on whether to take strike action later this year. The British Medical Association says pay has continued to fall and is also calling for more annual leave and better recognition for working anti-social hours. it’s less than a month since resident doctors in England ended their most recent strike. The pay dispute saw tens of thousands of resident doctors take part in the industrial action. It was their 15th strike since 2023.
BBC Breakfast this morning had the above.
How does this compare with the situation in Scotland?
Have the media operating in Scotland ever reported the above contrast? Find me it and I’ll share it.
Discover more from Talking-up Scotland
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Talking-up Scotland 
Offered to publish in Talking-up Scotland, unedited, a response from the Mull ferry ‘committee’ telling me why I’m all wrong, nearly a month ago. Nothing so far. I know the absence of evidence is not always the evidence of absence….but it can be.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have been wondering about that was going to ask if you had any correspondence from him.
On a different note turned TV on and it was Starmer just heard him say how he had saved the steel industry in England shouted at TV what about Grangemouth turned him off.
LikeLiked by 3 people
O/T So, based on Starmer’s speech today, the British Labour Party’s big idea to rescue the UK’s economy seems to be, according to the BBC News website, this: ‘Rebuilding the UK’s relationship with the EU is what the Labour government will be defined by, Starmer said, adding that at the next EU summit the UK will set a “new direction for Britain”.
Yet another (implicit) acknowledgement that Brexit was a huge error and that the nature of relations with the EU are critically important for the UK’s economic future. No acknowledgment anywhere (of course) that a large majority of folk in Scotland showed much better judgement than a majority of our neighbours back in 2016 – but to no avail! We rejected Brexit but experienced the economic harms anyway!
However, no commitment from the PM to joining the customs union or the single market or – perish the thought – full membership. But he will place the UK at the “heart of Europe” – whatever that means. And sometime, somehow things will get better for the UK! (Will it mean any more than this from Starmer from 2024: “Our UK Government will place Scotland back at the beating heart of everything we do”?)
How much Westminster-imposed missed opportunity and economic harm will voters in Scotland endure? Nearly a decade of harm caused by Brexit was preceded by little or no benefit to the onshore economy of Scotland relative to the wider UK economy from the once only bonanza from oil & gas production offshore Scotland.
North Sea oil & gas boosted the UK’s onshore economy as a whole but despite the location of almost all oil and much gas production, how much preferential benefit did Scotland gain? The GDP per head time series data and other economic comparisons between Norway and Scotland are telling!
And now with for example zonal pricing of electricity – much of it generated on and offshore Scotland – being ruled out by Westminster, is anyone here confident that Scotland will gain a measure of economic benefit above that which may accrue to the UK as a whole? Economic benefit to the rUK will be gained through access to lower cost electricity than would be possible without Scotland’s abundant renewable energy sources. Scotland may share an economic benefit spread across the whole UK but will it gain preferentially from its indigenous energy assets? History already repeating itself?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read this yesterday.
The former Labour MP, Ian Davidson, who lost his seat in 2015 to the SNP, has now taken up a role as adviser to Malcolm Offord following the Scottish elections.
Davidson was selected in 2017 and also in 2019 to be the Labour candidate but failed to win yet again.
So what possible political advice could Davidson provide to Offord ?
Well in October 2011 the BBC reported that:
“An SNP MP has withdrawn from a Commons committee over allegations that she was threatened by its Labour chairman” (Ian Davidson).
“Dr Eilidh Whiteford, the MP for Banff and Buchan, has made a formal complaint to the Commons speaker”
“It is understood her complaint centres on a meeting of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee in private session last week”.
“Ian Davidson MP is alleged to have told her he would give her “a doing” if the discussions were leaked to the media”.
Prior to that in June 2011 there was another story again linked to Davidson and the SNP which the BBC also reported:
“Storm over MP Ian Davidson’s SNP ‘neo-facist’ remark”
“Alex Salmond has demanded an apology from the chairman of Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee, after he branded the SNP “neo-fascists”.
“The first minister’s call came after Labour MP Ian Davidson made the comments during a Commons debate on the Scotland Bill”
“The Glasgow South West MP attacked the “narrow, neo-fascism of the nationalists”.
So it seems that Ian Davidson is yet another mainstream party reject, that is he is someone who the voters rejected in 2015 and then also rejected in 2017 (he came third) and also in 2019 (he came fourth) as the Labour candidate , but now with all of this aggressive political baggage and record of losing , somehow Malcolm Offord sees Davidson as the best candidate to ‘advise’ him.
Advice him on what ?
How to both wrongly label and so attack the SNP and so then act and speak as aggressively and as obnoxiously as he, Davidson, once did against the SNP when he was formerly a Labour MP.
Mind you Reform UK may be the perfect fit for Davidson, as he too is a Eurosceptic and he served on the board of Vote Leave (with many other Tories like him , mostly blue ones).
In Scotland , post the EU referendum, there was a majority for remain in every one of Scotland’s local authority areas so I guess he , Davidson, still could not ‘win’ his argument within Scotland.
It is quite a thing to see , an ex Scottish Labour politician, who was decidedly rejected by the Scottish public but who now has decided to ‘hitch his wagon’ onto a party like Reform UK , a party that he must now identify as being a party on the rise, perhaps in the hope that they, Reform UK, will one day select him to stand as a candidate for them in a future GE.
Well since Davidson was so consumed by a (supposed) hatred of “Neo Fascism” which he falsely linked to the SNP- where neo fascism is defined as being something that “revives elements of fascist doctrine, including ultranationalism, racial supremacy, authoritarianism, and nativism. It often operates within democratic systems, using populist rhetoric, xenophobia, and anti-immigration stances to oppose liberalism and social democracy“.
Do these above characteristics of neo fascism that are highlighted in bold remind you of the beliefs, rhetoric and language currently being used by any current party ?
Can he, Davidson, really not see a direct connection/link/association with his ‘new’ party, Reform UK and a neo fascist ideology ?
Well I guess for him, Davidson, he conveniently (for him) places himself , along with others, as those whom we define as being those so (willingly) blind to political reality and truth that they then become completely unwilling to ever see or acknowledge political reality and truth.
A revival of a career is probably foremost in his mind and also yet another opportunity to attack and so try to get revenge upon the party that he sees as being the one that lost him his job.
However it was the voters who finally ousted him, so one wonders just why they , as voters, decided that after his 23 years as a Labour MP then somehow they, as voters , no longer wanted him , believed in him or had faith in him as a Labour MP in Scotland post the 2014 independence Referendum.
Well now that he has joined Reform UK it seems that canny decision made by voters in 2015, 2017 and 2019 was somewhat insightful and perceptive, an action that helped those voters in those respective areas to ‘dodge a you know what’ in them deciding not to elect him again as their Labour MP.
Hopefully his ‘advice’ to Offord will be just as bad as his former inaccurate, outdated and reckless futile attacks were upon the SNP when he was a Labour MP.
Seems Dinosaurs do indeed still live, within politics that is.
(Just look also at Starmer reintroducing Gordon Brown).
Or at least they, Dinosaurs, are being revived by dubious and (far too) desperate sources it seems.
Surely it will all eventually end badly for both him , Davidson, as political ‘adviser’ and also for Offord whom Davidson now , checks bloody notes, supposedly ‘advices’.
FGS someone make it all stop as it is getting way beyond a joke now, surely.
Liz S
LikeLike