By stewartb: The journalism on display in the Irish Times regarding the UK’s handling of BREXIT has provided – hopefully will continue to provide – a blast of ‘fresh air’.  I have come to appreciate – to enjoy, to be informed by and provoked into new thinking by – the likes of Fintan O’Toole.  Last week’s (28 May) opinion piece by Una Mullally brings together insights into the current state of politics and society in the USA and the UK, the two nation-states with THAT so extra special ‘special relationship’. And she does not pull her punches! The author takes … Continue reading “Send in the clowns, and you wake up in a circus.”… seeing this ‘precious Union’ as others do!

The Herald ‘owned by Newsquest, one of the UK’s biggest newspaper and website publishers’ is today the media arm of a pre-emptive strike by the private care home industry to try to transfer responsibility for their failures onto the Scottish Government. In two linked pieces, spokespersons for the industry are able to distort the truth unchallenged by the reporter. First, the ‘devastating critique’ comes from Scottish Care, described quite misleadingly as ‘Scotland’s main care body’ when they are merely, as they put it themselves, ‘the voice of the independent care sector.’ Entirely unchallenged by the reporter, the group attempts to blame … Continue reading Private sector media used by private sector care owners to try to pre-empt the blame for multiple deaths coming their way

As the English testing and tracing system collapses and has to be delayed for a month and as the Scottish system seems, judging by the eerie media silence, to be working, BBC Scotland have found something they can use. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) has received evidence of a phishing scam themed around the [UK] app, even before the real app has released nationally: Members of the public received texts informing them that they have come into contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. The message contains a link to a bogus website which asks for the … Continue reading BBC Scotland transfers phishing scam concerns for the UK app to the Scottish system

At first, I thought this must be faked. It’s not. It’s from a BBC Dorset report yesterday. They’re collecting in a dense crowd to get off the beach after being herded together by police so that rescue helicopters can land to treat three injured beach-goers. Here they are again not observing any kind of distancing as they leave, gasping for breath and puffing out all over each other: They had been spaced out a bit beforehand: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-52864454 Well, at least they’ll get tested and traced by the end of June in a world-beating system. Continue reading Have hundreds of English beach-goers volunteered to be herded into an immunity experiment?

The choice of visual is a bit of a clue as to what will follow. The opening headline seems promising: Coronavirus in Scotland RECAP: First weekend after lockdown restrictions eased, public urged to enjoy outdoor spaces ‘safely’ By Ema Sabljak Off we go with the recap as it was at the end of the day, yesterday: 4:49pm An Observer journalist asks about the Dominic Cummings scandal.. 4:35pm A Sky journalist says 8000 new infections every day just in England.. 4:29pm The UK Government just announced 4:24pm First question from Chris Mason, who asks for Dowden to respond to the scientists … Continue reading The Herald: Providing a service but not really for Scots with 9 reports on England and 1 on N Ireland

Strangely fed by following the Twitter feed of Andy Burnham, in turn estimated based on data compiled by the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Record thought it was able to trumpet the above bad news yesterday, as Scotland began to loosen its breakdown: It’s hard to see where they get their headline from when you look at the column for the R no. Every area is between 0.7 and 0.9 with Scotland in the middle at 0.8. Then when you look at actual infection rates as opposed to … Continue reading Scotland’s actual covid-19 infection rate is pretty average

For Opinium on 28th-29th May, with 169 adult Scots (18+), 64% overall and 67% of Labour voters, trust the information on coronavirus provided by Nicola Sturgeon. 39% of Conservative voters also trust her despite Jackson Carlaw’s repeated claims that she has lost the confidence of the public. https://www.opinium.co.uk/public-opinion-on-coronavirus-28th-may/ Readers may remember the YouGov poll in January in which only 8% trusted Carlaw, just ahead of Richard Leonard on 6%! https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/01/30/less-than-1-in-10-scots-trust-jackson-carlaw-latest-yougov-full-poll-puts-yes-ahead-and-better-together-leaders-in-the-bin/ Continue reading Nearly 40% of Scottish Tories trust the FM!

From stewartb Its high time we devoted more resource to exposing the ways and means adopted by Westminster governments over the funding of public services in England and the negative impact these can have on Scotland. How much do we NOT know? We hear very little from the Scottish news media about financial scrutiny of governments in Westminster. In Scotland we have little or no exposure to investigations by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Commons or those by England’s National Audit Office (NAO). This means that too often we are unaware of the financial competence or … Continue reading Westminster Tories damage England’s NHS – and harm Scotland (Part 1)

From stewartb This is the second article for the TuSC motivated by a view that it’s high time we devoted more resource to exposing the ways and means adopted by Westminster governments over the funding of public services in England. It’s important to highlight the negative knock-on impact on Scotland. We hear very little from the Scottish news media about financial scrutiny of governments in Westminster. In Scotland we have little or no exposure to investigations by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Commons or those by England’s National Audit Office (NAO). As a result, we are … Continue reading Westminster Tories avoid responsibility to address the needs of England’s NHS and this harms Scotland (Part 2)

By Brenda Steele: Ian Murray is getting a lot of press mileage out of the  Nike Conference “Cover-up” https://www.theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2020/05/murray-continues-to-probe-over-nike-conference-in-edinburgh/ Murray continues to probe over Nike conference in Edinburgh More than 70 Nike employees from around the world attended the conference in Edinburgh on 26 and 27 February 2020, and a BBC investigation found that at least 25 people linked to the event contracted Covid-19, including 8 in Scotland.At the weekend, in the Mail on Sunday, it was reported that several workers who came into contact with delegates, including kilt-fitters in Edinburgh and staff who shared a building with Nike in … Continue reading The Nike kilts were fitted two days BEFORE the virus is thought to have arrived in Edinburgh