In the Herald today: Caroline and Mary are due to take exams next year. Caroline’s home is in a deprived area of Glasgow while Mary’s is not. Should Caroline bother working hard at school, or has Scotland become as much of a postcode lottery on education as health? Discuss. If Caroline were going by the 2020 results from the Scottish Qualifications Authority released this week, she might be forgiven for pulling the duvet over her head when schools return next week. For the country’s exam regulator, and by extension the Scottish Government, have made a right porcus auris of matters (that’s pig’s … Continue reading As Scottish Education improves year on year I know what’s getting ditched

Conor Matchett is another of the Scotsman’s virtual team of youngsters pontificating on the Scottish political scene secure in their almost complete lack of familiarity with it. Remember their Conor Malborough, above, unfettered by any knowledge of devolution after a lifetime in England, telling us this? Boris Johnson has suggested that the UK-wide lockdown measures will be relaxed on Monday, as he attended his first prime minister’s questions since being diagnosed with coronavirus in late March. Mr Johnson said he would reveal plans for an “unlockdown” in a televised statement on Sunday, following a review of the current measures on Thursday. So, … Continue reading Scotsman’s Norfolk Sport Correspondent predicts post-exam gloom for SNP

I’m guessing BBC Scotland juniors have been trawling the twitter feeds of Scottish teenagers and found these three or, maybe, they live next door to Miles Briggs or Anas Sarwar or Willie Rennie or whoever. It’s journalism Jim and just as we increasingly know it. BBC Scotland continues to base it’s criticism of the SQA’s on a handful of pupils who might in other times have appealed their grades but would not have done so in the media spotlight. We have 3 out 138 000 presented as some more informative than the news that the overall pass rates increased, that … Continue reading 0.002% of 138 000 is not just insignificant using it is infantile

Pushing three weeks with no deaths and infection level at average of less than 20 but media still harping on about the past: And on and on… Continue reading 8% of the population 3.4% of the new cases and 0% of the deaths so ‘different enough’ for the media to recognise?

The graphs above from Ofcom’s Media Nations Report 2020 Q1, reveal an ‘uptick’ in the reach of the BBC’s local radio in Scotland, in the first quarter of 2020, as listeners sought regular updates on the outbreak. The Tusker also surged, doubling its audience between January and May but then falling again in June and July. It will be interesting to see how the BBC figures adjust as we emerge from lock-down. There seems little reason to doubt that they will fall too. Looking at the trend until the outbreak, the reach of the BBC’s local radio in Scotland had … Continue reading Can Covid-19 halt the steady decline of Radio Scotland?

Maybe I’m being a bit thick or they’re being a bit duplicitous. If I know that word, can I be thick, really? I thought that headline meant there had been an outbreak of coronavirus in a school of some kind. I know that pupils are not yet back but are some teachers, admin or maintenance staff in? It seemed a reasonable reaction to think this was in a school. See that ‘after’, it’s the same one BBC Scotland use when babies die in hospital ‘after’ pigeon poo is spotted in the boiler room. How many million other things happened, just … Continue reading The dark art of misleading headlines

Joining her corporate and state buddies, once again, the National reminds us of the unavoidable limitations of a pro-Independence news source wedded to bourgeois notions of journalistic standards and staffed by interlocking elites, too close to BBC Scotland and the MSM. I know they publish a lot of very high quality reports entirely favourable to the cause but there is clear agenda to undermine the SNP on a regular basis with reports identical to those across the lobby in the Herald that, in so doing, undermine the wider movement. They, some of the celebrity hacks clearly ambivalent and often recent … Continue reading Fury as National reminds us it will always weaken the Yes campaign to snipe at SNP Government

Just as with the single hospital cases, among thousands and thousands too successful for words, morbidly presented, after ‘ambulance chasing‘ with opposition politicians, to suggest something wrong, so BBC Scotland’s campaign to find fault with an otherwise astonishing piece of recovery, preserving the futures of thousands, consists of reports like the above. One student seems justifiably upset and, last year, would have appealed against the grades awarded. The story would not even have made the Motherwell Times but this year, it’s big news. I seem to remember seeing two ‘A students’ in Stirling, similarly indignant, on Reporting Scotland. I’m sure … Continue reading ‘School-bus Chasing?’ Thousands appeal every year and BBC Scotland pointlessly reports a tiny handful of this year’s group

In the Herald today, from Rosemary Goring (no relation 🙂 ) Last month, when protestors in saltire and tartan masks stood at the Scottish Border near Berwick bearing placards telling the English to turn back and keep Scotland Covid-free, a shudder ran up many spines. Really, I think not. I’m guessing most of us just laughed. ‘Protestors?’ Four the first time, two the second and now, gone? Goring seems to have little of substance to base her anxious headline on. Admitting that there is no evidence of such behaviour from the thousands of AUOB marchers, she relies on the two guys in … Continue reading Opinion: Anti-English prejudice is very rare indeed?

Spotting an error in the Herald’s headline, below, the Tusker’s ‘night watchman’ has finished it off so that it makes sense in the light of recent opinion polls. It looks as if the Herald’s headline editor has fallen asleep over the keyboard at a crucial moment, leaving the headline looking frankly laughable. If history tells us anything about promoting macho males with a love for footie, then the Scottish Tories’ own ‘Jim Murphy’ figure seems unlikely to last the full 90 minutes. Continue reading The Tusker helps the Herald out after embarrassing error on Douglas Ross