Author: johnrobertson834

Retired Professor of Media Politics Not-for-profit independent political analysis
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Child trade crisis – one more reason for Scotland to take control of our border

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Like Canada sharing a border with the USA’s massive crime rates, deregulated health and economic system, Scotland has multiple reasons to seek control over its border with England. Extreme violence, new cheap and more powerful drugs, managed by County Lines gangs, flow up the motorways and the rail lines from major English cities and into the low crime areas of Scotland, into at least 60 villages and smaller towns, from Wick to Dumfries. Measles and TB spread from low vaccination areas in the South … Continue reading Child trade crisis – one more reason for Scotland to take control of our border

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Do you ever get fed up with us reporting how after 19 years without LabCons just about every public service in Scotland has been protected by the SNP? Now it’s our well-regulated RAAC ‘which can easily last 50 years, and should be able to carry on for several decades after that’

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 BBC Reporting Scotland Down today are back in Aberdeen, meeting folk who should really be suing the engineers who did the report upon which a mortgage lender lent them money to buy their RAAC council house, at a knock-down price thanks to the Tories and Labour back in the 20th C., before the SNP put an end to the taxpayer rip-off scheme in 2016. They interview a young man who has clearly played poker before and likes it there, he says. ‘Make me an … Continue reading Do you ever get fed up with us reporting how after 19 years without LabCons just about every public service in Scotland has been protected by the SNP? Now it’s our well-regulated RAAC ‘which can easily last 50 years, and should be able to carry on for several decades after that’

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Millions of litres of raw sewage in 50 toxic waste ponds and tanks, some huge, some stirred, most open to the air and all within a few hundred metres of a giant hospital for the seriously sick – Welcome to Glasgow under Labour

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 The view above of five large open-topped raw sewage tanks, from the viewpoint in the red arrow below. To the left, the viewer sees a large building with the moss green flat roof – labs, testing. A wee wall attempts to protect it from sewage bioaerosols containing more bacteria and fungi which travel around 100m, than anyone could list here. To the left again, at the bottom of the image, the main hospital entrance and in the semi-circular, the hospital for children where cancer … Continue reading Millions of litres of raw sewage in 50 toxic waste ponds and tanks, some huge, some stirred, most open to the air and all within a few hundred metres of a giant hospital for the seriously sick – Welcome to Glasgow under Labour

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Scotland’s health board restructuring is not unusual and wee local groups cannot be trusted with complex medical issues

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Lesley Riddoch in the National yesterday, with the above and: Leaving aside her invitation to ‘islanders’ to make me ‘walk the ferry gang plank’ after I questioned their awareness of just how much the SNP Government has done for them, I still trust Lesley Riddoch as an honest and constructive, not to mention, very articulate, critical friend of the SNP. I have my own concerns on the SNP leadership, especially on foreign affairs, but if you work to destroy them you will regret it … Continue reading Scotland’s health board restructuring is not unusual and wee local groups cannot be trusted with complex medical issues

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With TWELVE times as many temporary school exclusions and ONE THOUSAND times as many permanent exclusions, PER HEAD, than Scotland, England’s schools are in a deep crisis fuelling County Lines gangs and street violence

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 In the Guardian today: The proportion of secondary school students in England removed from class and placed in “internal exclusion” as a disciplinary measure has almost trebled in three years, according to new data. The data shows the proportion of secondary pupils removed from normal lessons went up from 5% in the 2022/2023 academic year to 13% in 2025/26 – a 160% increase. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/sep/03/proportion-of-secondary-school-students-in-england-placed-in-internal-exclusion-almost-triples-in-three-years I can’t quickly access comparable percentages but, in May this year, we were able to compare total numbers per head of population, following … Continue reading With TWELVE times as many temporary school exclusions and ONE THOUSAND times as many permanent exclusions, PER HEAD, than Scotland, England’s schools are in a deep crisis fuelling County Lines gangs and street violence

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Oil, Renewables and Data Centres

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 By Mark E. Saunders of “The Scottish Minuteman” https://www.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=61575625542197 There is something very revealing about the way Scotland’s resources are discussed and pumped into our living rooms via our television screens. During the 2014 independence referendum, North Sea oil was presented as nothing but a risk to everyone living in Scotland. We were warned about falling production, volatile prices and the dangers of over-relying on oil revenues. Alistair Darling described relying on oil as “gambling with our children’s future.” On Sky News, June 2014, Gordon Brown ‘England’s Lord … Continue reading Oil, Renewables and Data Centres

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Brass Neck – BBC Scotland returns to the scene of their criminal lies about NHS Tayside’s cancer care which will have harmed many there

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that will no longer exist under these new Government structural reforms but they do have to do something pretty transformational with the NHS because there have long been warnings that it is financially unsustainable. BBC Scotland‘s Health Correspondent Lisa Summers, above, makes a return to NHS Tayside, the exact same spot, 7 years after she decided, all on her own, that it was ‘dysfunctional.’ Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 As reported here in April 2019, the NHS Tayside breast cancer treatment team, after experimenting with reduced chemotherapy doses to … Continue reading Brass Neck – BBC Scotland returns to the scene of their criminal lies about NHS Tayside’s cancer care which will have harmed many there

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Embrace ‘Manchesterism?’ What, for more homelessness, crime, corridor care and poverty? For less affordable housing and letting wildfires burn longer? Two Scottish profs are mad fer it clearly

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Says who? Prof Sir AntonMuscatelli and Iain Anderson (Jethro Tull?). Have they read anything about Manchester recently? Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Wot, like this? Full text at:https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/?s=Manchester Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Continue reading Embrace ‘Manchesterism?’ What, for more homelessness, crime, corridor care and poverty? For less affordable housing and letting wildfires burn longer? Two Scottish profs are mad fer it clearly

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Minimum wage shame list reveals Scottish firms significantly more likely to pay staff minimum wage than in other parts of UK

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Top story at BBC Scotland Business and front page on the BBC Scotland News site but barely mentioned across other BBC sites, ‘Minimum wage shame list reveals Scottish firms that failed to pay staff.’ Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 From BBC Scotland today: Fifty firms in Scotland have been revealed on a UK government list naming and shaming employers that failed to pay staff minimum wage. Three of the companies topping the list in Scotland – including North East bakers Murdoch Allan & Son – each owed more than … Continue reading Minimum wage shame list reveals Scottish firms significantly more likely to pay staff minimum wage than in other parts of UK

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Another crime surge into Scotland from England that must be fogged

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and is a problem across the UK. Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 BBC Reporting Scotland last night investigating the sale of illegal tobacco, let slip their awareness that this is linked to organised crime and is a phenomenon moving from the south, that is ‘England.’ is starting to set in. Scotland has much lower crime than England & Wales and that is not good for the image of the Union – more dangerous together? This one has been a huge success for criminals from England looking for new territory: … Continue reading Another crime surge into Scotland from England that must be fogged