Partner of the South Ayrshire Council leader, enabled into power by Labour despite SNP being the largest party, ‘list’ (ie not really elected by anyone) Con MSP, Sharon Dowey, is impressively present in the media these days as the face of the latest Conservative HQ attacks on the SNP.
Her twitter feed is a marvel of ill-informed and shiny-necked claims.
The above is the latest as a Tory, yes a Tory, tries to blame the SNP Government for falling life expectancy.
Here are the facts, not of interest to Dowey:
‘The fall in life expectancy is proof that [Tory] austerity kills‘
For the full story, see this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/25/levelling-up-life-expectancy-tories-government-health
Talking-up Scotland 
I follow Dr. Campbell for Covid19 stuff. Here he talks about ‘excess deaths’ in ‘Europe’, and EU but also the ‘UK’.
I did see he had a video about numbers going up, but Scotland rate going down re Covid cases, a couple of days ago. Oh no he could not bear to say that Scotland was doing better, pretty much implied it was an anomaly and that he is ‘looking at it as a whole nation’ or something to that effect. Whenever reporting on Scotland data being worse than England’s, he has never quite ‘looked at it as a whole nation’..hmm, ie Scotland bad.
Anyway, you can listen or read the transcript re this data on excess deaths and it’s happening across the globe. No one seems to know why.
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There are a couple of details to note about this Tory MSP’s tweet. First is a presentational one: note the reference to The Spectator in the attribution for the graph.
Given this, it’s probably unsurprising that the MSP may have missed two important, substantive points made in the National Records of Scotland report ‘Life Expectancy in Scotland 2019-2021’ .(https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/life-expectancy-in-scotland/19-21/life-expectancy-19-21-report.pdf )
(1) ‘The majority of this fall (in life expectancy in Scotland) is due to mortality from COVID-19’.
(2) ‘Life expectancy in the UK – Currently we can only compare life expectancy for 2018-2020, as data for 2019-2021 are NOT YET AVAILABLE for the rest of the UK.’ (my emphasis)
Given the impact of Covid, the latter point is likely to be especially important in drawing any current comparisons with the rUK!
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Yep and far as is intimated no UK research on this is taking place, not surprising.
I guess as well as Covid19, the actual pandemic and it’s knock on effects may be being made apparent now. Tory austerity and their class war against the poor and vulnerable, is going to add to the negative effects on peoples’ wellbeing over the past 2-3 years, not that the EngGov cares one bit of course.
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Also then life expectancy will be going down, because excess deaths, not attributed to Covid19, are across the board, young and old alike. Makes you wonder what’s going on, aside human induced flood fire and famine, why is that happening? Lack of healthcare during the pandemic, loneliness, long Covid, it could be any number of factors.
What we do all know here, is that life expectancy in Scotland wheil under English rule, was absolutely appalling, ‘the poor man of Europe’ it was known as. Glasgow was known as the crime capital of the world, when we were kids we were told how bad Glasgow was via the news and would have been too scared to set foot. As if the NE of England was safe, lol it most cerytainly was not and it has very high crime now.
To get life expectancy to an acceptable level in Scotland equal to other (rich) countries, will not be achieved while England holds the purse strings, keeping Scotland poor, and they delight in that in London’s WM government, ha ha ha they larf in Scotland’s face while robbing the people fo Scotland blind. It’s not so secret now though.
This is about the long and short of it, a parody, perhaps too close to the bone, funny though, or you would cry.
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Ah Huey and Louie left Dowey to carry on with the cartoon capers…
Of course the “National Records of Scotland say…” no such thing, as they do not distort facts for a living, Sharon and the Spectator on the other hand…
To paraphrase Sharon’s final flourish “Conservative lying is a concerning trend that needs to be addressed with urgency” yet shows no signs of abating….
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£370 to fund the pandemic over a lifetime. £270Billion already spent. Scotland did not get £27Billion for parity.
In 1 year+ the Tories will be gone, 120,000 died in the South because of austerity even before the pandemic.
The Condemdid not cut the Oil tax whenprices we’re falling. 120,000 lost their jobs. There could have been full employment in Scotland.120,000 unemployed.
The Tories are totally out of touch. Course and not understanding. Lying through they’re teeth. An absolute disgrace.
Starmer economic policy is wha5 th3 SNP in Scotland has been doing for years. Harvesting and investing in green energy.
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Lying through their teeth, Harvesting and investing in green every is what the SNP have been doing for years.
Nuclear decommissions cost £13Billion a year for ten years. The dearest and most dangerous. Westminster Gov is totally corrupt.
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This looks promising
http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_876209_en.html
“Landmark partnership aims to improve Scotland’s health
A ground-breaking collaboration between NHS, university and industry partners has been launched to co-create NHS Scotland transformation through large scale programmes to improve the health of the population and expand clinical research.”
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Ground-breaking but not BBC Scotland-making?
Thanks
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John
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