The Herald - again

Last week I wrote to the Herald complaining that they had got into the habit of printing a Tory 'report' resulting from a Freedom of Information request just about every Monday. The reports give no context to the information, are highly selective and always use 'big numbers' to encourage readers to think education, the NHS and the police and other emergency services are on the brink of collapse in Scotland.

They didn't print my letter - of course - but they have today printed another attack on public services on their front page (bottom left) and in some ways it's even worse than the usual nonsense: 'Children attacking teachers' claims there were 'a number of violent assaults' on teachers by children as young as 7 and that the number of violent assaults has 'rocketed by more than 50% in 12 months.' Police 'were called into schools dozens of times to deal with violent incidents involving out-of-control children, while hundreds of teachers were left with injuries after being assaulted by pupils.'

No context is given for for these claims. Where did the incidents happen? Who was involved? I used to assume kids would be (as in my teaching days) scrapping in the playground but that simply doesn't happen any more. Primary staff have done a good job on the 'we don't hit, we talk' approach. Violence in schools is more and more a rarity. No sources are quoted in the article. More FoI requests? More 'reports' from Tory MSPs? No figures are given except the ones I've quoted above. So we don't know if the 'attacks' number in the thousands or the hundreds or the dozens or in penny numbers.

It's worth making a few points:

- At any given time, and here I'm quoting Bill MacGregor, one-time leader of the Headteachers Association in Scotland - and no push-over as a headteacher when it came to dealing with troubled children: at any given time, the overwhelming majority of pupils and teachers are in school doing what they're supposed to do: learning and teaching.

- In addition, quite a few secondary schools have a 'campus police officer' known to the kids and any incidents would be dealt with unless they were very serious by him (or her). The police would not need to be 'called in,' like this was some episode of Law & Order. Schools have access to educational psychologists and social workers. Some local authorities operate a team system where vulnerable children are the joint responsibility of all agencies as well as their families. Is something going wrong here with our care for children? Can we fix it? We'll never know, because the Herald's stance is to blame, not to protect or improve.

- Sometimes children, especially those with special educational needs or mental health or behavioural issues, have a melt-down and are temporarily 'out-of-control.' One problem with teachers and classroom assistants is that, dammit, they are very understanding and, once the meltdown is over, they don't want to stir things up by reporting the incident, since that would lead to case meetings, safety assessments and possibly repercussions for the kids. Staff certainly won't be rushing to report incidents if they think they and their kids are going to get a mention on the front page of the Herald.

I plan to cancel my order for the Herald quite soon, but I worry that there aren't many people left to challenge their Unionist codswallop, their distortions of the truth, selective use of facts and willingness to undermine the confidence of the public in public services, where staff are doing their very best to keep going with sometimes lousy pay, job cuts, and constant pressure to keep up standards and meet targets with reduced funding.

I'm not saying my letter last week rattled the Herald enough to give up printing the Tory FoI nonsense - although I'd love to think it did. I'm just sorry I haven't been able to alter their mindset that somehow kids in education are the enemy, the management of the police service and the NHS is a disgrace, and it's all the fault of the Scottish government. (No, I'm a Green, not SNP).

We undermine our public services at our peril: demoralised nurses, teachers, EMTs and the rest perform less well than people who are respected and trusted.

I don't know why this is spaced like this. FFS.

Freedom of Information

Just in case the Herald don't print it, here's my latest letter to them about Scottish Conservatives' love of FoI:

Another Monday, another shock-horror revelation from Conservative MSPs. 

This time it’s about agency nurses employed in the Scottish NHS. The report 

provided to the Herald by the Tories (Row as hospitals pay more than £1,500 

per shift for agency nurses to fill rotas – 23 January 2017) is sadly short of detail. 

Exactly how many times were these eye-watering sums paid out last year? 

Three times? Three hundred? Three thousand? But of course that kind of exactness 

is unlikely to shock readers the way that big sums like £1,565 or £1,528 paid to agencies 

(that’s not what the nurses get, I hasten to add) will do. I suppose the average 

payment to an agency is not quoted because it would be too low to cause a fuss. And 

I suppose I should be grateful that the Health Minister gets a chance - right at the end - 

to point out that the use of agency nurses is dropping and has been for a decade.

 

I’ve got questions I’d like to put to the people who produce this FoI stuff: is this really 

what Conservative MSPs do? Sit in Holyrood and fire off Freedom of Information 

requests? And do they really think the voters/tax payers are so dense we don’t notice 

how the information is skewed to make it look like public services in Scotland are going 

to hell in a handcart? Or that we don’t realise that the constant demand for data through 

FoI requests ties up staff time which the tax payer ultimately has to pay for: every FoI 

request has to be written and submitted by a member of the MSP’s staff (whose salary 

we pay) and then dealt with by members of staff in the public body (also paid by the 

tax payer). If in the end this is all the Tories can come up with, I’m not sure they're giving 

us value for money. 

Trumpetry

I'm trying to get to grips with these words 'left' and 'right.' They seem to have shifted their meaning over the past few years.

I recently posted on a wee Facebook reading group I'm in that Bill Bryson these days seems to me to be the archetypal Conservative Home Counties man. He has taken UK citizenship but he really only sees England - not the UK or Great Britain - and really southern England at that. He hates change and would prefer if we could keep things the way they were when he first came to live in England from the USA about 40 years ago: mostly by that he means polite (that's the people) and 'unspoiled' (that's the countryside). He hates technology (HS2, the Channel Tunnel, Heathrow), bureaucracy (the National Trust, the staff of any public institution) and service that could be described as anything less than subservient. One of our American members was surprised by my post: in the US, Bryson's regarded as pretty far to the left.

If that's what soft and cuddly Bryson would be, what about me? Green, social democrat, in favour of equality, etc. O, but I already know that: when I posted on another FB thread that I found it shocking that Americans would repeal Obamacare and leave so many more people without health insurance, I was immediately attacked as a Commie. Mind you, the same thread also called me some sort of socialist and a dangerous leftie. Either I've got a very ignorant bunch of FB friends or there's some confusion out there about what these terms mean.

On FB and twitter right now, I can see 'lefties' being blamed for attacks on Donald Trump and on his wife Melania and son Barron. When I read the comments people make, there's nothing at all to suggest that these people are anything to do with the left - or right - in politics but plenty to suggest they are seriously horrible people who have realised they can write anything about anyone online and go unchallenged.

No, I'm not attacking freedom of speech. If anything, I'm pointing out that with that freedom goes responsibility: being a grown-up (and if you have the vote you are understood to be a grown-up) means you have to agree what is and is not a legitimate target: Donald Trump is. What he does and says as president are. His political appointments are. His family is not. In fact, attacking his wife and son is a distraction from what is actually going on: a transition from government by politicians (ultimately answerable to the ballot box) to government by billionaires (all male, all white billionaires at that, answerable to no one except the man who appoints them). It's a bit like Theresa May's clothes: all that fuss about what she wears took our eyes off the mis-firing of a Trident missile - and since I live just down the road from where these warheads are stored, this is of some concern.

The trouble with people like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump (two cheeks of the same arse if you like) is that they fling the door open to chancers like Marine Le Pen. She's been on TV and radio today distracting French voters from the Socialist opposition announcing their candidate by proclaiming that the EU is finished, that the UK started a domino-effect when it voted to leave. She's not saying what comes after the EU but you can try this on for size: Marine Le Pen is right-wing but gets a lot of funding for the Front National from oligarchs and billionaires who can see many advantages for them if the EU collapses. Then capitalism and multi-nationalism will be triumphant and the last entities that could control them will be gone. At that point your children, grandchildren and their descendants will be at the mercy of people whose only interest is money. Happy with that?

Maybe now is the moment to declare the terms 'left' and 'right' officially dead. What's at stake is constitutional democracy and any semblance of fairness in society. The enemy is big money.

The women have shown the way with their marches. I noticed the UK papers described 'hundreds of thousands of women' marching across the USA. Little mention of what they were marching for or of the marches that took place across the rest of the world. If I was being really chauvinist, I'd say 'step aside, guys - leave it to us. We don't accept what Trump is offering - the Bryson view of an ideal world - so we'll take it from here.'

Trump Minimus

I haven't been very well for a few days so I missed the excitement of the Trump inauguration. When I switched on the TV tonight, I saw Mrs Trump in a blue coat and couldn't even remember her name. This may be a feature of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - or perhaps not... It's Melania. She's wife number 3. I wish she didn't hold Donald's hand quite so tightly during the proceedings and that her name wasn't so close to melanoma.

Next to Trump Senior was a wee boy. I had to google him too. This is Barron. He's 10 and the son of Donald and Melania. He always seems slightly disorientated by the position he finds himself in and maybe for a reason. Can you imagine the horror of being the youngest son of Donald Trump? It seems Barron has a whole floor of Trump Tower to himself, poor wee b*gger. He goes to a school that costs his father about $50,000 a year. I'll bet that comes up in conversation from time to time.

Billionaires always seem to have gazillions of wives and kids. Murdoch is the same as Trump. Is it a form of boasting? While the rest of humanity is trying to make a decent job of bringing up two or three children, the ultra-rich are farming their kids out to the help and then wondering why they turn out to be sociopaths - just like themselves.

I would like the Trumps to remove Barron from the limelight. Unlike the Obama girls, he doesn't seem to have the maturity or the resilience to be the First Kid. Give the kid a break. Let him be a kid.

T(h)eresa May

I've put the h in parenthesis because I'm so uninspired by Mrs May that I haven't bothered to spellcheck her name. This is not a politician whose party I would ever vote for, given that I take the same view of Tories as Nye Bevin did: <<What is Toryism but organised spivvery? … No amount of cajolery can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party … So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.>>
4 July 1948

I've annoyed a couple of friends today - both educated, intelligent women - by commenting on the way we (note: the collective we - not they) are obsessing about Mrs May's clothes. They object to the word obsess. 

So far we've had three pictures of Mrs May's clothes: 

- the leather trousers 

 

- the 'lucky' suit 

- the other suit

If you want me to comment on Mrs May's clothes, I'd have to say she has money and nae taste.

But there is a more important point here. Mrs May's government is overseeing the biggest political change in the UK in 40-odd years. Her government needs to be held to account over that change. And, in my opinion, having her clothes all over every newspaper front page, and all over twitter and Facebook trivialises the job she's meant to be doing and distracts the public from close scrutiny of government actions. And since most newspapers in the UK are right wing and seem quite happy to walk us off a cliff over the EU, I can only suppose the distraction and trivialisation are deliberate. 

I reckon it's now almost 30 years since I wrote my first letter to a national newspaper about sexism. My letter was in criticism of an item they had printed describing GTCS action against a female headteacher. Their piece included the deathless phrase: 'Ms X wore a black suit to the hearing and carried a matching briefcase.' My letter congratulated the paper on the detail they had provided and invited them to include a similar description every time they reported the actions of any man. They printed my letter but didn't comment. How much longer do you suppose this kind of crap will go on? Well, it would help if women could control their inner bitch and not join in the fun.

The telly

If you're an exile who loves British TV 'dramas' - Downtown Abbey, Fetch the Midwife (is that what it's called?), Sherlock, Taboo, Silent Witness - I apologise in advance.

In my opinion, TV is in the middle of a massive slump. Nothing new has emerged for years. We have police procedurals, nostalgic nonsense and mysteries. Characters are paper-thin. Plots seem to have no sense to them or follow a pattern that most of us could write ourselves. The test is this: record something, leave it for a week and then watch it. Do you care what happens the characters? Leave it another week and then ask yourself: who were these people and what happened to them? I swear to gawd you won't remember and you won't care.

The Midwife thingy went to Africa over the Christmas holidays. I don't know why. Maybe just to give the cast a foreign trip? Use up a budget? It was dire. Only fit for people vegging out on the settee after Christmas dinner. I hope its era is over. I can't take Vanessa Redgrave's croaky voice for much longer.

I'm also glad Sherlock is over. It was such hokum, you could have flung a set of clues in the air and whatever fell to earth would have been a better plot than what the BBC actually came up with. What a waste of really talented actors. Maybe that's better than watching and thinking: for FFS, I know at least 3 people who could play that part better.

If we're not being offered this dross, we're getting re-makes of ancient comedy series. Now why would that be? Isn't modern life funny any more? Don't we all meet 'characters' every day in life? It's not as if there are no writers out there desperate to get their work on the telly. Despite all our complaints about BBC Scotland, we still have Two Doors Down, Mrs Brown (discovered and nurtured in Scotland), Scotsquad, the Limmy Show, etc.

Sadly, US telly is the same. For the past few years, I've been waiting for a series that would replace - and update - CSI, Special Victims, NCIS (what the hell happened to Tony, eh?). Or a new comedy like Friends or Frazier. What happened? Did US telly companies run out of cash? Or get scared of taking risks?

No wonder I've been switching off the telly and reading books. Well, I would have done anyway but these days I wonder if my Sky subscription is worth a damn. I could just go to the library more often.

Recycling rant

I live in a block of flats where we have communal bins. Not very attractive to look at, I admit but most of us try to obey the recycling rules. It's just it's all getting to be a bit complicated:

Food waste has to go into the bin marked food waste.

Plastics and glass go into the two big bins downstairs. No bags allowed.

Paper and card go into two other big bins downstairs. Unless the card is 'soiled.' In that case, it has to go to the big recycling bins behind the station. Stuff like polystyrene and bubble wrap also had to go to the station bins. Again, no bags are allowed. You can get rid of clothes and shoes at the station. Of course, the signs at the bins say the clothes much be bagged and the shoes must be tied together with elastic bands.

General household waste goes down the chute at the end of the corridor. In bags.

Then there's the cost. Food waste must go in biodegradable bin liners, which we have to pay for. You need bags to take plastics, glass, paper and card downstairs and these days you have to pay for them too. But you can't put the bags in the bins so you have to bring them back to your flat or take them to the big bins behind the station. You also need to buy bags for stuff that you put down the chute or take to the station. And buy elastic bands for any shoes you dump.

I wonder what my elderly neighbours do if they're housebound. The carers don't do the recycling. Nor does the warden. Do they have to wait for visitors to arrive and get them to do it?

At least one of my neighbours is on a 'dirty protest,' dumping any old kind of rubbish into the first bin s/he comes to. The result is that we now have two food bins that the binmen have sealed and refuse to empty and nowhere to dispose of food waste. We've had a visit from one of the managers at the recycling centre. I was introduced to him and pointed to the sign above the bin area telling us cameras were operating. Couldn't they see who was misusing the bins on those? The warden looked a bit sheepish. It seems we've always had that sign. Just no cameras, because of the cost. I'm not sure what the binman can do unless he stakes the place out 24/7.

I know this is an urban problem. If you live in the country or have an allotment, maybe you can burn your rubbish there?

In the urban setting, the councils get fined if they fail to recycle. As I say, most of us want to reduce waste. it's just not very easy.

God Bless America

I know quite a few Americans.

I should maybe qualify that statement: my South American relatives will tell you that they too are Americans but the USA has taken over the word 'American' when what they really are is 'citizens of the United States of America.' Nothing more.

There you are. You might think other people's politics is simple, but as the great French cartoonist Sempé once wrote: Rien n'est simple. Tout se complique.*

On a BBC radio satire programme today I heard Mark Steele suggest that when Donald Trump takes up his job as president of the USA, the Mexicans should build a wall to the south, the Canadians should be asked to build a wall to the north, and the rest of us should chip in to put a roof over it, and close the USA in. For at least four years. Maybe eight. I suspect quite a few Europeans will sympathise with that view. Especially after seeing that press conference.

But I digress. As I said, I know quite a few Americans. Especially on Facebook. They are nothing like Donald Trump. Quite a few of them are first or second generation immigrants to the USA - as Donald Trump's mother was - and they totally endorse the principles of the US Constitution. Since I'm quite left-wing myself (liberal in US terms), I tend to attract friends on Facebook with similar views to mine. I don't block people, unless they're weird - like the guy who seemed to think being liberal was the same as socialist and that was the same as communist. He called me a Putin clone. I didn't know whether to be flattered or shocked, so I blocked him.

My US friends are as horrified as we are in Europe at Trump's misogynistic attitudes towards women; his mocking of the disabled; his contempt for Barack Obama; his refusal to publish his tax returns. Of course, he now denies he's an abuser of women or that he mocked a disabled reporter (even though we all saw it on TV). He's keeping quiet about Obama and the shameful persistent questioning of Obama's birth certificate, but he happily mocks other black US politicians, like the saintly John Lewis. (How the hell can anyone mock this man? A leader in the non-violent tradition, a Freedom Rider - and if you don't know what that means look up his entry in Wikipedia). And Trump is still adamant that not paying taxes - which his fellow citizens have to do, not being able to pay accountants to avoid them - makes him 'smart.'

I've been to the USA a few times. The places I've visited are: New York (hated it), Kentucky (loved it), Tennessee (ditto), Mississippi (ditto), Georgia (ditto) and California (ditto).

I think the USA will survive Trump's term as president. I'm not so sure Trump will survive. As president-elect, everything he has done is a stunt. Eventually, he'll run out of stunts. He'll then be into a new period. In the UK, it's called 'put your money where your mouth is.' We know Trump has a mouth. But is there any more to him than that?


* Nothing's simple. Everything's complicated.

The NHS again

I wrote last week about how the Tories have worked out the way to destroy the NHS. This picture has just been passed on to me:

I usually thank the people I get - steal - pictures from but on this occasion I can't remember how it found its way to me. But thanks anyway.

So let's look at this a bit more closely:

1 Who is this private doctor? Has anyone checked out his or her qualifications? Do they speak enough English to be able to communicate with patients? Have they been police-checked? If you go to the NHS, you can be sure who is treating you. In my time, over the years, I've been treated by many overseas doctors in my local practice and in hospitals. I've only ever had to complain about one, and that's because he had the bedside manner of Jack the Ripper.

2 Walk-in GP clinic. Hmm. I know what I mean by that title, but it may not mean the same as the people running this walk-in clinic. My GP clinic - we call it the health centre - houses a group of GPs but it also has nurses, nurse practitioners and medical assistants who offer a whole range of services like blood and urine tests on-site and sends our samples out to NHS labs for processing. By the way, the labs are very efficient. I wish we could praise the backroom boys and girls of the NHS more). My health centre also has access to the whole of the NHS for x-rays.CAT scans/PET scans, physio (actually in the same building), specialist treatment by consultants and so on. We don't pay for those up-front.
3 Notice the price. Not enough to frighten the horses. A lot of people could probably afford £19 but that's not the price, which is 'from £19.' This is a wild guess but could it be that the services I referred to in 2 above are not included and if you need any specialist treatment you - or your health insurance company - will have to come up with the money? This is the US system, where you have to find 'co-funding' for tests: so if you need a test that costs $200, the insurance company only pays half and you have to pay $100 up front before the test is done. The system that operates in France is much the same: you pay for doctor's appointments up front and get some of the money back (depending on your status as a member of the national sécurité sociale scheme. Same with prescriptions: you pay up front and claim back. What this means in reality is what I've seen happening at the pharmacies in France: elderly people discussing with the staff which one of the three items the doctor has prescribed is the most important because they can't afford all three.
4 Where this private 'service' wins hands down is in what the poster doesn't say: you don't have to wait a couple of weeks to see a doctor; you can book online; and you get 15 minutes with the doctor when you get in there. There will be parts of England where I imagine this reads like heaven. But I keep on saying this: never under-estimate the greed of capitalism - and US-style medical services are an arm of capitalism. They exist to take our money off us and give it to their executives and shareholders.

And a final comment, to the mothers whose children were playing with the fruit and veg in my local posh supermarket: we're in the middle of an epidemic of the norovirus in Scotland. (I know of people who went on holiday to a few Scottish islands at New Year and came straight back because the sickness/diarrhea bug was rampant). The supermarket has installed hand sanitisers at the entrance to the supermarket. For the love of gawd, get your children to use them before and after. And if you're buying loose fruit and veg - in fact, even pre-packed fruit and veg - wash your hands!

Police Scotland

I alerted my faithful readers to the Scottish Tories' use of Freedom of Information requests only yesterday when they were doing a bit of NHS-bashing that didn't stand up to serious scrutiny. Today it's the turn of Police Scotland to get the Tory treatment, as reported here on the BBC Scotland website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38491433

The big headline is: Compensation paid out by Police Scotland has hit record levels, according to new figures. No figures are given, of course, to show how the figures have increased on last year or previous years.

Now you must know from press and TV comments in the past couple of weeks that Police Scotland is in trouble financially - it is £17.5 million overspent this year. Police Scotland is a massive organisation with 23,000 staff. It is still 'rationalising' its staff and its spending after putting all of Scotland's police forces under one banner. Savings were bound to take a while to kick in. For example, you can't decide on Monday that you're going to cut the number of police call centres and have the cuts and the staff savings in place by Friday. When there are to be cuts, there are workplace consultations to go through. The Police Federation has to be consulted so that police officers are sure their interests are safeguarded. Officers have to be given the chance to move to other posts if their current post is abolished. Funding has to be found if they are to be allowed to retire. All this is perfectly normal in any industry.

Yesterday, Police Scotland was getting a bashing for wasting money on Gaelic. The Gaelic Act was introduced in 2005 (I'm sure you'll remember Labour were in charge at Holyrood then). The aim of the Act - an aim I totally agree with - is to 'normalise' Gaelic as part of life in Scotland. One aim of the Act is for all public authorities to have a Gaelic Plan. Eleven years - that's eleven years - after the Act became law, the police are doing their plan. (I'm not being nasty here: the Gaelic Act was intended to be phased in and it just happens to be Police Scotland's turn now). Here are their aims: Police Scotland want police officers in areas where Gaelic is spoken to learn the language and will help them with that. No one will be forced to learn the language. Police Scotland will have dual-language signage on notepaper and forms and on police cars and other vehicles. End of. To listen to the press, every officer in Police Scotland is to be bilingual within five years (if they manage to do that, as a one-time language teacher I'd like to know how) and dual-language signs are going to be everywhere - and expensive. Newspaper reporters and people who write furious letters to newspapers have failed to notice that costs have already been assessed and changes are designed to be 'cost neutral.'

So what is today's headline telling us? In 2015/6, 'the force paid out £1.27million in damages as a result of 516 claims.' That's £1.27m out of a budget of £1.1billion.  I did it for the NHS allegations yesterday but I can't even be bothered to get the calculator out to work out what that comes to as a percentage. Not very much. Even the Tory spokesperson admitted the amount of money and the numbers of claims involved are very low but:

" (Police Scotland pay out) compensation payments on hundreds of occasions each year." And that means: "every day there is at least one incident which results in taxpayers' money being used to compensate for an error or incident." As we saw yesterday, big numbers are used to give us a shock but it all boils down to very little on analysis.

So the Tories' assertions are not true and Police Scotland is not as spineless as the NHS when it comes to standing up for itself - see the article on the BBC news website - even pointing how much money it claims back from car insurance companies whose insured drivers hit police vehicles.

But I would like a couple of minutes to consider these Freedom of Information requests. The Tories (and the LibDems) have become quite adept at making these requests and then using them to try to fool the public into thinking Scotland's public services are going to hell in a handcart. Who pays for these FOI requests? The Tories are great at telling us it's all about safeguarding the taxpayers's money. Are they doing that? Every FOI request has to be written by a member of an MSP's office staff (paid for by the taxpayer), filed with the public body it's aimed at and dealt with by a member of staff (paid for by the taxpayer). If all the Tories can come up with is the stuff here and in my previous post, I'm not sure we're getting value for money.

Not from the public bodies. From the Tories.

NHS24

Today's Sunday Herald (and no one was more surprised than me to find a Scottish Sunday paper in my letterbox on 1 January) has a brief article entitled: 2016 predicted to be record year for abandoned calls to NHS24.

So let's set the scene: NHS24 receives 1.5 million phone calls every year. In one 6 month period period (April to October), 32,881 calls were abandoned. A quick bit of mental arithmetic would make that roughly 66,000 in the whole year. My trusty calculator tells me that's .04% of the total calls received. Not an overwhelming number. Certainly within acceptable limits, I would think.

That's not how it's presented by the Tory MSP who writes about it: she makes it 150 calls a day abandoned. Well, that sounds a lot worse, doesn't it? She also says 2016 will be a 'record year' for abandoned calls but doesn't give any figures to back that up - like maybe figures for previous years.

She goes on to give reasons for people abandoning calls: 'because it's taking too long or being cut off through no fault of their own.' Both causes are possible but there's no suggestion that NHS24 has given her that information so she's frankly making it up. I could suggest a few more reasons people abandon calls:
- people phone up and then they or a relative decide they really need to go to A&E.
- people phone up, are put on hold because the staff are busy and hang up because, believe it on not, there are people in this world whose patience runs out after 30 seconds - sometimes sooner.
- people phone up and curse at the operator who then hangs up. That's official policy endorsed by employers. I did it a few times myself. Nobody goes to work to be abused.
- in odd cases, people phone up when they're drunk or on drugs, make no sense to the call handler who refers it to a supervisor and, after investigation, they hang up.

NHS24 says there's no evidence of staff ending calls 'inappropriately.' All calls are recorded so I'm guessing NHS24's IT staff and online supervisors can and do sample calls to check that.

So is there anything to worry about here?

In the case of NHS24 I worry about the stress call handlers are under, not to mention their supervisors and medical staff. Everyone can see onscreen while they are dealing with one sick person how many other people are waiting in the queue. They are trained medical people though, and deal with calls the way the rest of us wouldn't be able to: they are calm, they follow the protocols (is this a child we're dealing with or an elderly person or someone with a pre-existing condition?) and they are unfailingly polite and helpful.

I've only ever had to call them twice. The first time, I was able to go to an all-night chemist and pick up an inhaler; the second time, I was referred to the GP out-of-hours department at the Victoria Infirmary. In both cases, I was expected, didn't have to hang about and emerged reassured. I was also reassured when my GP practice phoned me next day to check how I was. Evidence to me of good communication and record-keeping.

If there's anything to worry about, it's the attitude of certain politicians and the media who seem to make endless Freedom of Information requests which they then try to stitch into an anti-NHS story. It doesn't surprise me at all that this story was put together by a Tory MSP. She is clearly following the agenda set down by the party in Westminster. The agenda looks like this:

1 Starve the NHS of money so that there aren't enough hospital doctors or nurses or beds, and waiting times go through the roof.
2 Starve the local authorities of money and blame them for not putting adequate care budgets in place. Then old people stuck in hospital because they can't get a care package in place to go home can be blamed for clogging up the NHS.
3 Blame the employees of the NHS, doctors, nurses and ancillary services like ambulance drivers and paramedics for refusing to swallow the idiotic idea that you can get 7-day services for a budget that barely covers 5.
4 Ignore the fact that the population has more and more older people needing medical attention. Ignore the fact that the population is growing anyway so we really need more GPs and more surgeries. Blame migrants for clogging up surgeries, despite the fact that we know - we know - that migrant workers do not over-use health facilities because they come here to work - and they work damned hard.
5 Get the right wing press to claim the NHS is failing. We're all each other's enemies now, fighting over a smaller and smaller pie, so we won't disagree when someone like Jeremy Hunt starts to privatise the NHS and other members of his party start to tell us that insurance (as in the US health system that is currently failing 27.5million people and which charges twice as much as the NHS) is the only way forward. Don't let anyone tell you the NHS is free. We pay for our NHS. Even I, retired nearly 9 years now, am still paying my share and happy to do so.

Above all, never forget: Nye Bevan, who fought hard to get his plan through Attlee’s postwar Labour cabinet, was determined the NHS should “universalise the best” care and not simply act as a safety net for the poor, and should be based on need, rather than ability to pay.