The Herald reports breathlessly:
More than half a billion pounds has been paid out by Scottish public bodies during the coronavirus crisis without any scrutiny. Analysis by the Herald on Sunday of public contracts show more than 160 were awarded by the NHS, Scottish Government, local authorities, and others directly to suppliers without any competitive process.
And, shockingly, ‘some’ firms have SNP links!
Wait, around 50% of the population is pro-independence so by rights 50% of companies getting contracts might be expected to be owned by or led by someone pro-indy?
Now if any of the contracts went to Nicola’s chums at Greenwood Academy, Dreghorn in Ayrshire, that would be a scandal. One of my colleagues who was in the same year group says Nicola didn’t have many chums as she was always studying.
You’ll remember there was a bit of pressure at the time but all the Herald seems to have found is one out of 169 contracts, going to a firm owned by an ‘independence’ NOT ‘SNP’ supporter, which provided call centre support, to help enable the success of contact tracing and another which makes alcohol, then asked to make an alcohol-based hand gel.
Is this mince again from the Herald?
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
I read the article this morning. There is no way you could get a halfway decent pot of mince out of it. Cauld kale at best.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Herag scraping the bottom of the barrel. Desperate stuff.
LikeLiked by 2 people
How many firms have Tory links, labour links, Lib Dem or Green links – what a load of tosh far more scandalous was the billions wasted by Westminster. Herald is a waste of ink and paper
LikeLiked by 3 people
Sorry O/T.
I have just seen this,can it really be true I know Westminster are stupid but come on what civil servants would carry this out.
UK Govt tells civil servants to stop referring to Scotland & Wales as “countries”.
Civil service & diplomats are to refer to the UK as “one country” in future communications.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Why am I not surprised?
Where did you see this?
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s already mostly the case anyway, the BritNats have done everything they can to attempt to portray Scotland as a wee ‘region’, or maybe a ‘north Britain’ if lucky, with a pretendy parliament that can be removed anytime by the er, English government. The reason for this making it official is because more and more people are making the distinction, even in England, people must be scratching their heads, ‘eh, you mean the UK is not a country’? It’s become an issue, what is the ‘UK’ and what does it stand for and in whose interests does it work/function? If it’s not a ‘country’ then what is it?! the ‘union’ is made up of four countries, or at least constituent parts with nation status. How very confusing for the BritNats’ narrative of rule Britannia.
What do you mean it’s Scotland’s oil and renewables, and they have a separate NHS, and separate education and law systems, oh no can’t have that. Call it a region, and give them a few quid for stuff, but remove fudning from their pretendy government, or even better ‘send the Scots off to the colonies to be slaves lol lol lol’, as that nasty troughing Tory MP spouted, to much hilarity in the HOC’s not so long ago.
For Scotland to be viewed as an actual country, outwith the UK, is a huge problem for the BritNats in WM especially. Are they going to try to remove Scotland’s nationhood and identity like they tried in the past? Probably.
When I checked my (losing 😦 ) lotto ticket earlier I noticed it says something about money for the ‘nation’, but, which one do they mean? We know that Scotland recieves nowhere what the ‘national’ lottery makes on sold tickets in Scotland, in funding for charities and projects in Scotland. Rather like the BBC really…
LikeLiked by 2 people
‘ stop referring to Scotland & Wales as “countries”.’
In early April 2020 I did some online research into which institutions in the UK referred to Scotland as a ‘nation’ or as a ‘country’: I kept notes on what I found, with links to sources. I was prompted to do this after seeing many social media contributions from Unionists denying that the UK was other than one, unified state.
One of the sources I used at the time was the website of The Commonwealth. I used this https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/united-kingdom
At that time, in April 2020 it stated explicitly that the UK is a union of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Given the queen is head of The Commonwealth that ‘endorsement’ of Scotland’s status was significant. I’ve just checked: the website of The Commonwealth no longer has this. It now has this, IMHO odd description:
“The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) is an island country that sits north-west of mainland Europe. It is made up of mainland Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) and the northern part of the island of Ireland (Northern Ireland).”
I have no idea when the change was made but change there has been!
The authoritative ‘CIA World Factbook’ (still) states this in its description of the UK:
“the percentage area breakdown of the four UK countries is: England 53%, Scotland 32%, Wales 9%, and Northern Ireland 6%”. And
“constituent countries by percentage of total population: England 84%, Scotland 8%, Wales 5%, Northern Ireland 3%”.
For how much longer?
Source: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-kingdom/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nothing to add just a quick thumbs up to contributors.
LikeLike
Though being able to recognise mince is a valuable life skill, we need to be careful to not obscure the intrinsic nature of our object of study, by separating it from its historical/cultural/social context. So do you mean the mince you buy at a butchers, or the semantic mince the Tories provide as camouflage for their own criminality and incompetence? We need to be scientific in how we define mince. 😉
https://www.hrprocurementlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Public-Procurement-and-Human-Rights-A-Survey-of-Twenty-Jurisdictions-Final(dot)pdf
LikeLike
That works out at slightly under £3000 each (on average). Oh dear!
LikeLike
Oops, that should be 3 million.
LikeLike
Here is another wee gem,the MOD are saying they will not be getting sporrans for Scottish regiments from Scotland anymore but they are going to Pakistan for them.
LikeLike
Cn’t be see not be helping the Sweeties can we?
LikeLike