More than 1 000 cases! The health board CE has to answer. There’s no mention, certainly no anxious photo, of the minister or of the PM. There’s no image of a creepy Labour MP ‘supporting’ the parents either. But in Scotland, the BBC and the Labour Party do it differently: Not only do we get an exploitative photo of the Health Secretary, a former nurse, who clearly cares about what she does, we get the First Minister and Anas Sarwar ‘supporting’ the parents. That last thought would make you boak. Continue reading 1 000 unnecessary baby deaths in one English hospital and no mention of Matt Hancock but in Scotland, 1 death and Jeane Freeman is the target

As Leicester locks down again, you look at that table and think: Where’s Leicester? Wait, Dundee is 4th? Wales is more infected than England? WalesOnline has done a thorough job on these figures, for obvious reasons: Throughout the outbreak it has never made sense because, as terrible a loss of life as they have seen, none of those councils have had the most deaths of people with Covid-19 in the UK as shown in the ONS weekly stats. In recent days, it has not made sense that local authorities in Wales appear to have had the biggest rise in coronavirus … Continue reading Dundee is NOT the 4th most infected area in the UK because English authorities are not counting all the test results

From MarketWatch on 27 June: It is a common refrain from critics of the lockdown. Don’t let the cure — locking down the economy — be worse than the disease it is preventing. If that is the case, then, Sweden should be a case study in how to manage the disease. It famously didn’t lock down. Bars and restaurants remained open, as did hairdressers and gyms. The University of Oxford’s government response tracker puts into numbers the light-touch effort, showing Sweden was one of the least restrictive countries in the world. Remember this? The MarketWatch report (full version at link … Continue reading Why the Scottish Tories’ quicker exit from lock-down would have done little for the economy

By stewartb The BBC News website (30 June) tells us this: ‘Boris Johnson has said now is the time to be “ambitious” about the UK’s future, as he set out a post-coronavirus recovery plan. The PM vowed to “use this moment” to fix longstanding economic problems and promised a £5bn “new deal” to build homes and infrastructure. Plans set out in the Tory election manifesto would be speeded up and “intensified,” he added.’ Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53234058 The same source also tells us: ‘Over the last few days, the comparisons the government has sought to draw have been with former American President … Continue reading Scotland Office and Scottish Tories say NOTHING about ‘ambitious new deal’

Both headlines are true but McArdle chooses one piece of evidence as the headline and I choose the other. Here is the detail: The targets are that 95% of patients should be treated within 31 days of being diagnosed and within 62 days of being referred by their GP. The first target has been surpassed for the last 9 months and the second has been missed for 7 years though performance has been improving for the last 15 months. Which target is the more important? I don’t know. What is the news? Isn’t change newsworthy? The details from NHS Scotland: … Continue reading Scotland’s cancer waiting times target met for third time in a row

From NHS Scotland yesterday: 94.7% of the 9,267 people who started their first drug or alcohol treatment during the latest quarter waited 3 weeks or less, with little change in recent years. https://beta.isdscotland.org/find-publications-and-data/lifestyle-and-behaviours/substance-use/national-drug-and-alcohol-treatment-waiting-times/ They’re too modest. They’ve been beating the 90% target for years now. Continue reading Scotland’s drug and alcohol treatment waiting time target smashed!

Have we peaked? Views down from 414 000 to 340 000, an 18% fall. Is it all downhill from here or can we recover? I had secretly been dreaming of the half million but it’s not to be. I had no idea about the surge and have no more about this drop. I propose we just keep on truckin’. Global reach colouring-in is unaffected: We are still in negotiations to have Greenland and Spitzbergen coloured-in properly, ie pretty in pink. The situation in Colombia is not to be sniffed at, or is it? We’re certainly narcked. Most-read reads: Continue reading Leading Cybernat site suffers massive fall in popularity!

The Holyrood Health and Sport Committee report, published today, featured widely in the Scottish media to suggest that the national system for the supply and demand of medicines was in a state of crisis. The committee is convened by Lewis MacDonald (Labour) and has a Unionist party majority of 5 to 4. It would be wrong to name the civil servant here. I have complained to him already about the choice of Professor Hugh Pennington, an anti-independence political activist, to give advice to the committee on the Scottish Government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic in Scotland. I’ve had no answer. … Continue reading Why is a Scottish civil servant misrepresenting the evidence to his own committee and enabling media exaggeration?

We rarely stray into football matters and are too scared to touch Old Firm stories, but this an attack on the Yes Movement’s capital in exile, Dundee. See this from BBC Scotland today: It would be “mutually beneficial” if Dundee United appoint Steve McClaren as head coach, says former English FA managing director Adrian Bevington. The ex-England manager is among the candidates speaking to the Scottish top-flight newcomers about the vacancy. Bevington says the move would offer the 59-year-old the chance to “improve” his reputation after recent setbacks. See that last bit? McClaren was last a success as depute to … Continue reading Now BBC Scotland try to undermine fitba in Indy City with English cast-off

Once more, the GMB exploits its members in a political campaign to undermine the SNP Government, on behalf of Scottish Labour. Richard Leonard’s wife, Karen, is a National Officer and hosts the GMB in Schools twitter feed We’ve seen this before in their hypocritical mobilisation of women carers and others against the SNP-led Glasgow Council, for compensation due to discrimination which they actually facilitated on behalf of their male workers, under the previous Labour administration. More recently, we’ve seen the unedifying sight of supposed socialists protecting private and corporate care home owners from crticism, by redirecting it onto the SNP … Continue reading Just one more GMB campaign exploiting their workers to attack SNP?