This is a response to some of the points raised in the comments about the last post on A&E …a good debate …thanks to everyone who had a go.

The real point is to ask whether the BBC should have taken the King’s Fund’s press release at face value or should it have questioned the figures more deeply.

Looking at the King’s Fund’s report it seems to be more an opinion piece than about conclusions based on the facts…and the crucial piece of information is missing…how many people were treated at minor injury units pre 2004 and how many after the new GP contracts were introduced….these figures were just lumped together….making the report useless…at least for gauging the effects of the GP contracts…..

Though possibly looking at the graph you could calculate that perhaps one half of the walk-in centre data, shown in red, (but only that in 2004 as it’s a one off increase),  could be attributed to patients diverted from GP surgeries…the other half being the previously unrecorded data.  The King’s Fund makes no such calculation.

Dez in the comments raises some points stating:

‘The actual number of people attending A&E units has hardly changed since 2004.

In fact the number of people turning up at A&E has remained fairly constant since 1987.

Or in other words, the longer waiting times for people in A&E have nothing to do with GP contracts or increased demand.

Got it yet?

There – has – not – been – an – increase – in – demand – at – A&E – units.’

Well firstly the walk-in centres and minor injury units were A&E’s by another name…they were created to take patients with less serious ailments out of the major A&E units to allow more serious cases to be treated quicker…but they are still ‘A&E’.

Major A&E unit patient numbers remained apparently ‘stable’ …but that hides the truth…it may be the same number of patients but they are more seriously injured or ill people….the less serious have been ‘diverted’ to the walk-in centres…so overall numbers have risen.

Next…well common sense should immediately say that Dez’s claim that there has been no rise in numbers going to A&E can’t be right.

Between 2001 and 2011 the population increased by 3.7 million in England and Wales….7.1%.

And between 2004 and 2011 the population increased by 3 million.

Dez….you are saying not one of those 3 million extra people went to A&E….John Bercow yesterday said that immigrants were harder working than Brits…he didn’t tell us that they were also so remarkably healthier!

So you say there has been no rise in numbers at A&E units….. the NHS’s College of Emergency Medicine says something different in 2013:

‘A&E departments have seen a rise in the number of patients they are seeing in recent years, with an extra 4 million people a year using emergency services compared with 2004.’

The very King’s Fund report you quote even tells you that numbers have risen enormously:

‘The NHS has experienced a phenomenal increase in accident and emergency workload over the past decade.’

So does the BBC….a trustworthy advocate for you Dez surely ? Not only does it state that numbers have grown substantially but that the GP’s refusal to do out of hours work led to part of that increased workload at A&E:

‘It has been clear for some time that pressures have been growing in A&E.

For the past decade the numbers attending the units have been rising year by year. There are now more than 21 million visits annually – up 50% in a decade.

There is a combination of reasons why they have grown, including a rise in number of people with chronic conditions, such as heart disease, that end up having emergencies; the ageing population; and problems accessing out-of-hours GP care.’

And look, the BBC says it again:

‘GP consultations are up by a third since the mid 1990s.

Some of this workload has been passed on to hospitals with referrals for non-emergency care at one point during the 2000s rising by 15% a year.

There are signs the GP workload has had an effect on A&E too.

Amid complaints that doctors could no longer cope, they were allowed to relinquish responsibility for providing out-of-hours care in 2004.

This has been taken on by agencies, but with confidence in the system low there are large numbers of patients now attending A&E who do not need emergency care.

The College of Emergency Medicine estimates up to a third could be treated elsewhere.’

And here even one of the radical BMA’s representatives admits numbers have risen whilst rigorously denying his members had anything to do with that:

Dr Buckman told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme:

“People who go to A&E are not going because of GPs. There is no doubt some of it is because people are confused about how to get access to out of hours services and some of it is because NHS 111 is sending people there.

“But some of it is about a rapid rise in demand.”

Surely he’s not in the pay of the government is he…nor the BBC or The College of Emergency Medicine?

And yet more evidence:

‘Nationally, 20 per cent of patients attending A&Es during normal GP opening hours require an admission. But at some primary care trusts the average is as low as 6 per cent, suggesting significant numbers of patients are visiting A&Es in place of GP surgeries – even when practices should be open.

NHS Alliance chief executive Mike Sobanja said: “At its simplest these figures may show that patients are ringing up for an urgent appointment and cannot get one, and so go to A&E.”’

GPs are under pressure even when they are ‘open’…because of immigration and the vast numbers of new patients…resulting in people not being able to get appointments during the day…so they go to A&E….and in out of hours times patients go to A&E as well… immigrants often going straight to A&E treating it as a GP practise.

So Dez, your point:

There – has – not – been – an – increase – in – demand – at – A&E – units’

…has been comprehensively debunked.

What about your other point…that a change in the way data has been recorded explains why it looks like there has been a rise in admissions due to GP contracts changing?…you say…

‘It shows that from 2003-04 the way the data was recorded was changed – so that it included visits to “walk in centres” & “minor injuries units”.

You haven’t read the King’s Fund report properly….it does say data gathering changed but not in the narrow way you suggest.

Previous to 2003/04 there were these walk-in centres in existence……the government then introduced the GP contracts….and set up a whole new set of walk-in centres….to cope with an expected increase in workload at A&E….an increase you must presume they believed would arise from the fact that they knew that a majority of GPs were going to opt out of working ‘out of hours.’

The change in methodology in recording data  included adding in these already existing walk-in centres….but it also included the newly set up centres as well…and as stated earlier the King’s Fund makes no distinction between the two…which is the crucial figure that you need if you want to know how GP contracts effected the data.

Here the King’s fund evades giving the actual figures just claiming ‘much of the increase was due to previously unrecorded data‘:

‘So, much of the increase [how much?] in 2003/4 was due to previously unrecorded attendances now being collected, but also additional – but less serious – work being carried out in the new units. From 2003/4 to 2012/13, attendances in type 1 units have remained more or less unchanged. It is attendances in type 2 and 3 units that account for all the increase.’

Here it tells us that there were new walk-in centres created in 2003/04 to divert less serious cases away from expensive major A&E units:

‘Until 2003/4, statistics on A&E attendances included ‘major’ A&E units only. But around this time more, smaller units – including walk-in centres (WiCs) and minor injuries units (MIUs) – were introduced with the intention of diverting less serious emergency cases away from the larger, more expensive A&E departments, and the statistical collection was changed to record attendances separately for ‘type 1, 2 and 3’ units. Type 1 essentially reflecting major A&E units and types 2 and 3 defined as the smaller, walk-in and minor injuries units, together with specialist emergency departments.’

So 2003/04 Labour created more walk-in centres to cope with an expected rise in attendances at A&E.

Immigration contributed massively to the rise in attendances at A&E.

GP contracts and opting out contributed to a rise in attendances at A&E.

And finally….

Yes in 2004 some of the initial rise in the data showing higher rates of attendance at A&E could be attributed to previously unrecorded data….but much of that was down to new patients in new walk-in centres….but that was a one off change in the data that couldn’t be replicated for any following year.

So what of the following years? How to explain patient numbers that continued to rise year on year…from around 16 million  in 2004 to just over 20 million in 2011 before levelling off?

Are you saying Dez that that rise was because, year on year, the NHS kept finding ‘forgotten’ walk-in centres whose data they hadn’t recorded and so each year these undiscovered centres had their data added to the charts?

Plausible….or maybe not.

The truth is a complex combination of things…mostly increased population due to immigration combined with the difficulty of getting access to GP services whether in opening hours or not.

And the point of all this? Perhaps the BBC should have been delving a bit deeper into the King’s Fund’s claims and not taken them at face value.

Dragon Den’s Khan was given plenty of airtime to make excuses about employing his daughters…but so far nothing on the Telegraph’s story of Labour donor’s tax dodge..helped by the Labour Party….

Anyway…another open thread….all yours….

Compare and contrast:

The Telegraph on the A&E targets:

The graph that shows Labour is to blame for the pressures on A&E

and

Migrants partly to blame for A&E waiting times, Tory MP says

In 2004 Labour introduced GP contracts that paid them more for less work…resulting in patients going to A&E instead…and of course immigrants were ‘swamping’ the country by then as well, making use of the NHS.

The BBC on A&E targets:

NHS ‘misses A&E waiting time target’

Right at the end, the very last sentence, it slips in this:

‘But the government has in part blamed a “disastrous” legacy from Labour, including the renegotiation of GPs’ contracts which allowed them to opt out of providing out-of-hours care.’

Clive Myrie talks to Sylvia Emenike

Hugely disappointed…been watching the BBC’s ‘Australia With Simon Reeves’ and it had been something different from the normal offerings we get which follow the usual beaten path showing us all the same old touristy sights and sounds.

Reeves put in some effort and dug up some of the more interesting corners of Australia….but then the BBC flipped the switch and we got a BBC ‘Stepford wife’…obedient and mindless, repeating the BBC mantra, the party line….on the subjects of Race and Climate Change.

The BBC is up to its old tricks of ambushing us with its propaganda inserted into ‘normal’ programming…you wouldn’t mind half as much…but it is pure misinformation, factually wrong and highly misleading,  and rather blatantly and jarringly levered into place to send us a ‘message’.

36 minutes in we came to issues of race…we were told that Australia was now probably less racist than America or Europe….not Japan, or China, or Nigeria or Pakistan or any non ‘white‘ country? No racism in any other country in the world?…just old whitey again….but despite that…’racial tensions still exist’.

Reeves heads off to Cronulla Beach where he joins up with a team of Muslim women who play Australian rules football.

He gushes along the lines of: ‘Look how fantastically willing they are to engage as Australians…to integrate into society.’

He then gets down to business…in 2005 there were riots at the beach between non-Muslims and Muslims….

Reeves doesn’t bother explaining what caused the riots we were just told that they were ‘race riots’ and the impression given was that it was Muslims who were the innocent victims.

His Muslim ‘witness’ said that the consequences of the riots were that they had reinforced the migrant theory that they didn’t belong in Australia and were not really wanted….totally ignoring all those other immigrants happily making a life for themselves in Australia…..around 6.5% of the population (of 23 million) are now Chinese and 6% are of Indian origin…with many more from the rest of Asia, Africa and the Middle East…as well as the UK of course and New Zealand.

Reeves then asked if she got much hassle for being Muslim and wearing a headscarf…she related a story of her being abused for ‘no reason at all’ at a petrol station…..but there was nothing to substantiate that claim at all.

Nor had there been any other voices to talk about ‘race’ in Australia…it was purely from one perspective…that of the Muslims.

What really happened in Cronulla? The truth puts a completely different spin on things….and it’s not hard to find…it’s all in this police report from the New South Wales Police.

The report shows that groups of ‘Middle Eastern’ men were frequently the cause of violent attacks previous to the riot….and there are plenty of other reports of Muslims assaulting and abusing residents of the area over several years…all of which built up a deep seated feeling of antipathy and resentment against them…which eventually spilled over in 2005.

Was the riot just an attack by ‘whites’ upon Muslims? These text messages intercepted by police show that both sides were looking for a fight:

The following are samples of the text messages that were being distributed:

[From the White side]

“Just a reminder that Cronulla’s 1st wog bashing day is still on this Sunday. Chinks bashing day is on the 27^th and the Jews are booked in for early January”

Every fucking aussie. Go to Cronulla Beach Sunday for some Leb and wog bashing Aussie Pride ok”

[From the Muslim side]

“All lebo I wog brothers. Sunday midday. Must be at North Cronulla Park. These skippy aussies want war. Bring ur guns and knives and lets show them how we do it”

“0 fight each Aussie. Yulleh. Lets get hectic and turn gods country into wogs country. Habib will be cookin victory kebabs after. Tell all your cousins”

At the same time intelligence was being received by police from a variety of sources that Caucasian males were planning to converge on Cronulla Beach area on Sunday Ilth December. Also, intelligence was received that Middle Eastern males were going to the same area to engage in a riot.’

From the evidence it looks as if this was a case of Whites ‘defending’ themselves against the racism of ‘Muslims’….rather than the other way round…..at the very least it was both ‘sides’ equally to blame …it certainly wasn’t a one sided racist assault by white Australians on innocent immigrants that Reeves portrays it as.

Reeves rounds it all up with a pious bit of patronising preaching from the BBC multicultural bible:

‘Racism is an issue that Australia must deal with if the communities are going to be a harmonious society that makes the most of Australia’s position the edge of Asia….other people may see them [Muslims] as outsiders but they see themselves as Aussie to the core and my goodness what amazing young women they are!’

He then moves on to climate change and tells us that Australians are some of the most evil people on the planet…they are one of the worst offenders for polluting the atmosphere with CO2. Not China then or India?

Australia produces around 1.4% of the world’s emissions of CO2, China 23.5%, India around 6%, Iran 1.5%. Per capita Australia is worse but not by other measures…by land mass for example…Australia produces only 0.17% per Sq Km, China 2.6% per Sq Km….take your pick how you compare emissions and ‘guilt’.

Reeves tells us that Australia is a heavy user of energy, a massive user of electricity generated mostly by ‘dirty old coal’…he goes on to say they are among the worst emitters of carbon in the world,  that they are among the most polluting people on the planet…charming…especially as he of course flew there, probably with a big BBC crew and is driving around in a large 4×4.

He says it is hard to know what the consequences will be…but will we heed the warnings?…he implies politicians are corrupted by the system…as democracy fails us because they only look to the short term to win votes by appealing to the ‘people’s’ baser instincts…greed and selfishness no doubt.

Reeves tells us we really need to think long term…and that of course entails putting a stop to all that CO2 ‘pollution‘…..Aunty knows best…just shut your eyes and do what you are told.

Funny the BBC’s version of ‘democracy’…it has nothing to do with what the ’people’ want…but what their ‘morally and intellectually superior’ elites, mostly those working in the Media, tell them they must have.

The BBC always sneers at ‘populism’…but isn’t that ‘democracy’?

The New Cultural Forum’s review of the BBC’s coverage of immigration by Edest has been released:

Groupthink: Can we trust the BBC on immigration?

The last post looked at ‘Prosperity Gospel’ and what the BBC thought about its message…..the Guardian reviewed the programme and within that review one astonishing statement stood out a mile and revealed a lot about a certain mindset:

‘The whole of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, can be read as a record of people coming to terms with failure. In part this was done by the invention of a heroic past, in the empire of Solomon’s time, something that may have been one of the truly great mistakes of history.’

Here Wikipedia explains just what the Guardian may be referring to:

‘King Solomon is one of the central Biblical figures in Jewish heritage that have lasting religious, national and political aspects. As the constructor of the First Temple in Jerusalem and last ruler of the united Kingdom of Israel before its division into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah, Solomon is associated with the peak “golden age” of the independent Kingdom of Israel as well as a source of judicial and religious wisdom.’

So the Guardian suggests ‘Somebody’ invented a ‘heroic past’……‘one of the truly great mistakes of history‘.

Who would that ‘somebody’ be?

The ‘Jews’ of course……the Jews invented their past…invented their existence as a ‘nation’ and invented their right to exist as such a nation.

The Guardian calls that ‘one of the truly great mistakes in history.’

Isn’t that verging on the old excuse for rabid anti-Semitism that the ‘Jews killed Christ’?

The Guardian here is blaming the Jews for much of what is wrong with the world today …..a modern version of course being….sort out Israel and Palestine and peace and harmony will break out all over the world.….Israel is ‘illegitimate’ and the cause of most of the world’s problems.

The Guardian itself admitted that it had allowed anti-Semitism to rear its ugly head within its pages….things don’t seem to have changed.

The BBC once again broadcasts a programme that tears into a Christian Church as Dotun Adebayo presents a programme about the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ Church.

An interesting programme about a Church that I had never heard of and probably one meriting a look at its activities….but as I said…once again the BBC goes for the Christians.

The programme tells us …..

‘The Bible says you cannot serve both God and Mammon but in this programme the BBC explores the rise of a movement within Christianity which turns that piece of scripture on its head…Christianity can make you rich…material wealth is a sign of God’s blessing in the Church that preaches ‘Prosperity Gospel’.

Prosperity Gospel is based upon purity…if you are good and behave as a Christian God will bless you and that blessing will primarily be and fundamentally be economic.

It is a canon within a canon…some parts of scripture are more important than others….and their interpretation of the Bible is based more on the Old Testament than the New with a selective use of scripture that contradicts the overall message of the Gospel.

We are told that Prosperity Gospel began in the Pentecostal Church in 1950’s America before travelling via evangelism and the satellite to Africa and then to Britain via immigration….the migrants being mostly West African who came to Britain looking for a brighter more prosperous future and so are fertile ground for this type of message which for ‘people of faith’ has a unique and powerful appeal promising people what governments don’t dare.

Where there is faith there is hope…but it comes with a price tag.

Dotun says that: ‘I’ve got to be honest, I’m not comfortable with the mantra of Prosperity Gospel…it makes me queasy…maybe it’s the religious fundamentalism of the 7^th Day Adventism of my Nigerian upbringing or the cultural modesty of my English side…I just don’t feel comfortable with the bling and the brashness of Churches which make a virtue of cashing in and a fortune from it too….I want to know why the message connects with so many people.’

A couple of things that are of note…firstly a presenter who is personally uncomfortable with the subject….having said that, by the end of the programme he says he sort of gets it…the appeal of the message…and the justification of it.

Secondly Mark Thompson refused to cover Islam in a similar fashion dby elving into its inner workings, critiquing what the preachers of Islam claim and what the message of the Koran is.

Why did he refuse to do so?

First of all he said that you had to be more wary when covering a subject about which its followers  might object to your portrayal of it:

‘In a wide-ranging interview about faith and broadcasting, Mr Thompson disclosed that producers were faced with the possibilities of “violent threats” instead of normal complaints if they broadcast certain types of satire:

“Without question, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms’, is different from, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write’”.

 But he had another reason to be wary of covering certain subjects:

“The idea you might want to … think quite carefully about whether something done ‘in the name of freedom of expression’ might to the Jew, or the Sikh, or the Hindu, or the Muslim, who receives it, feel threatening, isolating and so forth, I think those are meaningful considerations.”

“It’s not as if Islam is spread evenly across the UK population. It’s almost entirely a religion practiced by people who may already feel in other ways isolated, prejudiced against and where they may well regard an attack on their religion, racism by other means….it’s not unreasonable to ask what the consequences of broadcasting something, or writing something will be for a particular individual or for a community, especially communities who may reasonably – I think that’s perhaps an important word to use – reasonably take the thing to be an attack, or to be threatening.”

So Thompson suggests that a minority or ethnic based religion should be given more sensitive treatment that say Christianity.

And yet here we have a programme that takes a highly critical look at a Church which has a congregation that is almost totally West African in origin….in other word an ethnic minority.

Once again it looks as if the rules are changed just because it is a Christian Church.

The BBC were quite happy to characterise Buddhism as a religion of violence…..and here our old ‘new friend’ Jake Wallis Simons tells us on R4 that he left Buddhism because of its violence…..its ‘darker side’….other religions the BBC are more coy about.

This is what the Guardian says about ‘Prosperity Gospel‘:

‘For young, healthy, anxious strivers who need reinforcement in the face of discouragement, the prosperity gospel is a much less harmful way of escaping the world than either drugs or gambling, and will not make them nearly as poor as those do, even if it never makes them rich.

But no matter how I argue that these rites may be largely harmless when practised by consenting adults, I still find them disgusting.’

The Guardian finds the message of this Church ‘disgusting’…they wouldn’t dare say that about other religions.

And nor would the BBC.

Freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom from England…apparently a shortage of all in Bonnie Scotland.

Over 700 years ago…

…tyranny and terror were the tools being used by England to rule Scotland. Occupied and oppressed, the Scottish nation sought a hero to challenge the cruelty of King Edward I.

Someone to take the campaign for freedom into battle, and on to victory.

When the two countries faced each other at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, Scotland was led to victory by a figure destined to become a national hero – William Wallace.

Today Scotland has Mr Sean Adams……

According to ‘Mr Sean Adams’ of the SNP BBC Scotland has not allowed the Scots the freedom to comment on BBC editor’s blogs….strange you may think considering there is a referendum coming up on Scottish independence…might be nice for the BBC to let people tell the Media  what they think….unfiltered…you might think it would be a useful sounding board for the BBC itself to judge feeling and opinion..

He compares to all the other regions in the UK which do allow comments:

Mr Sean Adams ‏@ASairFecht 23 May Thirteen BBC regions. All have a political editor. All blog. Only region licence fee payers can’t comment? Scotland. Why @BBCScotlandNews

Mr Sean Adams ‏@ASairFecht 23 May Licence fee payers in Wales, NI and all English regions can comment on Political Editor blogs. Only in Scotland do BBC deny us that option.

Mr Sean Adams ‏@ASairFecht 23 May Anyhow, no time to talk about @BBCScotland denying freedom of speech when there’s grass to be cut. #Priorities

In his blog he expands on the point about BBC Scotland:

‘Some, including me, pointed out that – at the very least – BBC licence payers in Scotland were being discriminated against in relation to those in other parts of these islands. In this blog from April 2nd, 2012 I remarked on the anomaly that the BBC Political Editors in Wales, Northern Ireland and all eight English regions allowed the people who pay their wages to comment on their blogs. Only in Scotland was this privilege removed.

In terms of the BBC’s own Charters and operating guidelines the decision was, to say the least, a strange one. Nation may speak to nation but, it appears, a nation may not speak amongst themselves – except in England, Northern Ireland and Wales of course.

At any other period in Scotland’s modern history the decision would have troubled many. In the context of the Independence Referendum, when those of every political persuasion agree that Scotland faces its most important political decision in over 300 years, it was frankly bizarre.

Scots will not be allowed to discuss the issues with other Scots on the national broadcaster’s online platforms. The only information we are to receive on the issues will be the information supplied by Pacific Quay. Which is fine, I suppose, because the BBC is beyond reproach. No-one on the staff has a political bone in their body. At all times, we can be assured, news will be unfiltered, un-nuanced and uncorrupted.

I hope the people of the rest of these islands don’t feel too encumbered by their surfeit of free speech – it’s a heavy responsibility.

Luckily, we in north Britain have BBC Scotland to tell us what to think.’

Another week….sunshine and endless BBC bias to uncover…what more could you want?

…Just heard on radio  young people getting involved in Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ by volunteering…stick in the BBC’s throat?…it was always the ‘Big Joke’.