Above in the ‘good old days’ for the Herald when they knew how to report those SNP trains and before they got those SNP ferries. Today: Rail fares in England will rise by up to 5.9% in March after what the government called “its biggest ever intervention” to keep the cost of travel below soaring inflation. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/dec/22/rail-fares-in-england-to-increase-by-up-to-59-in-march ans ScotRail fares have now increased by 4.8% following a freeze since January 2022. The rise will not apply to season and flexi tickets to ensure the most frequent travellers are not impacted. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66086204 I’ll be accused of whitabotery. Continue reading How will the Herald present rail fares in England increasing by 23% more than Scotrail?

Andrew Bowie Con MSP, above, yesterday on the changge.org website: What the Nuclear Dump is For – The Big New Nuclear Gamble Dear Friends, The seismic blasting of the Irish Sea has taken place (to be followed by further invasive “investigations of the geology” in order to facilitate the ambitions of the nuclear gamblers who gathered this week at the Northern Nuclear Conference in of all places Carlisle Racecourse!   The deep nuclear dump plans are necessary to this new nuclear agenda to put the waste ‘out of sight and out of mind’. The Northern Nuclear Conference at Carlisle Racecourse … Continue reading The Bowie who sold the World? Scottish MP excited to put a major nuclear risk on our doorstep

Front page in the Herald, a one-year drop in affordable housing output and Scottish Labour allowed to suggest they are in a position to criticise. From the impartial Grampian Online in January 2023: Scotland has continued the trend of outperforming the rest of the UK in delivering affordable housing. In the last financial year 9757 homes have been built for social rent, mid-market rent, and affordable ownership. Scotland continues to outperform the rest of the UK by building 13.9 homes per 10,000 population, compared with 8.0 in Wales, 9.7 in England and 13.0 per 10,000 in Northern Ireland. https://www.grampianonline.co.uk/news/scotland-outperforms-uk-in-building-affordable-housing-298925/ 13.9 … Continue reading New affordable housing: SNP Scotland 74% better than Labour Wales

By stewartb – a long read The constitution of a nation-state ‘sets the rules according to which a society is organised’ – ‘constitutions reflect a country’s history, traditions and circumstances’.   These are shorthand characterisations offered in the first (50 page long) report to emerge from an ongoing Review of the UK Constitution by the Institute for Government (IfG) and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge. Their aims are to examine the purpose of constitutions; to assess how the UK constitution fulfils that purpose; to highlight problems with the UK’s constitution that are being revealed; and to … Continue reading The UK constitution – it’s England’s creation and England will decide if, how and when it is reformed!

Headlining across ‘Scotland’s’ MSM today, stories of alleged ‘murky finances’ turn out to be just auditors advising that small donations of under £250 need to have a physical as well as an online ‘paper trail’. Insiders tell me this merely relates to petty cash and very low value cheques which are payable to SNP and cannot go elsewhere. Also, that auditors were under intense pressure from their professional body and others (political?) not to take on the SNP accounts and had to be extra careful to cover their backs. Yet this far more serious and really murky behaviour by the … Continue reading SNP probed over small donations from its mass support while the others rake in millions from ‘murky sources’ and conceal them from auditors

BBC Scotland News constructs a far more anxious and conservative world than STV News does: A comparative content analysis study of state and corporate media in a small, devolved nation. Professor John Robertson OBA – Retired Professor & Chair of Faculty Research Ethics Abstract A four-week survey [6 to 30 June 2023] of news reporting by BBC Scotland and STV gathered objective data on fifteen measures, including references to bad news, to the devolved government within reports and reports of ministers or their party being causally linked to the content.  Twenty episodes and 102 reports from both BBC Scotland and … Continue reading Research: BBC Scotland News constructs a far more anxious and conservative world than STV News does:

BC Ferries is the nearest thing to CalMac in terms of size and the number of destinations they serve up and down the West coast of Canada. They serve 47 locations with 41 vessels in very similar weather conditions to those on the West coast of Scotland. Calmac serves 50 locations with 31 vessels. CalMac is obliged to report daily reliability data but BC Ferries is not. CalMac is averaging 95.4% of sailings on time this Summer. https://www.calmac.co.uk/calmac-performance-data-browser BC Ferries in 2020 (the most recent I can find) managed 90.2% on time. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.bcferries.com/web_image/h41/h98/8822250045470.pdf In recent days, CalMac has been cancelling … Continue reading British Columbia Ferries should take advice from CalMac

Only the Daily Record, the Courier and the Evening Standard are reporting these dramatic events from yesterday: Four gang members have been jailed and a missing child rescued after police rumbled a major drugs line from London to Dundee. Officers from the Met Police launched a probe after concerns were raised for the welfare of the 16-year-old on November 14 last year. Detectives discovered the youth, from Croydon, had travelled north of the border earlier that month – closely followed by Malik Paul, 26, Michael Nwadire, 28, Dylan Newman, 21, and Ellis Davey, 22. Operation Orochi was launched with officers racing to Dundee … Continue reading Why are Scotland’s ‘national’ media not reporting the terror of English county lines gangs in Scotland?