Ed: I was late getting to this so have had to make minor changes to Alasdair’s text in light of changes on the websites during the day.
If you peruse the BBC pages for Northern Ireland, there is no mention of Coronavirus. On the Wales pages, there is a single mention, but it is not dramatic. On the Alba page, there is no mention. However, it is the lead on the Scotland and the Scottish Politics page and has been since the outbreak began, with the emphasis on the ‘200 00 Scottish cases’ and ‘epidemic in Scotland awaited’. These are de-contextualised from the Chief Medical Officer’s report, which like all formal announcements indicates the range of likely sufferers and the ‘probability’ of epidemics. So, it is data-mining to present an alarmist story. Clydebuilt, above, has indicated other features of recent coverage.
This has to be seen in the context of the long-running Health scare stories.
As I passed my pharmacy this morning there was a notice from NHS Scotland on the door. It was considered in tone and strightforwardly offering sensible advice. Shortly after, I met a friend, who is retired from the medical profession and who dealt with public health and his view was exactly that expressed in the NHS Scotland notice.
As we all know, BBC Scotland News and Current Affairs is actively political against the Scottish Government.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
This link is to an article based on the report produced by experts from WHO to study the Coronavirus outbreak in China. Lots of interesting information.
Hope it works Ok.
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Sorry it has produced the whole article more or less rather than just the link. Feel free to delete it John.
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Thanks for this. Could you summarise?
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I this is already a summary of the main report and as such contains important information about the disease, symptoms, transmission, treatment of the seriously I’ll and containment measures etc that we should know not just from a personal perspective but also as a means of measuring and judging what we are being told by the Gov and the measures they are promoting.
The last three paragraphs which are direct quotes from the report are also important especially when judging the measures being put in place in the UK.
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Who exactly is behind all this SNP baad stuff , I want a name John ! .
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Eh, Sarah?
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John,
I hope you will forgive me for writing to you off the topic.
On March 4th the HoC held a debate on health inequalities. Phillips Whitford spoke most eloquently from 4.17.30 or so. If you have a few minutes of peace may I suggest you watch her deliver the speech?
I wonder if it would be possible to cut and paste the speech and get it on to social media. Could you help with this,please?
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Got a link?
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Sorry, yes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000g25r/house-of-commons-04032020
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Shared on Twitter and FB:
Philippa Whitford Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Health and Social Care), Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Exiting the European Union) 4:53 pm, 4th March 2020
Obviously I welcome what the Minister has said, but she talked about starting to take action and, given that we have had Conservative-led Governments for the last decade, I find it a bit surprising to hear talk of starting to take action now.
Health is much wider than the NHS. This is a confusion that many people make. Health is about everything else. In his acclaimed review “Fair Society, Healthy Lives”, Michael Marmot defined the social determinants of health: the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. He explained that the variation was driven by inequity in power, money and resource. The review set out how public expenditure could act on the social determinants to reduce health inequalities. The problem is that, although it was welcomed by the coalition Government—there was even a public health White Paper—no action was really taken. In contrast, in 2016, we saw essentially the repeal of the Child Poverty Act 2010, including the reduction targets to get more children out of poverty. In the 2020 Marmot review, therefore, we see not success over the past 10 years, but things going in the wrong direction.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2020-03-04a.913.0
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An interesting development in the campaign for safe consumption rooms is being reported on the STV news site – but I’ve seen no similar mention on the beeb Scotland pages. (If it appeared it must have been a ‘blink and miss it ‘ job).
The story involves a seemingly visionary Scottish activist who would appear to be in the mould of that fine tradition of Scottish visionary activists such as Mary Barbour and John Wheatley. Mary and John – operating in a careful and disciplined manner – ‘pushed’ at Westminster’s legal boundaries to achieve progressive change via the Glasgow Women’s Rent Strikes in 1915 (whilst keeping public opinion firmly ‘on side’.) From the outline of his plan many sensible Scots will be wishing more power to Mr. Krykant’s elbow, I suspect.
North brit tory MSP Wee Annie Wells has repeatedly called for radical action – Perhaps she’ll have the chance to offer herself as a human shield to protect Mr. Krykant from the full force of Westminster’s ‘bad’ laws that are maintaining this situation? Link and snippets below:
https://news.stv.tv/west-central/ill-run-my-own-drugs-fix-room-from-a-travelling-van
While the Scottish and UK governments are locked in a stand-off over drugs ‘fix rooms’, one man is taking matters into his own hands.
Drugs recovery worker Peter Krykant intends to open a safe consumption room in a van travelling around Glasgow.
Scotland is in the grips of a drugs crisis, with a record number of deaths last year, while two major summits were held last week.
The Scottish Government has been calling for powers to open a facility where users can take cocaine and heroin safely, but drug policy is not devolved and its requests have been rejected by the Home Office.
Mr Krykant said he had been left frustrated by the lack of new measures to tackle the crisis and plans to hit the road within three weeks.
Mr Krykant said: “We’ve been talking about this for over four years. The initial proposal to set up a safer consumption room within Glasgow was in 2016 and that was blocked.
“It’s been continuously blocked, so we have to have some activism to move this forward.”
There are more than 150 drug consumption rooms around the world, with no reports of fatalities.
After an initial crowdfunding webpage was taken down, Mr Krykant has been raising money and spreading the word through social media.
He said: “We would be providing clean injecting equipment, clean sterile water and, most importantly, we would have [overdose treatment] naloxone kits.”
Mr Krykant said his commitment to the project had cost him his job, and said he was saddened that he felt forced to take drastic action.
He said: “If you want to come and arrest me for running an internationally recognised, evidence-based approach to reducing the harm’s caused by drugs and keeping people alive being a former injecting drug user and street homeless myself, you’ll need to come and do it.”
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SAlasdair
It’s always interesting to compare the BBC reports inflicted on Scotland with their reporting in other parts of the UK.
Recently Kaye Adams interviewed Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Catherine Calderwood, even though the tooic was Coronavirus, Kaye couldn’t resist trying to trap the good Doctor by getting her to give out advice for travel to other countries.
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Alasdair apologies for spelling. . . . Having problems posting here.
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