Hugh Pennington, Professor of Bacteriology (Dirty Ham Sandwiches), with…..you know…..Maggie’s Wee Westie.
His expertise:
Our favourite prof because he knows what he’s talking about Thomas Hale:
What he said at the Covid Inquiry to then be completely ignored by the media
Try searching for ‘BBC Scotland Hugh Pennington’, long-retired bacteriologist, not virologist or epidemiologist, and get 1 360 000 hits.
Try searching for ‘BBC Scotland Thomas Hale’, Associate Professor in Global Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government; Fellow of St Antony’s College, and get not one link and just his own university website mentioning that he’d been on Good Mourning Scotland to talk about climate change.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
It’s what the BBC call ”balance” !
I wondered why Prof Pennington was called to the Covid Inquiry – then realised , as he whined about not being listened to by that Sturgeon wummin , that THAT was the reason he was there . He could have been Josef Mengele …BUT , if he could be trusted to put the boot into Nicola Sturgeon then he was welcomed with open arms and given a platform to spout his irrelevant views .
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“Leitch must go over Covid controversy says top scientist”
Prof Hugh Pennington says
This is the headline in an article in the P@J Monday 29 Jan 2024
Prof if you can retrieve the article would be worth posting it,afraid its is beyond me to do that I also have some downloads I would like to post but don’t know how?
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Here you go https://archive.ph/ugPeO
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Thanks, A letter in todays P@J does criticize the Prof for his article.
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What was interesting in searching the phrase “Leitch must go over Covid controversy says top scientist” was the hits which turned up – P&J, Daily Mail, STV News on Youtube, Scottish Daily Express, and a Youtube of “Labour call for Leitch to be sacked after Covid Inquiry evidence”…
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I am no expert in any of these fields and therefore cannot offer an explanation but one thing for certain is that the WHO report shows that there was a lower death rate of people aged 60 – 69, 70 – 79 and 80 and over in Scotland during 2021 due to the pandemic than in England.
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Vaccination strategy ?
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Very llikely as the Scottish Government used the first available Oxford Vaccine for front line staff and care homes then talked with Pfizer-BioNTech and got instructions on how their vaccine could be kept in fridges and used in small quantities so that care homes could continue as a priority.
The uUK Government set up large scale operations that rapidly overtook the percentage of population being vaccinated in Scotland but reduced the percentage of those over sixty being vaccinated.
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Indeed the HMG Circus crowed about SG ‘falling behind’ and the opposition and media in Scotland wailed and wrung hands in horror, nothing “indy” political about that at all in a pandemic…
IIRC it was the ‘small mobile freezer’ puzzle the SG task group solved to enable them to hit JIT priority targets in sequence… Ironic in a way politically given Johnson’s penchant for hiding in fridges etc., that it was too small…
I can but hope once the Inquiry is done with it’s WhatsApp political theatrics and returns to it’s stated purpose of lessons of learning for a future pandemic, that all of those on the ground who figured out and solved the problems (north, south, european) along the way are recognised for their massive contributions to saving lives.
Politics did indeed get in the way in dealing with the UK Covid crisis, primary of which was Boris ‘Bloody Stupid Johnson’….
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Don’t hold your breathe!!! Nothing the Scottish Gov. did will be highlighted as being “good” only “bad” they have a broken “union” to save and English colonial wealth stolen from Scotland to keep!!!
Otherwise England will be a very poor country with nowhere to store nuclear waste or arms….we can’t have that can we?
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When are some Scots going to realise that the UK state and it’s supporters do not act in Scotland’s interests but rather against us.
This has been openly exposed since Westminster lost political control of our parliament.
Consequently,everything the UK state tries to do in Scotland has a political basis designed to undermine confidence in our democratically elected government.
Who needs enemies with a “partner” like this?
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A Covid Inquiry ‘witch hunt’. QT from Glasgow. The audience supported bus passes for young people, no prescription charges, funding the NHS properly, paying some higher level tax (2%) to eradicate child poverty. A ceasefire in Gaza and humanitarian aid.
Supporting Holyrood and Scotland running its own affairs and policies. Independence for Scotland. Apart for one Tory woman on a rant. Fraser Nelson was speechless for once. Trying to peddle the usual lies but being caught out.
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‘Could the Covid inquiry reshape the UK?’ – this is the headline above a piece by James Cook on the BBC News website today. Mr Cook is of course BBC Scotland’s political editor whose team of journalists has been working hard to amplify the alleged ‘significance’ of WhatsApp messaging more than anything else in news reports on the Covid Inquiry’s Edinburgh sessions.
Having feasted on the Inquiry’s references to WhatsApps, Mr Cook seems to have belatedly become aware of the journalistic relevance of ‘perspective’. He writes today: ‘ Not so many years ago many of the conversations now under scrutiny — sometimes casual, sometimes consequential, occasionally both — would have been murmured on the telephone or muttered in the corridor, leaving no trace but memory.
‘In an era when much informal interaction in society has shifted from verbal to written, can those elected to lead us, and those appointed to assist them, have the full and frank discussions necessary for good governance if they expect that every word of those discussions will eventually be made public?
‘Can teams forge good working relationships in dark times without the ability to relieve pressure by sharing a private joke?’
He may be trying to come over all ‘thoughtful’ even ‘wise’ today, but none of the above influenced his editorial choices over recent days or moderated the negativity of the BBC Scotland’s coverage with its WhatsApp focus and witch-hunting tone.
One other thing strikes me as odd – both in terms of the Inquiry’s public hearings and media coverage. The former Scottish Government ministers when responding to the WhatsApp ‘issue’, focused on the significance of Cabinet meeting papers and minutes – for the record of options being put to Cabinet, of discussion in Cabinet of these options and of decisions ultimately taken. The Inquiry has access to Cabinet papers. The production of Cabinet papers and minutes is a highly developed, core skill within the Civil Service – Google searches yield detailed guidance documents from official UK government and Civil Service sources.
Can anyone recall much or any interrogation of witnesses – or any media assessment – around the ACTUAL content of key Cabinet papers: did these IN FACT – as claimed by former ministers – provide substantive records of options prepared, of the appraisal of options and the basis of final decision taking? Why does there appear to have been so little interest in examining and challenging witnesses on the ACTUAL content of Cabinet records to assess their adequacy for providing useful learning? Will this be rectified in the Inquiry’s non-public objective evaluation of ALL the evidence now available to it or will it be the inputs to public hearings that get most attention?
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