From sam: Taiwan offers an innovative way to increase democratic decision making using digital sources. Is this transferable to Scotland? “Citizens help select the projects on Taiwan’s government-run “Join” e-democracy platform, which has so far hosted more than 10 million unique visitors, using a sophisticated system called quadratic voting. Each person has 99 points to award to their favorite projects based on their preferences, resulting in a more “fair, balanced, and … pro-social” outcome because it more fully captures people’s choices, Ms. Tang says… In this way, Taiwan’s government invites change from the inside out, through transparency, open data, and … Continue reading Who needs a corporate press? Taiwan offers an innovative way to increase democratic decision making using digital sources. Is this transferable to Scotland?

Speaking on Good Morning Scotland and reported in the Press & Journal on 13th April: Mr Kilgour, a Tory party donor, said: “My reading of this is that it’s pure spin, frankly, from the Scottish Government. “It’s no new money as far as I can see. All they’ve done is announced what has been agreed on the annual pay award. It’s always done on April 1 every year. Mr Kilgour accused the Scottish Government of trying to pass off a previous arrangement as a measure to help control coronavirus, adding: “All they’ve done is packaged and announced it as if … Continue reading Care home owner and critic of Scottish Government on PPE is Tory donor and anti-independence activist

The Herald tried to report on this for their headline story this morning. We’ve had to make their headline, above, more informative and sorted out the opening paragraphs with some bold and necessary insertions: MORE than 8000 visitors a week are continuing to arrive in Scotland from home and abroad without health checks because border control is a reserved matter and UK Border Control is doing SFA about it while the nation continues to be in lockdown and undergo social distancing in the coronavirus pandemic, it has emerged. Estimates provided to the Herald reveal that while arrivals from home and abroad at … Continue reading 8 000 every week unchecked for covid-19 allowed into Scotland because of reserved UK border controls but the Herald doesn’t quite explain why

I’d just finished writing: ‘Nothing is ever all bad as coronavirus purges our media’: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/04/19/nothing-is-ever-all-bad-as-coronavirus-purges-our-media/ when I spotted the above. Maybe I should just re-write but it’s easier and more fun to focus on this one. John McLellan, Conservative and Unionist councillor and regular in the Herald and the Scotsman, illustrates so well why they’re getting nothing from me and why they better not get anything from my taxes. McLellan is a real establishment figure: ‘John McLellan has been a City of Edinburgh Conservative councillor since 2017 and was director of communications for the Scottish Conservatives in 2012-13. He has edited The … Continue reading Tory councillor illustrates why we should let established newspapers die

Newspapers have been in steep decline for decades. The young do not buy them at all, getting news from online sources, mostly on their mobile phones. Coronavirus looks like hastening their demise and their owners, corporations, have even approached politicians for direct funding. Now, it seems, some politicians have urged the public to support them. Clearly, I’m not paying to see just whom. I’m guessing it’s the kind of white/pink male Unionist often interviewed uncritically in these same newspapers. Please let it not be Nicola! Nowhere, across the globe, are state or corporation-owned media the friends of the people. Conrad … Continue reading Nothing is ever all bad as coronavirus purges our media

Hours after Reporting Scotland’s outdated report on PPE, the Herald reports: ‘QUESTIONS have been raised about how well the spread of coronavirus is being tracked in the community in Scotland after it emerged that some Covid assessment centres are not testing at all…’ The covid ‘hubs’ or ‘assessment centres’ were never intended to test for covid-19 but to protect GP surgeries, the staff and patients there, from the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. This nation-wide initiative, unique to NHS Scotland, seems likely to have been a factor in Scotland’s much lower death rate from coronavirus but has been ignored by Scottish MSM … Continue reading Herald health correspondent’s deliberate distortion of facts about covid hubs which may have saved many lives

As I reflected on the above graph from the very useful Scotland Coronavirus Tracker, the words of a song came into my head. Written in the 70s by Pete Atkin and Clive James, ‘The Last Hill That Shows You All the Valley‘ isn’t on re-reading that optimistic but I’d re-thought its title to suggest the optimism that we will surely see a downward slope soon, in coronavirus cases and deaths, as we enter a sunlit plain where the virus is contained and the vaccine is on the way. I find that graph encouraging, The number of patients sick enough to … Continue reading ‘On the last hill that shows you all the valley?’

Not for the first time, from gangs to hospital infections, Reporting Scotland has scraped around to find cases, even one at times, of a problem which has become widespread in England. The underlying message is the same: ‘Don’t think you’re different.’ As English hospitals completely run out of PPE, we hear headlined on Reporting Scotland: ‘Almost half of nursing staff who responded to a survey say they’ve felt pressure to care for a patient without the appropriate personal protective equipment.’ They go on to tell us nearly everything about the Royal College of Nursing survey except those facts that might … Continue reading Reporting Scotland tries to drag us into NHS England’s PPE shortage scandal with dated and unreliable evidence

By stewartb: I see Mr Jack getting a profile this morning for his ‘borders’ guff. I’d like to think only the most blinkered, unchangeable Unionist diehards believe this stuff now but I do wonder how aware folk are of realities elsewhere. On Nordic Co-operation, just one insight:  https://www.norden.org/en/news/ministers-nordic-co-operation-discuss-coronavirus “Led by Denmark’s Mogens Jensen, the Ministers for Nordic Co-operation met by video link on Wednesday to share information on their efforts to fight the spread of coronavirus. Much of the discussion addressed the importance of co-ordinating measures to limit the negative impact on CROSS-BORDER COMMUTERS and trade between the Nordic countries.” … Continue reading Alister Jack borders on the ridiculous

While Scotland and now Northern Ireland have moved to a new covid-19 recording method for deaths, leading to major increases in cases being reported and opening up governments there to inaccurate comparisons, Matt Hancock resists any such change for England. From the Good Law Project’s campaign: Leaked guidance from an NHS hospital trust reveals that doctors are not being required to report COVID-19 as the cause of death for patients. Here’s what the guidance says: ‘Doctors are asked to use the standard MCCD (Medical Certificate of Cause of Death) form to certify death. ‘Pneumonia ‘or ‘community acquired pneumonia’ are acceptable … Continue reading Hancock’s Half Horrors as England hides its dead