From stewartb
[In response to the evidence that 70 days over 8 years is around 0.003% of all time spent by ambulance staff]
Is that big, small, something else?’ It seems that Scotland’s opposition parties and their media allies simply will not give an answer to such a question. Their reason for omitting context and perspective? It harder and harder not to conclude that the motivation is partisan politics – anti- SG/anti-SNP/anti-independence – rather than a genuine attempt to highlight problems within public services in order to find feasible solutions.
Providing context – as done in the above TuS blog post – and perspective is actually not that difficult. And providing these things does not mean that the ‘issue’ – in this instance, the hoax calls – is not a ‘problem’ and that a solution would be welcome.
For perspective, courtesy of the GMB website from January 2020:‘Ambulance trusts have been flooded with at least 42,000 hoax calls in just three years ..’ – from 2016/17 to 2018/19.
(https://gmb.org.uk/news/ambulance-trusts-flooded-42000-hoax-calls )
We’re told in the Herald article of 617 hoax calls in Scotland in 2017-18. At that rate over a three year period the total would be 1,851 calls. Thus compares to the GMB’s figure based on FoI requests of at least 42,000 hoax calls in England over three years.
Assuming similar proportions of ‘hoaxing’ people in each nation’s population, if ‘hoaxing’ at the same rate as Scotland, England would have had just c. 18,510 calls! Must we face another year of gaslighting Scotland? ‘Gaslighting is dangerous because it undermines a person’s (a nation’s) sense of self-belief.
If you tell someone (people) they’re wrong about things over and over, it can make them feel insecure or less confident in their point of view. Eventually, they may come to agree with the person (those) who is (are) attacking them – believing that they must be right.’ (From the Relate website – with my inserts, extrapolations from the individual to the nation.)
Talking-up Scotland 
Auld Cauld-Ham was a merry old sod,
and a merry old sod was he.
He called up the BEEB in the middle of the night,
’cause he was told he could phone for free.
Like every LibDumb he was a very fine fiddler,
and a very fine fiddler was he.
If he got a dram for every Liberal scam,
Then he would be very, very merrrrrry!
Since the good-ol’ days of Grimond, Joe,
The Dumbs have been on a go-slow,
Very soon there just wont be no more.
As the voters show them the door,
send them down the Old Swanee.
Oh, there’s none so rare as can compare
As Cauld-Ham and his fiddlers three!
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Strange to think the LDs have gone from being being led by a wee mannie to a wee man in an Armani…
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Worth communicating at every opportunity? The views of Jo Grimond, the former Liberal leader and MP for Orkney and Shetland (1950-83), from his 1983 book ‘A Personal Manifesto’:
“I do not like the word devolution as it has come to be called. It implies that power rests at Westminster, from which centre some may be graciously devolved.
‘I would rather begin by assuming that power should rest with the people who entrust it to their representatives to discharge the essential tasks of government.
‘Once we accept that the Scots and the Welsh are nations, then we must accord them parliaments which have ALL the normal powers of government, except for those THAT THEY DELEGATE to the United Kingdom government or the EEC.’ (my emphasis)
Unfortunately for any within the Lid Dems who might still hold Grimond’s view – but I strongly suspect NONE of their elected members do, and most especially in Scotland – we’ve moved well past this.
It’s either the status quo (plus or perhaps more likely, minus Westminster decided tweaks) or the Union is dissolved. And once dissolved, practical matters of statecraft may well lead to new collaborations between equal independent nation states across these islands cf. the Nordic Council.
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I notice Jo Grimmond only mentions Scotland and Wales. In an article about the introduction of new Covid-19 restrictions beginning today the BBC says…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59792754
“New Covid restrictions have come into force in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as the nations try to halt the surge in infections.
All three nations have introduced curbs on the hospitality and leisure industry, resumed social distancing rules and put limits on the size of gatherings.
Boris Johnson has not announced any further restrictions in England.”
Gosh!
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Chortle. Gavin, ACH obviously reads TuS (or someone must tell him), the content. Must a very low opinion of himself, knowing what many people think of him, especially when folks like yourself, take the time to ridicule him (and the other moronic, so called ‘leaders’), with lovely little ditties like this, then carries on producing even more, ridiculous BS. Keep it up.
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