I still checkout the Guardian for cultural reviews and news on the USA but have long lost trust in their coverage of the Arab world or, of course, Scotland.
Today Severin* Carrell writes:
Scotland’s devolved government has been beset by poor decision-making for the past decade because of an obsession with constitutional disputes, a thinktank says. The report, by Gordon Brown’s Our Scottish Future thinktank, which has close ties to Labour, says much-needed reforms to public services and economic investment have been hampered by short-term decision-making and an unrelenting focus on referendums and elections.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/01/scotland-government-wasting-time-constitutional-disputes-thinktank
Today’s header is what you get when you click on the url for Our Scottish Future. On XTwitter, last post was June 23, 2023 hopefully.
Carrell then goes to accept everything and without ever offering any evidence of what the consequences of this supposed poor decision-making might be.
Do they mean outcomes of decision-making like these?
- No health service strikes at all
- The best performing NHS by some way
- The lowest crime rate
- The most affordable housing
- The lowest child poverty
- The lowest poverty overall
- The lowest rents and council tax
- The lowest student debt
- The most inclusive Higher Education
- The best ferry service
- The most trees and the most new trees
- A positive trade balance
- The most inward investment
- The lowest Covid death rate
- No NHS critical incidents
- The best IVF service
- A government not made up of entitled, lazy, private schoolboys
That’s off the top of my head. There’s no doubt more, much more
Footnote: Severin. WTF names their child that. A Velvet Underground and SM fan?
Severin, Severin, speak so slightly
Severin, down on your bended knee
Taste the whip in love not given lightly
Taste the whip, now bleed for me
https://genius.com/The-velvet-underground-venus-in-furs-lyrics
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
“The report, by Gordon Brown’s Our Scottish Future thinktank, which has close ties to Labour, says much-needed reforms to public services and economic investment have been hampered by short-term decision-making and an unrelenting focus on referendums and elections”
I think we all know who it is that has “hampered” all progress for our country….as does Gordon Brown….as does The Guardian……
Indeed we have seen (suffered) an abundance of ‘Think tanks’ being formed in the UK (and too elsewhere) whose sole purpose seems to be to try to brainwash our collective thinking into supporting the political party that they are aligned to…….and also them trying to convince us to adopt their preferred ideology……where, in some instances, as in Liz Truss disastrous premiership , she found support for her catastrophic mini budget via another Think Tank , the IEA, and where she managed to tank the UK economy with THEIR ‘Think Tank’ blessing in order to benefit those who FUNDED their specific ‘Think tank’………
Gordon Brown’s ‘Think Tank’ is just an extension of the New New Labour party…….
whose sole purpose as a ‘Think Tank’ is it campaign for, promote and ensure that they, New New Labour, get into power in their UK…..while in Scotland they are also trying to sway public opinion against the SNP………so NOT an independent body but another partisan entity created to further taint the political arena……I don’t need to read the “small print” on who they , as a ‘Think Tank’, are and what they really represent to know what their REAL purpose is……
In fact I am sick to the back teeth of both hearing about, hearing from and also seeing that 2014 lying BritNat Gordon Brown on our telly and in newspapers and wish that both he and his ‘Think Tank’ would slither back down into the gutter that they obviously inhabit via the way he and they constantly ‘play politics’…….BTW his Think Tank also stated that “Scotland has had too much politics”…..NOPE…Scotland has actually had TOO much of Gordon Brown sticking his nose, biased opinions and pro Labour support and anti SNP and anti Independence C*** (rhymes with PAP) into OUR politics and our country….this is OUR time now and not yet another of HIS pro Labour/pro UK swan songs…….
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Deary me! Gordon Brown’s Scottish Future doesn’t seem too bright if the Guardian’s Scotland Editor (no less) has distilled the best bits for his article from the thinktank’s latest output .
The journalist seems particularly taken with output statistics provided by Mr Brown and his team: ‘the Scottish government has been suffering from “consultitis” by publishing more than 1,000 consultations, plans and strategy papers in nine years’ and ‘Since September 2014, there have been 529 strategy papers or plans, or more than one published every week, and 669 consultations’.
Notwithstanding the matter of what constitutes a ‘plan’ in the context of government, the implication is that for example 669 consultations is (obviously) an outrageously large number and to be deprecated.
But is this a high number for a busy, ambitious government organised with 54 directorates and other agencies all with the responsibility, among other things, to propose legislation. Is this a high number when working across policy areas as diverse as: the economy, education, health, justice, rural affairs, housing, environment, equal opportunities, consumer advocacy and advice, transport and taxation.
If only there was a way of testing whether 669 consultations in nine years is something out of the ordinary, something obviously ‘bad’. If only we could find a benchmark and especially one that a senior Labour politician and his thinktank team would recognise as appropriate?
Of course we can! Candidly sometimes this is just all too easy!
A search of the Welsh Government’s website listing all of its consultations reveals that during the same nine year period, from 1 September 2014 to the present, Labour governments conducted 719 consultations, now closed. A Labour government with even more severe ‘consultitis’ it seems!
See https://www.gov.wales/consultations?keywords=&field_consultation_status=2&All=All&All=All&published_after=01%2F09%2F2014&published_before=02%2F11%2F2023
There are times when the only rational conclusion to be drawn is that intellect and critical thinking are being forced to give way to the constant demands of striving to sustaining Unionism.
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Oor Severin conveniently forgets to add in his byline that he is the prospective London Labour party in Scotland candidate for the Western Isles. And of course that has absolutely nothing to do with his obvious biased “churnalism”.
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