Year: 2025

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News you won’t hear – massive reduction in road fatalities and serious injuries in last 10 years and lowest in the UK

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By Professor John Robertson OBA From Road traffic accident statistics: FOI release, published today, we see a 24% fall in road fatalities, from 203 in 2014 to 155 in 2023 and, for serious injuries, a 32% fall from 2 901 in 2014 to 1 944 in 2023. Most of these FoIs are requested by the likes of Alex Cole-Hamilton of the Lib Dumbs, so it will be interesting to see if and how they try to spin this. Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400443200/ The longer-term trend: From Transport Scotland May 30th 2024 , but not making it to any front pages or to BBC Scotland: One hundred … Continue reading News you won’t hear – massive reduction in road fatalities and serious injuries in last 10 years and lowest in the UK

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News you won’t hear – treatment orders for drug-dependent offenders imposed since 2019 plummet by half and success rates soar

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By Professor John Robertson OBA The emphasis of a DTTO is on drugs treatment as the primary means of reducing offending behaviour rather than the specific offence focused approach of a probation order. Specifically the objectives of a DTTO are to: • Reduce or eliminate an offender’s dependency or propensity to misuse drugs; • Achieve positive changes in the scale and frequency of drug related offending The Order introduces unique aspects e.g. drug testing and regular court reviews as features of a community disposal. The DTTO is a high tariff, highly invasive community disposal involving social work supervision. The order requires regular … Continue reading News you won’t hear – treatment orders for drug-dependent offenders imposed since 2019 plummet by half and success rates soar

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News you won’t hear – Injury road collisions plummet by up to a third since 2019

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By Professor John Robertson OBA From Transport Scotland – Road accidents in Scotland data: FOI release, published today, we can see that all road collisions with an injury, at all speed limits, have fallen dramatically since 2019, ignoring the Pandemic-caused dips in 2020 and 2021 when road traffic was significantly reduced. Of particular interest, the injury collisions in the 30mph limit have fallen by 34%. Similarly, collisions involving HGVs have fallen across all speed limits> Critics may spot, if they read on, that injury road collisions where speed contributed to the collision have increased slightly since 2019, from 165 to 173 but … Continue reading News you won’t hear – Injury road collisions plummet by up to a third since 2019

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BBC Scotland faking baby death ‘spikes’ that were never there

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By Professor John Robertson OBA From Scottish pregnancy, births and neonatal data dashboard, published on 14th January 2025, you can see Scotland’s falling stillbirth trend with variation between 3 and 5 per 1 000 births around the ‘normal’ level of 4, from one quarter to the next. There is one quarterly figure of 5 per 1 000 in July-September 2021 but it is not repeated and is no more significant then the very low figure in the previous quarter. Scotland’s higher level of midwife and home visitor staffing must be credited as a major factor in this trend. In the second graph, … Continue reading BBC Scotland faking baby death ‘spikes’ that were never there

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4 tower block fires but no towering infernos in Scotland confirm higher building standards and more frequent safety inspections in Scotland

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By Professor John Robertson OBA I’m four-sevenths of an architect. From 1970 to 1974, I passed 4 years of the part-time Certificate course in Architecture at Glasgow School of Art before getting sacked for (guess). I could calculate how much reinforcing steel you’d need in a concrete beam, but it’s all gone now, except one thing. Everyone moaned about the local authority building control officers telling us our airy dreams were unsafe. Looking back, thank goodness they did. Anecdotally, I’ve often heard about stricter building control regulations in Scotland, going back for decades but maintained by the SNP these 18 years, as … Continue reading 4 tower block fires but no towering infernos in Scotland confirm higher building standards and more frequent safety inspections in Scotland

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SNP plants nearly 20 times as many new trees as Labour Wales and more than 3 times as many as Conservative England

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From Forest Research, Time Series in 2024: In the period of SNP administration in Scotland, from 2008 to 2024: Scotland planted 131 460 new trees including 67 000 broadleaves. England, with 10 times the population and nearly twice the landmass, only planted 40 720, less than a third. As for Labour-run Wales – 7 800! Source: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statistics/time-series/ Continue reading SNP plants nearly 20 times as many new trees as Labour Wales and more than 3 times as many as Conservative England

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What’s behind Reform’s ‘surge’ when it’s only half as high in Scotland?

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Lucy Dunn, above (I’m getting that artist to do me a lovely caricature of me for the blog) , clearly has no idea at all about reality. A Reform surge in Scotland? Between 9% and 13% in the last 10 Holyrood polls but between 22% and 25% in the last 10 Westminster polls. At best, only half as popular in Scotland. Why? We have bams in Scotland but, thanks to people like Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson, only half as many as in England. We’ve known that for decades as the Tory vote in Scotland comes in at half that in … Continue reading What’s behind Reform’s ‘surge’ when it’s only half as high in Scotland?

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Labour MP attacks her ‘local’ A&E in Fife, Scotland, despite it treating 3 000 patients per month more within the target time than her preferred local A&E in Croydon, England

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Yesterday on BBC Politics Scotland, from Westminster (see the backdrop), Melanie Ward, Scottish Labour MP for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy joined the horde of ‘Scottish’ Labour MPs serving up and humiliating their local communities in the service of the UK Labour Party. From the local Courier in May 2024: A Palestine medical charity boss based in London has been picked to stand for Labour in the Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy seat at the next election. Melanie Ward was chosen to replace disgraced candidate Wilma Brown, who was ditched by the party after she liked “racist” posts on social media.1 Only 6 months earlier, … Continue reading Labour MP attacks her ‘local’ A&E in Fife, Scotland, despite it treating 3 000 patients per month more within the target time than her preferred local A&E in Croydon, England

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Sandesh Gulhane in the Herald today to mislead you on the state of cancer care in Scotland based on less than 1% of the cases and another infantile counting up to get a big number

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By Professor John Robertson OBA Based on a Scottish Conservatives Freedom of Information request, the Herald today has: 2 000 young scots faced delay to cancer treatments The figure, 2 418 is based on that primary school method of counting up for as many years as you need to, in order to get a big number for a headline. In this case it’s from 2014, so presumably 10 years, giving an average of around 240 per year. There are 35 400 cancer cases per year in Scotland1 so we’re looking at only 0.68% of the total. The Herald report does not … Continue reading Sandesh Gulhane in the Herald today to mislead you on the state of cancer care in Scotland based on less than 1% of the cases and another infantile counting up to get a big number

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The lure of a negatively framed headline about Scotland’s environment to conceal what the expert actually said

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By stewartb So a highly experienced journalist with the Guardian – its Scotland editor no less – demonstrates how to manufacture a negative frame for a news story.  As you read on, is the editor revealing that it’s OK for journalists supposedly serving the public in Scotland to mis-report – to  manipulate – the content of an interview in order to create a damning headline? As it’s well know that headlines impact readers, is this a blatant example of seeking to influence by deception? Note the headline (from January 19, 2025): ‘We are resting on our laurels’: Scotland faces significant challenge … Continue reading The lure of a negatively framed headline about Scotland’s environment to conceal what the expert actually said