Vashon Island (10 000) commuters to Seattle in Washington State are up in arms about their $27, 15-minute ferry service: Vashon Island residents are fed up with the unreliability of their ferry route and many expressed their frustrations at a meeting Monday night. On Monday morning, an issue with a ferry forced it to leave the Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth route to unload vehicles at Pier 52 in Seattle. The issues on this ferry line have been a point of complaint for years — long lines of vehicles at Fauntleroy are common, so much so that an entire Facebook group is dedicated to … Continue reading Affluent islanders say ferry service is ‘worst ever’…..in the USA

Audit Scotland has an agenda quite unlike that of the National Audit Office for England. The latter above puts not a word of criticism, direct or implied, of the Government in report titles or press releases. Today, the Herald and Reporting Scotland have been all over the Audit Scotland headline report below. In Scotland, it’s all very different: Things are bad almost everywhere they look and that is trumpeted in headlines and releases for the media. One of Audit Scotland’s clearest indicators of bias and, indeed, lack of credibility, came in April 2023 when we heard that better protection from … Continue reading Audit Scotland has an agenda quite unlike that of the National Audit Office for England

Rutherglen and Hamilton West UK Labour candidate Michael Shanks is keeping his head down, dreaming of that £85K salary and hanging on to his seat belt, aided by the media, as his UK Labour keeps steering right. Remember when he, a man who resigned from Labour over Brexit, said he was ‘not against’ re-joining? That’s the kind of guy you don’t want in your corner. Today, as we hear that Treasury officials are discussing a one-off break from the pensions triple lock that could save £1bn by preventing a bumper 8.5% increase in the state pension next year, UK Labour … Continue reading Rutherglen By-election – Is Labour candidate ‘not against’ punishing pensioners for inflation when billions could be raised from the wealthy instead?

From Plymouth Live yesterday, as Putin and Jong Un meet to plan ‘sacred fight’ against the West: Devonport dockyard operator Babcock International Plc has been criticised in Parliament after it emerged none of the Royal Navy’s attack submarines were at sea. Tory MP Mark Francois blamed the engineering giant for delayed refits and demanded ministers give Babcock bosses a dressing down. He told the House of Commons that “Not a single one” of the UK’s attack subs were at sea a few weeks ago due to maintenance. It was reported that all six of the country’s nuclear subs were alongside, with … Continue reading Scottish Government offer to Penny Mordaunt – ‘We’ll fit torpedo tubes on larger CalMac ferries as all six RN attack submarines are tied up for repairs’

In the Guardian today, but getting no coverage at all across the BBC or ITV or the press: Vulnerable eating disorder patients from England are being sent hundreds of miles from their homes to Scotland for treatment, as the number of available beds south of the border has dropped in two years. Data from NHS England, which included the financial years 2020-2021, 2021-22 and 2022-23 and up to the end of May 2023, shows that 84 patients were sent from England to Scotland. The total cost of this was almost £9m. In the financial year 2022-23, 29 patients made this trip, costing more … Continue reading More than 100 eating disorder patients have to be treated in Scotland