We’re all familiar with Prof Pennington, Commander of the British Empire, popping up to state the bleedin’ obvious but who knew the the Principality of Wales had one too, in Prof Sian Griffith, Order of the British Empire. The similarities are uncanny. Both ‘experts’ are quick to remind readers that they are probably not the ones to ask any more but the British media like their Unionist thinking. Today: Wales must work closely with other UK nations to secure enough resources to deal with coronavirus, an expert has said. Prof Griffiths said it was “good news” an antibody test was … Continue reading Wales has a British Empire Prof too, pushing for Better Together

From Brenda Steele: Why does the Sunday post not make it clear that it is the performance of a UK Government Testing Hub that Mr Cole-Hamilton is dissatisfied with? If he is unhappy that they lost his results and thinks there should be faster turnaround, he needs to complain to either Deloitte – who manage it – or the UK Government. Telling Scottish Health Secretary Jeane Freeman and Jason Leitch, Scotland’s National Clinical Director, wastes their valuable time and will do nothing to get the problems fixed. And we do know that this system has problems The results of tens of thousands of Covid-19 tests … Continue reading Lib Dem tries to blame Scottish Government for failures of UK Government testing

With Gordon Brewer this morning, Jackson Carlaw shouts: We hear this morning we’ve not recruited any, NONE, of the 2 000 individuals that are going to be doing the work (testing) is deeply concerning. Brewer does not, of course, correct him. Neither know the facts or care about the facts. The First Minister tweets about them that afternoon so who told Carlaw that there were none? Continue reading Jackson Carlaw allowed to lie about testing on BBC Scotland! No? Really? Surely not!

From ragmanbugle12: My blood pressure must be rocketing up. I know that English is overflowing with everyday metaphors – they are part of its richness, and serve to increase its potential for the transmission of meaning – but I have become more and more irritated as I listen to politicians and pundits who pepper their pronouncements with metaphors which are either exhausted or inappropriate. Long ago, an English teacher explained to me that a metaphor is a lie which reveals a truth: the soldier was not really a lion in the battle, but to say that he was reveals more vividly … Continue reading Misuse of Metaphor in a Time of Disease

By Brenda Steele: I find this paragraph from Hardeep Mathura’s ‘Britain’s Chernobyl, Covid-19 & the Cost of Lies’ very interesting indeed: The explosion did not just destroy a nuclear reactor but the Soviet Union itself. Independence movements – particularly in Ukraine and Belarus, the two most affected regions – found life in its wake and the empire fell five years later. In 2006, Mikhail Gorbachev, on whose watch the disaster unfolded, said that “the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl… even more than my launch of Perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union”. Transposing the concept to the … Continue reading Will Covid-19 be Britain’s Chernobyl?

We heard this from Gordon Brewer this morning: There is also a view. It was put by one columnist in a newspaper this morning very bluntly that at the beginning of this there was an understandable desire to clear out acute wards in hospitals in order to make room for what was expected to be a possible overwhelming surge in coronavirus patients and that in effect elderly people were dumped out of hospitals into care homes! Now there is a letter from NHS England but that wouldn’t apply up here which talked about getting 30% clear-out rates in hospitals. Did that happen … Continue reading FACT CHECK: There was NO ‘spike’ in care home admissions in March triggering mass deaths

In an interview this morning Gordon Brewer said: There is also a view. It was put by one columnist in a newspaper this morning very bluntly that at the beginning of this there was an understandable desire to clear out acute wards in hospitals in order to make room for what was expected to be a possible overwhelming surge in coronavirus patients and that in effect elderly people were dumped out of hospitals into care homes! Now there is a letter from NHS England but that wouldn’t apply up here which talked about getting 30% clear-out rates in hospitals. Did that happen … Continue reading BBC Scotland presenter appears to accuse UK Government of dumping old folk out of hospitals into care homes with resultant surge in deaths

This morning, Gordon Brewer opened with: The man who represents Scotland’s private care homes says new government guidelines in homes which don’t have coronavirus are just wrong and that there was a spike of admissions to care homes in March as hospital cleared beds to be used with patients with covid-19. As it transpires, he does appear to agree with the first point but not the second. Brewer tries to pressurise him into agreeing. It becomes one of the worst examples of unethical, bad, journalism I’ve seen and certainly the worst from a supposedly grown man. Brewer, like any 18 … Continue reading BBC Scotland’s Gordon Brewer not just trying to put words into, but RAM them into, a reluctant interviewee’s mouth

From Opinium based on 13th May responses by 169 Scots, we see, to Jackson’s horror, that 45% of Scottish Tories trust the FM to inform them of coronavirus. Only 41% distrust her. That’s no way to run a campaign to become the next FM, as I feel sure I heard him say he would become in 2021. Stop it! Be serious! 64% of Labour and 53% of Lib Dems also trust her but only 85% of SNP supporters seem to. What? Wait till Glen see this: Threat to Sturgeon as not all SNP supporters trust her! It looks at first … Continue reading Majority of Scottish Tories trust Nicola! Is Carlaw for the scrapheap?

How does a member of the party founded by Keir Hardie get to the point when she can consider praising the UK Parliament, especially the Lords, just to have a wee huffy dig at the Scottish Parliament? By all means criticise but to feel comfortable using the Lords as your evidence tells us all we need to know about Dugdale’s values – any that will get her attention? Dreaming of Baroness Dugdale? The Scottish Parliament has no non-elected second chamber, stuffed with 784 aristocrats and former MPs being rewarded for loyalty, snuffling in the trough of expenses. There are 178 … Continue reading It was a dark day Kezia for your party when they embraced the Lords