Quietly amid the Tory press braying about the SG not treating businesses as well as Westminster does, they release this important news to blank expression from the business correspondents. Economy Secretary Fiona Hyslop has confirmed that grant funding for the newly self-employed suffering hardship and SMEs in distress will be available in the coming days. The £100 million fund to support the self-employed and SMEs announced last week will be broken into three separate funds as follows: • £34 million Newly Self-Employed Hardship Fund, managed by Local Authorities, will be allocated to the newly self-employed facing hardship through £2,000 grants• £20 million … Continue reading SNP ‘Lifeline support for business confirmed’ but ignored of course by BBC Scotland

Once more featuring John McLennan, but not mentioning, of course, that he is a Tory Councillor and former Tory advisor, the newspaper industry reveals the shiniest of brass necks. It seems the SNP Government is not offering financial support to those newspapers which have daily lied and distorted the facts in a failed effort to undermine them. You have to not admire their nerve. Trusted? Opinion poll after poll, year after year, for decades, put journalists at the bottom as easily the least trusted people there are. We’re no daft nor have we ever been daft just because we bought … Continue reading As public searches for ‘trusted’ news they avoid the Scottish press

See above, what the Scotsman’s ‘Westminster Correspondent’ had to say when a pro-independence broadcaster was allowed to ask a question at the First Minister’s briefing yesterday. ‘Partisan hobby blog?’ You can see his frankly nauseating sneer. Does he really believe any media are not partisan? On behalf of the state, or their corporate owners or the Eaton/Oxbridge elite from which most of the best paid figures emerge? ‘Ooooh, I’m the Scotsman’s Westminster Correspondent, I am! Does he know what their circulation is now? Here’s Gourtsoyanis in the Guardian back in 2011 He was just a blogger then. He must have … Continue reading Self-important corporate hack and former ‘news blogger’ thinks he’s better than us now

All across the Scottish media this morning we see headlines like this in the Glasgow Times: ‘83% of drug injectors in Glasgow would use city safe room‘ I can’t seem to find the actual GCU report. Do they just send it to the corporate and state media and not post it openly for ‘hobbyists’ like us at TuSC? That Paris guy at the Herald would approve. Anyhow from the Glasgow Times: MORE than 80% of drug injectors in Glasgow would use a safe consumption room and the service could help those most at risk of dying from overdose, a major … Continue reading Scottish Tories’ inaction and disregard for the lives of drug addicts is from the same sociopathic mindset as Johnson’s was on the coronavirus threat

Tonight at around 6:05pm, we heard ‘The figures in Scotland and Northern Ireland are higher.’ In Scotland 25% of coronavirus deaths were in care homes but that’s because the total number of which they are a percentage is much lower! By today, 21 April, there have been 985 deaths in total in Scotland and 237 were in care homes. https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/ In England, by the same date, 15 607 deaths were reported. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274 So, taking the BBC figure of 10% we get get 1 560 care home deaths. Per capita, the Scottish figure may be slightly higher, at the moment, but … Continue reading BBC 1 News stupidly and wrongly claims care home deaths in Scotland are higher

Searching for evidence to use in earlier posts about care home deaths, I found this piece in the BMJ from 2017. Reading it at the time, though shocked, I did not imagine the thousands of private care home residents now dying in places ill-equipped to cope with the coronavirus onslaught. When I say ill-equipped I do not mean because of government failures to test or to provide PPE as Scottish Tory hypocrites and BBC Scotland would love to claim. I mean ill-equipped because of rapacious management treating their patients as cash cows and failing to train, equip, or pay adequately, … Continue reading How the Tories sowed the seeds of this whirlwind of mass deaths among the elderly ten years ago

We’ve seen BBC Scotland and the Herald offer an uncritical platform to Robert Kilgour, care homes owner and Tory donor, allowing him to blame the Scottish Government for deaths in care homes. The Scottish Tories are of course joining in. The reasons are obvious. From the Daily Record only two weeks ago: Care home bosses could face fines or even jail if they don’t comply with new measures to protect staff and residents. Following allegations that one care home had locked personal protection equipment away from staff who needed it, a union boss called for full enforcement legislation to be used against … Continue reading Who is really to blame for death in private care homes?

At the Coronavirus update from the First Minister today we saw a two-pronged attack from BBC Scotland’s Glen Campbell and Sky’s Jim Matthews. Campbell said: ‘Can you update us on the prevalence of covid-19 in our care homes and explain why we’ve been unable to prevent mass deaths in some care homes?’ ‘Mass deaths?’ Really? Isn’t that a bit tasteless Glen, a bit melodramatic? Don’t we tend to use that word for Nazi Death Camps or the Killing Fields of Cambodia? At the last count (15th April) there were around 250 care home deaths and perhaps as many as 25 … Continue reading Remind me, who is responsible for infection control procedures in privately owned care homes where Glen Campbell says there have been ‘MASS DEATHS?’

In the Herald today we can read of the ‘postcode lottery’ of takeaway and restaurant hygiene in Scotland. As always in our NoMedia, a little context would have helped us to put things into perspective. Here’s some from 2017: From Environmental Health News on 20th September 2017: ‘English local authorities are seriously falling behind their devolved neighbours when it comes to resourcing food inspections. The latest LAEMS figures published this week reveals that each Environmental Health professional inspecting food establishments in England is responsible for 345 premises annually while in Wales the figure is nearly half that at 175. In Northern Ireland, the figure is … Continue reading Revealed – the Herald’s fails on background research into food hygiene

Talking-up Scotland Collective staff have had to step-in once more to protect BBC Scotland audiences from inaccurate reporting. Extracted from the BBC report but badly positioned, here are the main points: The vast majority of these homes are now properly resourced after seeking Scottish government support. The Scottish government said any home which flags up shortages because of Covid-19 illness or absence is offered immediate help from the Care Inspectorate watchdog. This could see the home allocated NHS nursing support or paired with available agency workers. Meanwhile, it has been revealed more than 2,600 people have applied to work in … Continue reading Scottish Government steps in to save private care homes with taxpayers’ money but BBC Scotland find something to misrepresent