Professor Thomas Hale – Associate Professor in Global Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government; Fellow of St Antony’s College https://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/find-an-expert/professor-thomas-hale 20 per 100 000 fewer deaths during the pandemic is more than 1 000 lives saved by Nicola Sturgeon and her team. Continue reading Oxford Professor confirms that Scotland had significantly lower Covid death rate due to Scot Gov ‘different’ approach and saved 1 000 lives

On a regular basis, Scotland’s media will scrabble around to find ways in which we should remember were are just like the rest of the UK. For example, where’s a surge in homelessness in another part of the UK, they’ll rush out to find one Scottish case and his mum to cry for the cameras. Within the limits of the devolution funding arrangements, the SNP in government has done what it can to reduce inequality with more progressive taxation, the child payment and a range of other benefits to help disadvantaged groups. On 11 December 2023, the Institute for Fiscal … Continue reading Funding the education of the disadvantaged – another way Scotland IS different

Lib Dem leader, Alec Cole-Hamilton reveals yesterday that like Boris, he too has the wrong skill set to lead even the smallest of projects. Was being different from Boris during the pandemic a justifiable aim? If it meant saving lives? Yes, see this from May 2020 only months after Nicola Sturgeon’s government took over responsibility for pandemic management: 19 days ago, the FT based on extrapolated ONS figures, estimated the true total of coronavirus deaths in the UK to be ‘as many as 41 000. At that time the UK Government figure was 17 337 but did not include deaths … Continue reading To be different from Boris was a justifiable desire for Nicola

Thanks once more to Dorothy for alerting me to this: Note the wee print under the photo – 85 dangerously substandard maternity units in NHS England. The ‘Scottish’ media are quiet. If they had something, they’d be all over it like nappy rash. I searched for ‘Scotland maternity inspections substandard‘ – only English ‘hits’. I searched the Healthcare Improvement Scotland site – nothing. I tried ‘Scotland maternity hospital inspection concerns‘ – bingo! As in the headline, only one minor concern in 2017 and another in 2013 but hey, using Reporting Scotland editorial standards, that’ll do. Get Gulhane or Baillie on … Continue reading ‘Two-thirds [85!!] of England’s maternity units dangerously substandard’ right now but one in Glasgow had rusty equipment in 2017 and another in Aberdeen was dirty in 2013 so no different, eh?

Headlining in the Herald today, a warm story of a charity helping asylum seekers give birth. It’s very nice, touching, but missing a few things for a supposed headline news story rather than a cuddly women’s magazine. Here’s something newsworthy though little reported at the time: In September 2019: The safety of vulnerable mothers and newborn babies [in England] is being put at risk by NHS fees that deter undocumented migrant women from accessing care, a new report from Maternity Action backed by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has warned. NHS packages for overseas pregnant women start at £7,000 for antenatal, … Continue reading The brutally different realities, largely unreported, for pregnant asylum seekers in Scotland and England