Meanwhile in Scotland......

I haven't lived in Scotland since I was a child, but at that time generally speaking the further south of the border the English lived the less they knew or cared about Scotland, or at least that was what it felt like then.

Seems things haven't changed all that much, but if you want to sharpen peoples' awareness of the differences between Scotland and England with regards to health, schooling or whatever you will need to go on posting on the main threads, as those who know nothing about Scotland are not likely to read a purely Scottish thread.

Scottish threads would be useful for those of us who want or need information on Scottish matters, though.

Here is a statement of the position in Scotland re Dental charging:

www.scottishdental.org/public/treatment-charges/

As you will see dental care is free for children up to age 18 if in full time education and for those in receipt of certain benefits. Initial examinations are free for all, which does encourage people to attend a dentist regularly such that problems can be addressed at an early stage and there is a cap on the total cost of any course of treatment.

This is all (good) news to me as I have had no occasion to visit a dentist for the past 40 years since I got my excellent NHS Wallies

What is a 'gNat' ? never heard the expression before.

It was not my intention to start a Nationalist or Unionist bashing thread, rather to create a space where we could discuss News and issues specific to Scotland which are probably of little interest to those furth of Scotland, but if it develops into a cross border exchange of information then all to the good

I was prompted to start the thread after lengthy exchanges on another forum with a bloke from 'dahn souff' whose ignorance of matters Scottish was astonishing. I referred him to the Wikipedia page on Scotland which is, to my mind a brief, relatively unbiased synopsis of the history and current situation of Scotland. I recommend this for anyone who does not know the basics, including Scots who were sadly not taught about their own Culture, History, etc in school.

I have just read on a Tax Payers' Alliance email that NHS Fife paid £1million in taxi fares. Not a very good example, I'd have thought.

Where did they find that info, Lilyflower and over what period was it spent ? I have done a quick search and can find only that in the six years between 2007 and 2013 Fife NHS spent £740,583 on taxis (and other areas had used taxis too. See www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/fury-nhs-spends-5m-taxis-1855802 27 APR 2013) That averages at £123,430 a year, not a million.

"Scottish Conservative health spokesman Jackson Carlaw . . .“ . . . .It shouldn’t be the case that patients perfectly able to use public transport should be chauffeured to and from hospital.” but do we know whether those patients WERE fit to use public transport? And what would have been the equivalent cost of buying, maintaining and manning ambulances for them, to form a comparison?

Pertinent questions in your second paragraph, elegran.

A change of search terms has produced the relevant news item(s)

"NHS FIFE has spent more than £1 million on taxi fares for patients over the past three years

just under £300,000 on private hire vehicles for patients in the past financial year. BUT - Figures for the past three financial years show taxi costs have reduced from £371,000 in 2014/15 to just over £299,000 in 2016/17. So there is a downward trend.

At Dunfermline's Queen Margaret Hospital, private taxi hire has cost £106,048 over the last three years BUT - reduced to £20,530 in the last year

At Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, £549,093 was spent over the last 3 years. The overwhelming majority of the accumulated fares originated at Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital, peaking in 2015/16 at £197,316. BUT This was reduced last year to £157,936
Dunfermline Press
The Courier

These two hospitals serve respectively West Fife and Mid Fife, both are fairly complicated areas to travel around, particularly for someone attending hospital. Bus services reach the main towns, but not the villages and countryside.

Well researched Elegran. As the current trend is to centralise services such as A&E there is often no available public transport to get to hospital, certainly not in the middle of the night! When DH dislocated and broke his elbow in late evening I was able to drive him to hospital with his arm in a makeshift sling, but was advised to get a taxi if no one available to drive, rather then send an ambulance. Although our hospital Forth Valley Royal is only about 9 miles away as the crow flies, it is necessary to go via Stirling or Kincardine to cross the River Forth, making for a 50minute journey so not cheap in terms of taxi costs, especially as it was 2.30am before I was able to return home - DH was kept overnight.

In a country which is in the main 'rural' I think the use of taxis is an eminently sensible and cost effective way of transporting 'walking wounded' patients.

A fully kitted ambulance costs £250,000.
Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the average cost per call across the ambulance service remained stable at around £190.

So for £300,000, they could have bought one ambulance and send it out to pick up 263 patients.

How many patients were picked up by taxi and delivered to Fife hospitals?
How many of them were capable of getting themselves to the nearest bus and thence to Kirkcaldy or Dunfermline?
How many were fit enough to do the same journey in return?
How many members of the tax payers alliance would have objected to them being "ferried about" in an ambulance when they were not emergency cases?

I wonder how many members of the Tax Payers Alliance live in rural areas, and how many of them (not many!) don't pay much tax as they don't earn enough to come above the tax threshold - and not enough to pay for long-distance taxi rides either.

I'm in Scotland but in a rural area. I find most talk of Scotland is concentrated on the Central Belt and precious little attention is paid to those of us outside that area. The Central Belt is like a mini-Westminster, they don't think beyond their own backyard.

Just for the record mcem, there is no English Parliament, as the English don’t have that privilege that has been given to the other member countries of the UK.
As much as people don’t like it the London parliament is a UK parliament.

Perhaps you could be more specific about the problems Sue as this is an issue that I am not very aware of and would like to learn more.

I suppose that I live in a semi-rural village about an hour from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Perth, but we have relatives in the Cairngorms, & rural Aberdeenshire and tend to holiday in the Western Isles or NW highlands. People I know in these areas seem to feel that since devolution their distinctive needs have been better served than when everything was controlled by Westminster, but, no doubt, there is still considerable room for improvement.

I was very heartened by the enormous support that the anti-fracking campaign attracted from areas outwith the Central Belt, which were not directly under threat of fracking and UGE themselves. Those of us in the Central Belt might be more supportive of the North, Borders and Isles if we were more aware of the problems there.

Things like govt underfunding, Granny23, council tax grants and school funding. I believe my area has the lowest education funding in all Scotland. Transport issues - no electrification of railways, sky-high bus fares compared to Central Belt, a monopoly of flights to/from London. Also a complete lack of public transport in some areas!

Lack of mobile phone/internet coverage is also a very big deal here. Nothing seems to be happening about that to improve the situation.

Lack of support for farming. My s-i-l farms and has been badly treated by the Scottish govt regarding payments.

This area has also suffered from the emergency services being centralised to the CB meaning local knowledge has been lost as well as job losses. Our health board is often having to fight to prevent services being relocated to the CB, even at one point wanting to remove trauma services. There are no in-patient MH services for young people north of Dundee - a huge area.

Those are some of the things we feel strongly about where I am - sorry, you did ask!

Marianne given that we're very well aware of that I'd have hoped that coupling important and English together was either a way of indicating that I know my place ( tugs forelock) or might be seen as ironic!!

PS also a nod to the earlier references to M&S!

Thanks for putting me right on dental treatment. Looks much the same as for me then. It’s free for those in full time education or on benefits and I pay I think, £20 for a check up. The dentist used to do a de-scale and polish as part of a check up but now I’m supposed to make another appointment with the hygienist which cost £45 for 15 minutes. Needless to say, I don’t!

This will be an interesting thread to follow, but so far there seems little difference between us. I think if you go to Cornwall and the south east or the north or here in the east, you’ll find the same feeling of being second class citizens to the wealth of London. Maybe it’s a centre of power thing. I suspect the French feel the same about Paris.

NFK your post made me realise for the first time that I feel no more at home in London than I do in Paris?
Now trying to work out why that is ( I lived and worked in London for 2 years but living there and visiting aren't the same!)

I think you knew what I meant Durhamjen It was clear from the context.
It may be divided into NHSE and NHSS but I don't know anyone in England who calls it anything other than the NHS and I have never seen any signage which says NHSE.
It was an uncontroversial comment. No argument to be started.

Elegran The chairman of TPA is the Stephen Shakespeare the owner of ConservativeHome.com and it's donors are the same as those who donate to the Tory party like the CEO of JCB and of McAlpine.
It is quoted by news outlets, particularly the Daily Mail, as if it is an independent think tank but most people involved with the running of it either were or are closely involved with the Tory party.

I was in Durham hospital when NHSE came into being, Jaycee.
I remember mentioning it to one nurse and she said, " So that's why all the headed paper has been changed. I did wonder."
As I was in with an undiagnosed problem that could have killed me, I didn't talk to that many of the staff, but none of those I did mention it to knew anything about it.
Too busy saving lives to think about the politics of it.
Not their fault.

@Granny23 - a 'gNat' is one of those rabid nationalists. Not the normal 'I'd like for Scotland to be independent' types, but the sort who thought abusing Jim Murphy was ok owing to his hoping Scottish voters would vote to stay in the UK. They're also called 'cyber-Nats' but gNats is a play on the midges.

Suedomin I set out to investigate some of the points you raised re rural areas but got bogged down in mobile phone coverage which seems to be an enormously complex issue. There are 'notspots' i.e. no coverage areas all over the UK, mainly in rural areas but even within the major cities. One of the problems is that companies experience difficulties in getting planning permission for additional masts because of local objections - everyone wants better signal but does not want a mast in their back yard. Another, mainly urban problem is that 3G, & 4G services use more broadband width, smart phones use more than simple mobiles so the need for more, and more powerful, masts increases all the time. Signals cannot pass through large dense buildings nor mountains. It is not cost effective for companies to erect masts in very rural areas where there are few paying customers.

This is an update on what the SG is doing to try to address the problems but it appears there is no magic wand and no prospect of a quick solution. www.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00501359.pdf

longhaulgran Jim Murphy wasn't ABUSED ,he was heckled and that has long been something politicians expected ..even Harold Wilson remarked about heckling AND being egged in his day and it wasn't in Scotland.Murphy to be honest was a waste of Space as have been all the subsequent leaders of the Scottish branch of Labour ,Maybe that party NEEDS someone who has Scotlands interests at heart instead of WM's.Oh and I did vote SNP the last 3 elections and YES in the referendum...but after Independence when the parties are Scottish based and not tied to a party in Westminster my vote will likely go elsewhere .Meantime SNP have done more for us than labour did in the previous 70 years .They are our way forward .

Longhaulgran I am very interested in your account of the 'egging' of Jim Murphy as it seems to contradict the press and media reports of the incident which stated that the egger was not a 'gnat' but rather a man, who had a personal grudge against Murphy, who took exception to him speechifying outside this man's house, went to a nearby shop, bought fresh eggs and proceed to throw them at JM. Was this another example of 'fake news' from the media?

Personally I did not experience any intimidation or threats during the Referendum Campaign (unlike ordinary parliamentary elections where we have had eggs flung at the door, windows and car, tyres slashed and rival's posters superglued to a car.) In fact I think it is something for all Scots to be proud of that we conducted a campaign and democratic referendum without any serious violence, injuries or riots. How many other Independence Campaigns around the world could make the same claim?