Weekend Stroke Deaths
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said this week that if you have a stroke at the weekends, you're 20% more likely to die. But is that true? We look at the evidence.
Are you more likely to win prizes with newer Premium Bonds? We ask Radio 4’s Money Box presenter Paul Lewis if there is any truth in this.
A few weeks ago many newspapers were reporting that alcohol was the cause of 70% of Accident and Emergency attendances over the weekends. Did the newspapers misunderstand the research?
Why was the polling in the run up to the General Election last year so wrong? We speak to Professor John Curtice, lead author on a report using the 2015 British Social Attitudes Survey to see if they could come up with better data.
There is great excitement over rumours that one of the predictions Einstein made in his theory of General Relativity has finally been observed. We ask UCL physicist Dr Andrew Pontzen why this is big news.
Plus, is the air in Beijing is so bad that it's like smoking 40 cigarettes a day? We investigate.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the download of the Radio 4 edition of More or Less. |
| 0:03.5 | First broadcast on Friday the 15th of January. |
| 0:07.5 | If you are a loyal listener to our podcast, |
| 0:09.8 | you'll have heard the final item about air pollution in Beijing before. |
| 0:13.4 | Enjoy the program. |
| 0:15.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less, your weekly guide to the numbers that surround us in |
| 0:19.5 | the news and in life. |
| 0:21.8 | This week, is there something weird about premium bonds? Have |
| 0:25.6 | scientists finally proved Einstein right? It would be really a crowning jewel in |
| 0:31.4 | in in Einstein's achievements. |
| 0:33.0 | Yeah, because the guy doesn't have much of a reputation. |
| 0:35.0 | It would be nice to sort of cement. |
| 0:38.0 | It would be nice to get him some recognition. |
| 0:40.0 | Our hospitals really swamped with drunks throughout the weekend and what went wrong with those pre-election opinion polls? |
| 0:48.0 | But first, junior doctors in England went on a 24-hour strike this week over a proposed change to their employment |
| 0:55.1 | contracts. |
| 0:56.4 | The change is being driven by the government's aim to have what it calls a seven-day NHS. |
| 1:01.7 | The idea is that you should get the same treatment regardless of the day of the week, |
| 1:05.3 | with the implication that currently you get worse treatment at the weekend. |
| 1:09.9 | To support this aim, ministers have repeatedly produced statistics showing that if you're admitted to hospital over the weekend, you're more likely to die than if you go in on a weekday. |
| 1:19.6 | Here's the Prime Minister back in May last year for example. |
| 1:22.8 | It is a shocking fact, but mortality rates for patients admitted to hospital on a Sunday |
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