In this updated and improved version of an earlier BBC Scotland report titled ‘Coronavirus: ‘Scotland jumped the gun on Greece quarantine’, the team at The Tusker have re-ordered the content to make sure readers are not misled. Moved from paragraphs 23 and 24, to 2 and 3 respectively, see this: A spokeswoman said: “In the case of Greece, we had a worrying number of people in Scotland who tested positive for Covid-19 and who had returned from Greece within seven days of the onset of symptoms. We could not afford to ignore that growing threat to public health. “In the … Continue reading Anger at Shapp’s risk-taking

From: Alasdair Macdonald The blanket coverage of Robert Kilgour’s complaints is a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the report on the Home Farm care home in Skye, which sets out in detail how bad the performance of HC-One was. The home has been taken over by NHS Highland in a sale which awarded HC-One £900 000 for their failure. Why are we not hearing from Mr Gary Smith about the conditions in which his members were working which led to them providing such inadequate service to the residents? By broadcasting Mr Kilgour with such regularity takes up a fair … Continue reading Care homes: Why are we not hearing from the GMB’s Gary Smith?

From sam: There is a story about the care home sector that the Disclosure team might examine but won’t. Robert Kilgour founded the Four Seasons Care Homes.The path of the company (“troubled” would be putting it mildly) can be seen here, on the link below. Cash cow might be a better description. It is not a path that is untypical among care homes and their operators. Note the names. They crop up in different settings. First, how does the sector look now. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/care-homes-coronavirus “The rising cost of PPE and extra staffing to cover for self-isolating workers, combined with continuously falling … Continue reading More on Scotland’s ‘cash cow’ care home owners

Early today and to be repeated every 30 minutes across TV and radio broadcasts: A care home boss has told the BBC it’s taking more than a week for his staff to receive the results of the regular testing for coronavirus Robert Kilgour is not just ‘a care home boss.’ He is not the voice of the care home industry. He is a Conservative party donor and chair of the Scottish Business UK group which campaigns against a second independence referendum. He has also funded Think Scotland a conservative-minded website which campaigned to leave the EU. Yet, once more we see him on … Continue reading Tory donor and anti-Independence activist on care home staff testing every 30 minutes on BBC Scotland today

Leaving aside how you can still be leading, in bacteriology presumably, this is disgraceful politicising of a serious health issue of concern to all of us, by a political activist, no longer working in the health field, in an attempt to stir up anti-SNP feeling, with the kind of divide and conquer strategy loved by violent dictators throughout history. Some, in Aberdeen will be encouraged by this kind of thinking to, once more, take risks. People could die. Pennington and his ilk know that and do not care. Pennington is not a leading thinker in the control of viral outbreaks. … Continue reading Still misleading after all these years?

I know, I know, it’s just clickbait. She doesn’t mean it. She has a new car to pay for. Yes, but somebody might read it, believe it and, thanks to Alison Rowat, kill their granny. Stirring the ill-informed and/or evil protests from a handful of cynical politicians and passers-by in a Glasgow street trawled by BBC Scotland, Rowat deliberately or stupidly ignores the clear rationale for the Glasgow measures, from the the FM and the DFM. Rowat opens with a clear piece of dishonesty implying that a friend cannot hand over shopping to an elderly person because they cannot now … Continue reading Cut the c**p Rowat and let the First Minister get on with tackling this crisis

Professor Ronald MacDonald, former Independent (shy Tory) councillor on Skye and member of the anti-Independence activist group SBUK, will be all over the MSM today with his latest predictions of an independent Scotland’s need to pay a higher price to borrow. His report in Daily Business yesterday is missing two key words – EU and Brexit. He argues that Scotland would pay more without the UK’s ‘long history of credibility.’ He chooses not to mention that Brexit, according to the Bank of England in 2019, will cause lenders to: seek compensation for bearing the higher risk and, because greater uncertainty … Continue reading Ronald MacDonald thinks Scotland in EU would pay more for debt than Brexit UK

Based on a Freedom of Information request to Police Scotland published on 1st September 2020: Data collated at 07/07/2020 provides that between 23/03/2019 and 23/06/2019 there were 1702 such assaults on (all) emergency workers and 1760 in the same period in 2020. https://www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/divfr3ej/20-1091-response.pdf The increased rate was 3.4% In England and Wales, based on a 4-week period ending on 2nd of August there was a 31% increase: https://cdn.prgloo.com/media/3a5509c01e924ab0993124cdeb57167b.pdf No raw data was provided. These statistics are, of course, not strictly comparable but are nevertheless reasonably suggestive of a sharp difference. Continue reading Percentage increase in assaults on emergency workers during pandemic 10 times higher in England and Wales

From Stewart Young, Cumbria County Council, in the Insider today: The leader of Cumbria County Council says Scotland would have to ‘build something like the Berlin Wall’ in order to physically close the border. and: We’ve discovered though [sic] a recent Covid-19 outbreak at the Cumberland Infirmary [in Carlisle] that there is a sizable number of hospital staff who actually live in Scotland, and a border would have made things a lot harder. https://www.insider.co.uk/news/scotland-would-build-something-like-22610801 The US doesn’t even have a ‘Berlin Wall‘ between it and Juarez, one of the most violent, drug-ridden cities in the world. Is there a Bern … Continue reading Are English Labour council leaders just as bright as ours as one claims we’d need a ‘Berlin Wall?

In the Herald today, Alex Gallagher, Largs, makes this comment I’ll leave the exams ‘fiasco’ for another time but the rest of this paragraph is based on clear dishonesty in the light of well-published evidence contradicting and rejecting it utterly. First, differentiating the death rates: Despite the damage done by following the 4 Nations approach, favoured by Labour, the death rate in England is now 50% higher per head of population, per capita, pro-rata. Second, the care home mortality: Care homes in England experienced the highest increase in excess deaths at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to those … Continue reading Labour councillor repeats disgraceful lies about Covid-19 deaths in a published anti-SNP diatribe