The Herald’s Helen McArdle, not for the first time neglects to point the finger accurately leaving casual readers to associate a failure of the UK Government with one of the SNP Government.
She’s missed ‘UK’ before ‘politicians’ in the headline and in the text we don’t see what I’ve added in brackets:
What do you [the UK Conservative Government] do if you’ve left your country’s [the UK’s] borders open to variants, squandered £37 billion on a [UK] test and trace system [for England] with “no clear evidence” that it has cut infections [in England], and consistently failed to ensure that vulnerable people have the financial support to self-isolate? You could hold your hands up, accept the criticism, and rectify the situation.
McArdle goes on to somehow drag Jason Leitch into this blame game. I’ve checked. He has not mentioned vaccine hesitancy ‘among deprived neighbourhoods and ethnic minorities‘, as far as I can see.
Wool? Eyes? Not pulled over, I hope.
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
There is another factor in vaccine hesitancy and that is our self-loving media. There have been several times when they have given significant amounts of times to various anti vaccination groups, the more crackpot the better.
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“. There have been several times when they have given significant amounts of times to various anti vaccination groups, the more crackpot the better.”
Did this happen across UK. . . Or just in Scotland?
“. There have been several times when they have given significant amounts of times to various anti vaccination groups, the more crackpot the better.”
Did this happen across UK. . . Or just in Scotland?
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Woops!
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O/T
But media-related.
The Guardian reporting on yesterday’s Covid update:
“A temporary travel ban between Scotland and Covid hotspots in England will come into force from Monday, Nicola Sturgeon has announced, as she confirmed that level 3 lockdown restrictions would continue in Glasgow for at least another week and warned that new cases had risen across the whole of Scotland by more than 25% over the past week.
Did she? I don’t remember that.
Maybe total cases for the whole of Scotland. But they haven’t shot up like that in the NE. How about, as the beeb would say, “where you are”?
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The full link, should you be sufficiently interested is https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/21/scotland-to-ban-travel-to-and-from-english-covid-hotspots-from-monday
And is it just me or, in addition to potentially sloppy use of language, is the punctuation appalling?
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Ms Brooks has joined the other Guardian ‘Write bad things about Scotland’ Correspondent, Severin Carrel. She has clearly learned from the Sarah Smith school of mendacious reporting and this, is, indeed, mendacious reporting.
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As I said to Alex, it could just be misinterpretation. Just about…
Problem is, the FM is usually quite precise and tends to look for things that can be open to such misinterpretation. Must be quite hard to get a balance when reporting the rises between it’s only spikes at the moment but it could spread and risking panic/ accusations of scare-mongering/ loss of credibility if it calms down again.
All against a MSM which blows every slight incident into a major headline – and never a good one!
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Yes. Strange use of commas.
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Yes she did say over 25% over a week https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-update-first-ministers-statement-21-2021/
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Thanks Alex.
So across Scotland as a whole (ie in total), rather than “across the whole of Scotland” which implies blanket increase, rather than spikes. Slightly different, maybe a bit nuanced for MSM.
TBF (despite everything I do like to be fair…) I can see how it could be misinterpreted by the over-eager. OTOH, they do have form…
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That’s how pathological British nationalism is, its proponents are prepared to risk contributing to vaccine hesitancy, which fortunately remains comparatively low in the UK, by punting redacted mince. Which is not a good sign in any media platform, and not particularly compatible with social democracy. Nor good public health management. Though that sort of dishonest and exclusionary practice appears to flourish under British constitutionalism.
COVID-19 vaccination in the UK: Addressing vaccine hesitancy
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(20)30016-8/fulltext
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Slightly off Topic. . . . The National . . . Herald stable mate
Couldn’t get a National yesterday . . . Tried several shops
Was this widespread?
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Talking about pathological British nationalism and English Torydum in particular, that Home Secretary certainly appears more than a tad touched by social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism. Which combined with collective narcissism and a taste for conspiracy theories, provides the perfect psychological support for neo-colonial and authoritarian capitalism. Though not the general public’s physical and mental well-being, particularly in Scotland.
Collective Narcissism and Its Social Consequences: The Bad and the Ugly
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721420917703
“For example, in the United Kingdom, collective narcissism motivated the Brexit vote because naturalized citizens and immigrants were perceived as a threat to the positive national identity of the autochthones (Golec de Zavala, Guerra, & Simão, 2017).”
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