I’m a big fan of David Olusoga’s work. In the series Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners and, in particular, in The Establishment and the Barbados Slave Code, I was moved to deep sadness, horror and some kind of shame, as he, deeply moved himself,  introduced us to the instruments of torture used to ‘discipline’ some slaves, including children. I say shame because I know Robertson’s were part of those horrors. I know that, just as Campbells, Smiths and others do, because of the many British Afro-Caribbeans, we meet or hear of, carrying the names of their ancestral owners. Olusoga has moved … Continue reading While Scotland’s elite and middle classes were soon to share in the tainted wealth of the slave trade, she was not a founding or defining member 80 years before Britain existed

This is a survey by a union based in Licky Hills Country Park in North Worcestershire. Their Scottish membership is not published. The EIS has 54 580 members in Scotland, including FE and HE lecturers, and over 80% of all schoolteachers are members. So NASUWT membership, in Scotland, 10 000 or less? The survey ‘report’ indicates: Nearly half of teachers who responded to the survey said they do not feel prepared to return to their school or college in August and just 22% said they feel safe or very safe as a result of the provisions their employer is putting … Continue reading Are nearly all Scottish teachers not uncertain about returning?

Thanks to: Eileen May @suleskerry for sharing this with me. Yesterday’s Guardian, hiding the above facts: Continue reading At last the true picture!

Perhaps just a victim of bad timing, Prof Chris Isles of Dumfries and Galloway, speaking yesterday on Good Morning Scotland, called for lock-down restrictions to be lifted in areas such as his: We have had no new Covid positive cases throughout the region for the last eight days, no Covid positive cases in the hospital for the last five days and no Covid positive deaths for the last fortnight. And, wait for it: Prof Isles said his area had locked down and waited for a “tsunami of Covid positive admissions” which had not happened. You’d think Isles would be aware, … Continue reading As Covid-19 strikes South-west Scotland, Dumfries medic calls for lifting of restrictions

Yesterday, the First Minister was careful to talk about the flow of covid-19 infection possibly being from Scotland into England. All of the media coverage talks of a cross-border cluster across south west Scotland and north west England. We don’t know for certain what happened yet but, these statistics might be of interest. Today, Professor Chris Isles of Dumfries and Galloway: We have had no new Covid positive cases throughout the region for the last eight days, no Covid positive cases in the hospital for the last five days and no Covid positive deaths for the last fortnight. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-52891239 Yesterday, … Continue reading Has one of Scotland’s least infected places infected England’s third-most infected place or….?

Whenever churnos talk of spikes, like the one that wasn’t in the Glasgow cancer wards for children, I reach for my varifocals and the source material. Here it is: The black line goes up and down between 6.5 and 2 stillbirths per 1 000 total births. It has recently climbed above 5 but was even higher in 2017 when there was no pandemic. Nevertheless the Herald’s Health Correspondent thinks: ‘Aha! A spike. This will make a good headline.’ But just below the graph: As stillbirths and infant deaths are relatively rare events in Scotland mortality rates tend to fluctuate over … Continue reading Helen McArdle doesn’t read the instructions and imagines a spike in stillbirths which isn’t there

stewartb The Times article is – unsurprisingly – carefully and negatively framed. No longer a ‘newspaper of record’ just, at least towards Scotland, a malign rag. However this scariness is all built around a big assumption that shop staff will be required by government to police adherence to the new face covering rule. Can we assume that ‘retail chiefs’ want to open their shops? Surely, even The Times accepts the answer to this is ‘yes’. So what is the problem the journalist seeks to expose? Is the implication here that the Scottish Government is pushing ahead without consultation and against … Continue reading Scottish Government has been consulting the Scottish Retail Consortium

I’ve been here before. Last year the Scottish Retail Consortium claimed that nine shop-workers were being assaulted every single day. I wrote to the lead researcher for a sight of the data broken down by region. He wrote back: They’s just made up the Scottish figure. I’m not going to bother asking this time. The author seems to work for my local the Ayrshire Post. Published in a low-crime area you’d think we lived in 1990s Bronx – page after page of death, despair, drugs, thugs, cheats and paedophiles. Continue reading Times predicts Nicola’s mask policy will backfire!

Despite Leicester, and the FT’s true statistics, the Guardian today, still tries to tell us that Wales is the most infected part of the UK and that Scotland and Northern Ireland are the same as most of England. The Public Health England statistics for Leicester were just 80 new cases in the period 13-26 June, yet they were told to lock-down. You can understand their confusion. Of course, Westminster knew the truth was 944 cases but had been keen to conceal the true figures for the whole of England, knowing they were far worse than those published, and released to … Continue reading The Guardian protecting the Johnson regime from scrutiny and England from the terrible truth

Once free of the 4 Nations approach (herd immunity), the First Minister and her team went hard at it with a strict lock-down based on clear, consistent and transparent communications. It has worked. Now, research by Professor Kao at Edinburgh University has estimated that had we not done so, the total coronavirus-related death toll might have been nearer 40 000 than the 4 000 we have. Prof Kao and his team’s modelling suggested: “With no lockdown and some restrictions, Scotland could have experienced a slightly larger outbreak, possibly with 7,280 deaths, or a far larger outbreak which could have killed … Continue reading Sturgeon’s clear messaging and all our discipline may have saved 36 000 lives!