With his personal trust rating, in YouGov’s January poll, at only 8% and support for his party leader’s Coronavirus unlocking strategy at only 9% in May, Jackson Carlaw must now deal with two damning exposures of how his party’s handling of the crisis has clearly brought the deadly virus to Scotland in the early days of the outbreak.
While BBC Scotland and the Scottish newspapers have been keen to characterise the outbreak at the Nike Conference on 26 March, and the decision of Public Health Scotland to protect the privacy of the ten or so Scots who attended, as a ‘cover-up’ and as Ian Murray (Con: Morningside) drooled it ‘a catastrophic error of judgement’ by the First Minister, the truth of the matter is now emerging. BBC Scotland Disclosure, with little perspective and even less sensitivity named it Scotland’s ‘Ground Zero.’
First, Dominic Cumming’s sociopathic disregard for the lives of others, including his own elderly parents, as he drove to Durham to have them child-mind for him, with symptoms of the virus, is merely a personal expression of something that will have caused deaths in Scotland. He along with chosen advisers were clearly on an ideological path to apply the herd immunity or eugenics strategy to the UK, accepting that we, our old and weak really, would just have to ‘take it on the chin!’
Ironically, the PM was to discover in an ICU, that he too had a threatening underlying condition – sub-cutaneous fat and not just around his chin.
Cummings attended the SAGE meetings advising the PM. The files remain secret. Why? What terrible Eugenics thing did he say?
This delayed the lock-down by at least one month, perhaps three. Control over lock-down measures was only devolved to The Scottish Government on 25th March yet it was criticised for delay and told by opposition parties, based on academic research, that 2 000 lives could have been saved with an earlier lock-down, which it could not have implemented.
Why has Carlaw never been asked for his views on herd immunity, ‘taking it on the chin’ or the secrecy of SAGE minutes?
He has not tweeted for two days, so we do not know his view on Cummings just as we never heard his views on his leader’s death-dealing Covid policies.
Second, it is now abundantly clear, if there was a ‘Ground Zero’ for this epidemic in Scotland, it also involved aircraft. Research evidence from multiple countries now confirms that thousands of asymptomatic passengers have spread the virus, unchecked by border controls across the globe from Singapore to London Edinburgh.
Indebted to their corporate donors, the Tories have delayed to this day, controlling the arrival of thousands of passengers. Many of these have come into Scotland, including the Nike conference attendees. That the privacy of a handful was protected by Scottish civil servants is not the cover-up here. It is the cover-up by the UK Government of the thousands bringing the virus here because, in this case, the economy came before public safety.
Why has Jackson Carlaw never been asked for his views on the lack of action by the UK Government to stop asymptomatic air passengers bringing the virus into Scotland ?
Why is this not the clever ‘Ground Zero’ headlined story for our media?
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
Great, just great piece, John. Keep telling this truth.
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Thanks
Too kind
Your posts great too!
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I haven’t been able to work out why it is only now that England’s Tories are applying lukewarm restrictions to people coming into the UK.
Was it to further their Brexit ambitions and display to the world that “Britain is open for business”?
Certainly open for virus but little in the way of business.
Dreadful response all round from them during this crisis and certainly not something the branch representatives here in Scotland would wish to be associated with.
Hence their attempts to deflect attention.
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Air travel industry too big to fail? Distancing in business class?
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“….. the lack of action by the UK Government to stop asymptomatic air passengers bringing the virus into Scotland ?”
The new restrictions don’t come into effect until 8 June – that’s over a fortnight away from now – so we still have fifteen days of potential incoming infection.
I fear that, despite all appearances and statements to the contrary, the Covid-19 policy of the UK government has not basically diverged from the original “take it on the chin” version.
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Come on John stop being so negative just think the Tories have effectively culled a fair % of the old, frail, sick and ethnic minorities now that are a burden on the taxpayer so I think with the news the Thursday clapping is being wound up a suitable replacement would be a round of applause for bumbling Bo-Jo supreme foresight. I’ve never felt so Better Together than I do now!!
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Brave man! Irony in text on social media….I hope?
You’ll get your house egged if you’re not careful.
Seriously though Boris for Eugenics Award?
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John you must indeed be knackered after all your sterling work. By all means take a break we don’t want you to burn yourself out but please don’t stop doing what you are doing it gives us all the info to debunk all the crap that comes our way.
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The awful truth that this virus to all intents and purposes is with us for ever now,just as common cold is
And such slowly but surely is beginning to
dawn upon the whole rotten cabal of those who miserably failed to respond
In the proper manner
There shall be no stone for them to hide under as thousand upon thousands of death certificates guard the ground upon which the hiding stones lay
History often demonstrates that at the onslaught of a most serious threat and crisis that support for the leaders initially
Grows but as the crisis and the awful truth unfolds,then the support begins to wither and slowly but surely FURY is unleashed
And a phrase of Churchill comes to mind
All you need to know about your fellow Human Being are two things
1 We all need someone to love
2 and we all need someone to despise
And in the event we cannot find either then we create them
In Scotlands case both 1&2 exist
And no prizes for guessing as to who 1&2
Are
But such will resound loud and clear when we cast our vote at the impending Indy Ref.2
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There is a piece to be written on another BBC and msm cover up. That Scotland lacks the powers to redistribute wealth, income and power effectively enough to prevent the most deprived from being most susceptible to covid19 deaths.
I’ll have a go at it.May not be today. Others?
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Go for it. I’m k nackered
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Why is it that BBC Scotland continually let’s Westminster governments off the hook on all manner of issues when they hold 80 percent of Scotlands powers?
The tories are never held to account by Scotlands broadcaster. Isn’t that rather strange?
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Nothing strange at all about BBC coverage
It is called Colonialism
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Health inequalities are about life expectancy and whether lives will be free from disability and,if not, how long lives are lived free from disability. Until the Thatcher government, Scotland’s health inequalities were much like those in the rest of Europe. After Thatcher, Scotland was regarded as the “sick man” of Europe though we have recovered a little from that tag to be less affected than some parts of the UK.
https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2014/02/12/thatchers-policies-condemned-for-causing-unjust-premature-death/
Click to access Scott_Samuel_etal_IJHS2014_The_impact_Thatcherism_health_well_being_Britain.pdf
Dr Alex Scott-Samuel and colleagues from the Universities of Durham, West of Scotland, Glasgow and Edinburgh, sourced data from over 70 existing research papers, which concludes that as a result of unnecessary unemployment, welfare cuts and damaging housing policies, the former prime minister’s legacy “includes the unnecessary and unjust premature death of many British citizens, together with a substantial and continuing burden of suffering and loss of well-being.”
Excess deaths
Speaking about the figures, Dr Scott-Samuel said: “Towards the end of the 1980s we were seeing around 500 excess deaths each year from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. We also know that there were 2,500 excess deaths per year as a result of unemployment caused by Thatcher’s policies. And these premature deaths represent just the tip of an immense iceberg of sickness and suffering resulting from Thatcherism.”…
….Dr Scott-Samuel said: “The policies of successive Thatcher governments are at the heart of the attacks on the NHS, the welfare state and local authority services by the Coalition government. It is clear that Thatcher’s wholesale changes to the British economy created massive regional and social inequalities which are continuing to have a direct impact on people’s health at the present time.”
The Office of National Statistics briefing paper “Poverty in the UK: statistics” reveals that 13% of the population were in poverty, after housing costs, in 1961. This rose to 25% around 1980 before subsiding gently to 22% where it remains.
Click to access SN07096.pdf
Scottish research is clear and certain about what needs to be done to address the fundamental causes of health inequalities.It is to redistribute wealth, power and income.
“Inequalities are caused by a fundamental inequity in the distribution of money, power and resources. This has an impact on the opportunities for, among other things, good quality work, education and housing. In turn, these determinants shape individual experiences and health throughout life.((Beeston C, McCartney G, Ford J, Wimbush E, Beck S, MacDonald W, et al. Health Inequalities Policy review for the Scottish Ministerial Task Force on Health Inequalities. Edinburgh: NHS Health Scotland, 2013.))(( Marmot M, Atkinson T, Bell J, Black C, Broadfoot P, Cumberlege J, et al. Fair Society, Healthy Lives. The Marmot Review. London: The Marmot Review, 2010.))”
https://www.surf.scot/scotregen/scottish-health-inequalities-eight-action-points/
If you use the link immediately above you can see that there are proposals to address the inequalities in Scottish society. You can also see that important policies in these proposals cannot be implemented because Scotland lacks the powers to do so. To redistribute power, wealth and income requires control of all welfare policies and of the economy, including employment law.
In Scotland there is a Tory government the policies of which are making worse health inequalities and poverty in Scotland.Research by Reed and Stark in 2018 project that the numbers of children in poverty in Scotland will rise to 34% by 2020/21. The cause of the forecast rise is the change to welfare provisions made by the UK government.
What the BBC and other msm will never do is report that Scotland lacks the devolved powers to do anything to address the fundamental causes of health inequalities. We, the people, are continually harmed by the policies of successive UK governments (composed of all the major UK political parties) while being denied the powers to do anything to tackle the fundamental causes. The BBC lies, continually, by omission, that this is happening. No doubt, though, when the poorest in Scotland suffer worst the effects of covid19 the BBC will feel able to blame the Scottish government.
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