

Other evidence of progress already reported here:

Economic contribution of Scottish women-owned businesses grows by nearly twice the rate of UK

Scottish politics is third best in world for women’s empowerment and well ahead of UK

Scotland first again, again and again: women on public boards?

 

Why choose that happy face photograph?

We’ve seen other indicators of the effects of Scottish Government policies to reduce the impact of Tory austerity here.

New pregnancy and baby payments to offset Tory austerity in Scotland

Scottish NHS performance holding up despite massive increase in demand and Tory austerity cuts

Against the odds: Evidence of how SNP policies have defended Scotland against a least some of Tory austerity

The level of abortion, like the level of mental health referrals, of stillbirths and of violent crime tell you things are not going well in a society.

In Scotland:

‘A total of 12,212 pregnancies were terminated last year, up 106 on 2016. The figures mean there was a rate of 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2017.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/abortion-rate-in-scotland-hits-five-year-high-1-4746699

In England and Wales:

‘There were 192,900 terminations in England and Wales last year – up four per cent from 2016 and the highest since 2008. Researchers warned the combination of cuts to benefits and sexual health services had led to increasing numbers of women choosing terminations. Figures reveal there were 16.7 abortions per every 1,000 women last year. Over the last decade, abortion rates have been decreasing for under-25s, though there has been a rise for over-30s.’

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/abortion-figures-statistics-cause-uk-england-wales-high-austerity-a8678556.html

 

What is BBC Scotland’s obsession with obesity about? These are only a selected few headlines

Today in repeated brief TV and radio inserts but in more detail on the BBC Scotland website:

‘Almost a quarter of children in Scotland are starting school at risk of being overweight or obese. A new National Statistics report revealed 22.4% of P1 pupils have potentially problematic BMIs. The proportion of pupils entering education overweight has remained constant since the start of the century. Obesity in childhood is associated with a wide range of health problems such as risk factors for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, asthma, emotional distress and mental health difficulties.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46519287

While the research is based on reliable scientific methods, it is only one and the BBC report is unbalanced and inadequate on three counts.

First, they fail to take account of the important predictive work done by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, reported in the Independent on 26^th May 2018 which suggested:

 ‘Under current trends it is predicted that 11 per cent of the population in Wales will be morbidly obese in 2035, roughly 340,000 adults, while Scotland is likely to plateau at about 5 per cent and England will rise to about 8 per cent.’

The researchers offer a surprisingly clear, confident and simple explanation for the significantly slower growth in Scotland – Scottish Government policy initiatives and resource allocation aimed primarily at children:

‘The government put a massive push on developing a route map for how we can actually combat this. They put together resources from the NHS that were proving to be effective. They did put a lot of work into it.’

https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/five-million-british-people-will-be-morbidly-obese-by-2035-study-shows-2/

Second, published on the 26^th November 2018, new research findings support the London School findings:

From Growing Up in Scotland: Overweight and Obesity at Age 10:

‘Historic data from the survey shows that the prevalence of overweight [in Scotland] including obesity remained relatively stable between 1998 and 2016, fluctuating between 28% and 33%. However, in recent years levels of obesity have shown a steady decline dropping from 17% in 2014. This is largely due to a decline in obesity amongst boys which have dropped from 20% in 2012 to 12% in 2017 [40%].’ (14)

https://www.gov.scot/publications/growing-up-scotland-overweight-obesity-age-10/

Third, the use of the BMI index is controversial. See this:

‘But increasingly researchers and health experts are speaking out to say BMI isn’t the perfect measure of health we once thought. Last year, a study by UCLA concluded that tens of millions of people who had overweight and obese BMI scores were in fact perfectly healthy.’

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/bmi-stop-measuring-weight-height-health-measure-fitness-fat-a7894951.html

Also:

‘BMI (body mass index), which is based on the height and weight of a person, is an inaccurate measure of body fat content and does not take into account muscle mass, bone density, overall body composition, and racial and sex differences, say researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.’

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265215.php

So, the BBC Scotland report is typically flawed by lack of background research, a passive attitude to research and consequently it lacks balance, but does it matter that much? See this:

‘Social policy and health strategies target individuals’ behaviours as though all were at risk. We are all involved in helping to defuse a health time bomb! This feeds a media frenzy and is of course a gift for the multi-billion dietary industry. The preoccupations of the powerful with the body’s appearance of a few are visited on the wider population, through a fear of fat. The message is that anyone could get fat, everyone is at risk and that the risk begins very early in life. This stimulates a constant, anxiety-driven, routine of self-surveillance, and helps to produce a lifestyle for many that is riddled with needless anxiety and conspicuously short of fun.’

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/people-politics-law/politics-policy-people/society-matters/the-uk-moral-panic-about-obesity

So, the TV News moral panic around obesity may be generating greater levels of anxiety in the wider population. That anxiety in turn, it seems, may be influencing voting intentions. In the recent US presidential elections, explaining support for Trump:

‘Controlling for other demographic variables, three factors stood out as strong independent predictors of how white working-class people would vote. The first was anxiety about cultural change. Sixty-eight percent of white working-class voters said the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence.’

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/white-working-class-trump-cultural-anxiety/525771/

In the recent EU referendum, explaining support for Leave:

‘Community considerations are closely linked to national identities and the ‘fear of outsiders’ with people who subscribe to a more exclusive national identity or who feel threatened by mass immigration being significantly more Eurosceptic than those who have more inclusive identities, such as feeling ‘British’ and ‘European’.’

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/why-did-britain-vote-to-leave-the-european-union/

So, a mediated panic about an ‘epidemic’ of obesity contributes to generalised anxiety in the electorate and an anxious electorate prefers the familiarity of an imagined, 1950s, USA or Britain, undivided and more ethnically homogenous.

Why then does BBC Scotland seem so obsessed with reporting in this way on obesity? They have reported many times in recent months and have even produced an extended documentary based on ‘courageous investigative’ journalism in darkest Ayrshire. I have complained about all of it. See:

BBC Scotland once more hide SNP Government’s policy success to create scare on obesity in women

BBC Scotland shames the fat and shames the truth with morbid titillation and distortion of the facts

I’m not, of course, suggesting that BBC Scotland News is deliberately weaponizing obesity with a view to undermining support for Scottish independence. I am saying that the editorial decisions leading to intensive, negative, distorted and sensationalist reporting of obesity in Scotland emerges from an essentially British cultural setting which habitually tends toward reporting choices and styles which portray Scots and Scotland, commonly, in a subtly negative and confidence weakening manner.

For more detail on this admittedly controversial idea see:

BBC Scotland News shoring up the Union with endless layers of supportive repetition

At an emergency meeting of the respected Old Oxymoron English Dictionary’s New Additions Board, Professor Naemeritus, Johann von Robertskinful, presented his case against the increasingly common but unhelpful and confusing use of the word ‘Brexiteer’. Prof Robertskinful said:

‘The word ‘Brexiteer’ suggests a kind of imaginative, swashbuckling manner so unlike that of prominent Leave figures such as Gove, Johnson or Davis. What more accurately characterises them is a plodding stupidity, lack of charisma and, in their ideas, a lack of logical coherence. They have much in common with the concept of an oxymoron where the two parts contradict rather than enhancing each other. The term ‘Military Intelligence’ is one of the better known oxymorons. Zo, I propose that this board recommend to all users of the OOED, that the term ‘Brexymoron’ be used in referring to leading proponents of Brexit and to Brexit concepts.’

The proposal was unanimously approved by the board.

A Breximoron can be a phrase about Brexit lacking internal coherence, a group or a person supporting Brexit who by definition lacks a coherence between what he thinks is true and what iss actually true. For clarification, here are some examples of a Breximoron:

Jacob Rees-Mogg

European Research Group

Great Britain

British diplomacy

British sea power

British influence

British decency

Independent Coastal State

Good trade deal with USA

Good trade deal with Russia

 

 

 

(c) projectscot.com

From the often more balanced and reliable BBC Scotland website news than the Broadcast versions:

• Scottish unemployment rate hits record low at 3.7%
• At 3.7%, the jobless rate is below that of the UK, which sits at 4.1%.
• ONS data revealed 75% of the working age population, those aged between 16 and 64, had some form of work.
• Scotland’s employment rate was ‘below’ [statistically insignificant difference] that of the UK as a whole, which is at 75.7%.
• Joblessness fell among both males and females, with the number of men out of work down by 8,000 over the period to 58,000, while the number of women without a job decreased 5,000 to 42,000.
• On employment for women and young people, a rate of 71.3% for women, higher than the UK rate of 71.2%, and 58.8% for young people, higher than the UK rate of 55.9%.
• Lower rates of unemployment for both women and young people.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46522798

It is also important to know about the quality of the employment experienced. It would be all very well to have increasing employment if it were primarily low-paid and insecure. At the end of October 2018, we were able to report that more Scots were getting the living wage, 54% fewer were in insecure work, more mothers were able to return, there were better conditions and better jobs, there was more workplace gender equality, more employee-ownership, there were more educated workers and more apprenticeships. See below for the evidence.

More mothers able to return to work as Scottish Government doubles free early learning and childcare

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

Scotland ‘poised to be a world leader’ in workplace gender equality

3 500 additional new-style apprenticeships confirmed for Scotland in 2018 as Scottish Government pushes on to increase youth employment further ahead of rUK

With 1 in 4 living wage employers already in Scotland, the Scottish Government aims to make this a ‘Living Wage Nation’

Are Scotland’s employers also different – more willing to pay a decent wage?

As the number of the employed yet homeless soars in Southern England it is falling and much lower in Scotland

UK Government urged to follow Scotland’s praised lead on employee ownership – another 8% story?

As oil prices soar and exploration increases, employment in Scotland’s oil industry returns to record levels

‘Scotland’s top private firms employed more people, increased salaries and witnessed a rise in profits in 2017.’

Once again, it’s the ‘8% of the UK population but much more of something good’ meme. This time it’s 33% of employee-owned firms in the UK

Is ‘insecure work’ far less common in Scotland and falling under the SNP? Is it as much as 54% more common in England and Wales?

Scotland has more educated workers than England: JRF Excerpt 2

80 000 lowest paid workers in NHS England still on poverty wages as NHS Scotland follows Scottish Government policy to pay a living wage to all public-sector employees

 

(c) propertywire.com

From news.gov.scot, today:

• 80,000 affordable homes delivered since 2007
• 21 percent rise in number of affordable homes delivered in Scotland during the last year
• 8,767 homes delivered for the year to September 2018
• A total of 80,104 affordable homes have been provided since 2007
• 50% per head more affordable homes
• More than five times as many social rented properties
• 5,340 social rented homes delivered, increase of 864 homes or 19% on the previous year
• Annual average of 137 homes per 100,000 population compared with 86 in England
• More than five times as many social rented properties delivered – 84 homes per 100,000 population in Scotland compared to just 13 in England

https://news.gov.scot/news/more-affordable-homes-1

 

(c) cosmopolitascotland.org

The Scottish government’s action plan announced yesterday, includes:

• Up to £1 million to develop solutions to the barriers employers face in hiring and retaining disabled people
• Up to £500,000 to pilot the provision of support similar to Access to Work to disabled people undertaking work experience or work trials
• A new support service to help disabled people for who more mainstream employment support is not suitable
• Appointing a business leader to advise Ministers on the steps to reduce the perceived risk of recruiting those with fluctuating health conditions
• Developing targets for the employment of disabled people within the Scottish Government’s own workforce

https://news.gov.scot/news/tackling-the-disability-employment-gap-1

While there is, of course, much still to be done, Scotland has already made some progress beyond that found elsewhere in UK:

Another little difference that tells us something: SNP to improve disability terms for terminally ill.

In the wake of the UN praise for Scotland’s approach to disability rights, NHS Scotland announces traineeships for disabled graduates

UN condemns UK Government’s ‘human catastrophe’ on disability rights but praises Scottish Government’s actions

How to feel a bit better about the Equality and Human Rights Commission report

‘One in five ‘Britons’ [living in England?] with disabilities have their rights violated, UN told’