SNP giving us fake news
WE all know by now that the ruling SNP is not very good with figures. Its failure to produce any kind of detailed plan for Scottish independence is one indication of this, as are the fantasy figures produced for various issues, which are mostly designed to show that Scotland is performing better than England.
Reporting of Covid figures was a part of this. Ms Sturgeon’s recent inaccurate claims about the percentage of renewables powering our electricity is another indicator. Now there is the issue of hospital admission waiting times, where it seems that the figures have been manipulated so that, as the UK’s statistics watchdog points out, “patients who have not yet been treated, some of whom may have been waiting a long time, are not included in [SNHS] figures” (“NHS waits data ‘misleads’”, The Herald, November 2). This means that the figures “could potentially mislead some patients about the length of time they may have to wait”. This is far from being an isolated instance of skewed figures in Scottish public services.
This raises two important points. First, why are staff in the SNHS and elsewhere using manipulated figures to misrepresent the situation? Well, we know why – to make things appear better than they actually are. But who tells them to do this? Is there a written order instructing them to do so? Does this come from the top – the ministers, the First Minister? Are there relevant emails deep in the interstices of the internet?
Secondly, it should be a matter of profound relief to Scots that the UK’s statistics watchdog is indeed scrutinising the Scottish administration to learn about its shabby practices. We need more of this, especially where the SNP administration intrudes into reserved issues.
The one thing missing is relentless publicising of the fact that our rulers have been imparting fake news to us while concealing the much less palatable truth. It is beyond time that Scots were treated as adults and kept accurately informed of the performance of their public services.
Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh
Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh
0 Comments