This drawn to my attention by Brenda Steele.
Maurice Smith, editor of the supposed pro-Independence Newsnet.scot, wrote in The New European, on the 12th, to regurgitate the same theory we’ve seen from Sarah Smith, Macwhirter, Maclelland, the FT, the Guardian and others, that the Scottish Government’s superior handling of the Covid-19 crisis is a con job.
The story opens with:
The Scottish first minister is considered to have had a ‘good crisis’ yet is facing many of the same criticisms as Boris Johnson.
She is, but only from opposition politicians and media sympathisers. Experts like professors Sridhar and Bauld and medics like Dr Stephen Cole have been fulsome in their praise:
Scotland has much to be proud of in the way that the pandemic has been managed. I have no doubt that the death toll would have been greater without the unwavering support and close working relationship between the government and the clinical community. Dr Stephen Cole, the president of the Scottish Intensive Care Society
Then we get:
And yet there are questions about that record. The Scottish government – which, to all intents and purposes means Sturgeon, such is her control – has failed so far to explain adequately why the details of a February Covid-19 outbreak in a central Edinburgh hotel were not disclosed until later.
Was this written well before the publication date? It’s seems embarrassingly out-of date. The FM and the Health Secretary repeated several times that protecting the privacy of the small number of Scots there had informed the decision by the public health officers but that, critically, they had still carried out the necessary contact tracing. Evidence of their effectiveness came from the Chief Medical Officer on the 9th:
Beyond the eight cases already known to be associated with this outbreak, there are three other cases with a genotype that might be linked to this lineage. Of these three cases, two of them are closely associated with samples that came from other cases identified in other countries and have been discounted as having been directly linked to the conference. The third show similarities to those associated with the conference but not direct link to the conference has been established. This suggests that the actions taken by the IMT to manage this outbreak were successful in curtailing spread and have led to the eradication of this particular viral lineage with no evidence of any wider outbreak associated with it in Scotland since that time.
Smith, on the 12th, ignorant of the above (?), makes this astonishing claim:
The insidious nature of the virus is illustrated well by this single incident: two Nike employees allegedly took the infection back to the Netherlands. Another returned home to England and passed on the virus at a children’s party in Newcastle.
Low. Very low.
Finally, Smith tells us:
The other serious charge to be laid at the door of the Sturgeon government concerns the spread of Covid-19 within Scottish care homes. In essence, the accusation is that in its single-minded pursuit of protection for the NHS in Scotland, the government neglected the care sector. Elderly patients sent back from hospitals spread infections to care home residents and staff. There was little protective clothing (PPE) for staff and testing came too late.
This is appalling stuff. It’s the stuff of Carlaw and Leonard. No journalist worthy of the the name writes this shit.
There is no evidence at all for the discharged patients having carried the virus back into the care homes. Research by Public Health England and MHA Care Homes, reported by the BBC on June 4th (!), confirmed that asymptomatic care workers, employed by private agencies, unknowingly spread the virus.
I used to write for https://newsnet.scot/ Some of my stuff from 2016 is still up there.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
He is a MI6 Plant
Do not even debate this point
Westminster is so desperate now
And no doubt infiltrating our movement
Where When and Hoverever they can
KNOW THY FOE
no one is above suspicion of such now
Use him accordingly feed him false info
Let him expose his true purpose
Or IGNORE him completely
And refuse to recognise the authority/position he holds
Nullify these kind at every turn
You are with us or not
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Its been a while since Maurice has picked up a cheque for a telly interview. He’ll be hoping this tripe will get him back on the box with the other experts. Maybe even a column in the Herald.
Wonder what G. Ponsonby thinks about handing Newsnet over to MS.
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I used to read that site, many moons ago.
Many of these supposed pro independence sites are faux, pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes quite effectively.
The demonisation and now gas lighting of Nicola Sturgeon carries on unabated. She must be doing something right.
The attempts, by the likes of Smith, to actually lay the blame for the spread of CV19 into England and indeed abroad, is an utter disgrace. She should hang her head in shame for peddling that sort of myth. Another atrempt at demonising the Scottish government, and the FM. Nicola Sturgeon is really getting under the skin of the Britnats, oh dear.
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Applying the principle of charity to this, perhaps, because the Scottish media pool, is fairly small and since most of the fish that swim in it (bottom feeders??) are pro-unionist, the kind of people they meet and, more importantly in a largely self-employed sector, the social ethos and the money providers tends towards ‘a groupthink’.
This can be seen in 24 hour news, where, to fill space, they have pundits who speculate and then they have other pundits to speculate on the speculation and so the speculation develops a trope which they all then deal with as a fact.
I can recall two separate conversations I had more than 20 years ago, with two journalists, one of whom has been, on occasion, the focus of pieces on this site. Both conversations related to private schools and it was clear that both journalists were in favour of local authority schools and were fully aware of the faults of the private sector, yet often they produced pieces which gave uncritical reportage of ‘top’ or ‘leading’ schools (as the sub-editor entitled these pieces). Both referred to the milieu in which they moved. One spoke of ‘these are the schools the people with whom the editor has dinner send their children, so, they have to be dealt with by me’. The other, who lived in Edinburgh at the time, and where around 30% of the population are educated in private schools (cf for Scotland – 5%), spoke of the enormous social pressure from the mass of neighbours, friends, family, colleagues, bosses to comply with the social norms of the people with whom they routinely associated and with whom on the whole they got on fairly well. Marriages sometimes failed because one partner was insisting on the children attending private schools (keeping of with the Ffionas and Hectors.) Both these journalists had been educated in the state sector and had done well academically.
This is not to excuse them and Mr Maurice Smith, specifically, but it is to indicate that peer pressure is very hard to resist. Who among us has not buckled at some time on some aspect?
As I said, I do not know much of Mr Maurice Smith and my piece is just to put forward a possible hypothesis.
Please do not feel I am putting peer pressure on you!!!!!!
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He tried to edit me. The nerve of the man! 🙂
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I was disappointed by the tenor of the article, but, I felt that I had to put another perspective.
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Having now read the New European article in full, it is IMHO even worse than the blog above indicates.
The journalist has certainly gone for the ‘broad and thin’ rather than the ‘focused and deep’ approach in his construction of an article. He has opted NOT to provide an evidence based piece showing ambition to provide fresh insight. And yes with evidence and fresh thinking, challenging (even negatively critical) commentary on the important issues that are undoubtedly around relating to public health responses in Scotland (- and almost certainly ‘everywhere’!) would have been well worth writing.
But that is not what we have here. Rather it looks as if the journalist has ‘scraped’ content from weeks of coverage by The Scotsman, The Herald and BBC Scotland, and pasted them together whilst adding nothing new and without bothering to assess critically any of the sources.
Indeed if time and resource are limited, on a number of the ‘issues’ that are certainly worthy of further analysis and comment, he could have drawn very easily on a host of other, independently-generated and authoritative, highly relevant sources already linked to by the TuSC!!
So what is the motive behind such an ‘assassination’ piece, one that makes little or no attempt at adding new (foreground) intellectual content? I could understand that ‘sweet spot’ of much needed income overlapping with political leaning for pro-British/Unionist writers but on this occasion…?
It’s not critical appraisal I object to it’s aggregation and amplification of stuff that can be – and already has been – seriously disputed (to put it mildly) by the application of logic and evidence. We expect this from some quarters but not from all.
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It is. I’m known for my restraint. Or is that being restrained?
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