I’ve been here before. Last year the Scottish Retail Consortium claimed that nine shop-workers were being assaulted every single day. I wrote to the lead researcher for a sight of the data broken down by region.
He wrote back:
They’s just made up the Scottish figure. I’m not going to bother asking this time.
The author seems to work for my local the Ayrshire Post.
Published in a low-crime area you’d think we lived in 1990s Bronx – page after page of death, despair, drugs, thugs, cheats and paedophiles.
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
“page after page of death, despair, drugs, thugs, cheats and paedophiles.”
His street or hoose?
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It is colonial “journalism”. “Bordering” on actual lies.
Oh, thats right, there IS no border, according to Blondie
.
Their propaganda is not meant to represent facts or truth.
It is meant to intimidate and frighten us.
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The current edition of the magazine Philosophy Now has a piece on journalism and its impact on perceptions and mood. They focus too much on the bad.
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The Times article is – unsurprisingly – carefully and negatively framed. No longer a ‘newspaper of record’ just, at least towards Scotland, a malign rag. However this scariness is all built around a big assumption that shop staff will be required by government to police adherence to the new face covering rule.
Can we assume that ‘retail chiefs’ want to open their shops? Surely, even The Times accepts the answer to this is ‘yes’. So what is the problem the journalist seeks to expose? Is the implication here that the Scottish Government is pushing ahead without consultation and against the wishes of ‘retail chiefs’? Well, this would appear NOT to be the case!
Source: https://brc.org.uk/news/2020/scottish-retailers-launch-five-steps-for-considerate-shopping/
“With retailers permitted to re-open their stores from Monday 29 June the Scottish Retail Consortium, along with the Scottish Government and trade union Usdaw, have come together to launch five simple steps to encourage considerate shopping. They are urging the public to play their part in creating a safe and enjoyable retail environment for other customers and retail staff.”
At the same source, Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work & Culture, is quoted saying: “I’d like to thank the Scottish Retail Consortium and Usdaw for working closely with us in producing official guidance on trading safely, and everyone in the sector for all that they are doing to ensure customers and staff can shop and work safely and with confidence.”
And finally, Stewart Forrest, Divisional Officer of shop workers’ union Usdaw, states: “Unfortunately the early part of the coronavirus crisis saw a rise in instances of abuse towards shop workers, and we are absolutely clear that ‘abuse is not part of the job’. Along with the SRC and Scottish Government we have collaborated to produce guidance for shops of all sizes and locations to provide staff and customers with a safe shopping experience.”
So who’s not being straight in their dealings here? Is the Scottish Retail Consortium conniving with The Times or being exploited (willingly or otherwise) by The Times for the latter’s anti-Scottish Government agenda. In Ms Hyslop’s position I’d want to ask very pointedly of the SRC representative what game the organisation is playing at next time we meet for a ‘co-operative’ purpose.
But then I’m glad I don’t have to deal with the kind of game playing towards the Scottish Government that seems all too common amongst advocacy organisations in Scotland nowadays..
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I like this one.
UK turns to Germany in bid to finally get its Covid-19 contact tracing app off the ground, ambassador says.
https://on.rt.com/aksj
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“page after page of death, despair, drugs, thugs, cheats and paedophiles”
The Ayrshire Post has certainly changed from the time our family read it regularly in the 50s and 60s. Plenty of death, but not much of the others. Presumably it’s all the Scottish Governments fault.
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Am i just being thick but to me the headline and photo are for a different article?
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I think that reply might be the most lazy, stupid bit of journalism i have ever seen.
That is an incredibly low bar but i am serious.
By that logic i could probably claim to be rich, poor, enlightened, imprisoned, knighted raped, damned and dead all at the same time.
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