Kurdish majority areas. The earthquakes The Indian Army has arrived but the Turkish Army, active in the area fighting Kurdish rebel groups has not. Thousands remained trapped under rubble after the earthquake and millions spent the night outside in freezing winter conditions while many areas have not received assistance and the government is being criticised for not using the military. “Thousands of people have died. AFAD [the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency] is not here; the state is not here. We have been abandoned,” Y# https://balkaninsight.com/2023/02/07/turkish-emergency-services-fail-to-reach-key-earthquake-hit-areas/ Continue reading The Kurdish areas, the earthquakes and the ‘absent state’

BBC Scotland, right at the end this morning, after supposed Council funding, nurse training and pedestrian death crises, some of us are shocked to hear: than elsewhere in Britain. And £580 per year higher than they would under the system in England & Wales. It will be interesting to see if this story survives throughout the day or is modified in the light of the last bit below: It’s called ‘repressive tolerance’, whereby a biased media is not always biased so that it can claim balance. Here the balancing positive (about Scotland/SNP) element tends to be after a string of … Continue reading Poorest £580 per year better off under SNP? Aye but…

I don’t commonly do book reviews here but someone shared a few pages of the above and they surprised even me. Nearly 200 pages in: If you have a book you’d especially like to recommend or even to warn us off, feel free to comment below. Continue reading Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!

In the Herald yesterday, ignoring what is ‘the news’ by definition : Scotland records worst ever A&E 12-hour waits in December THE number of people spending over 12 hours in A&E exceeded 8000 for the first time in December. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23304450.scotland-records-worst-ever-e-12-hour-waits-december/ Typically picking out a soor ploom, from last month, they ignore the currently plummeting weekly number waiting over 12 hours, falling from 2 261 in the first week of January 2023, to only 851 or around 3 500 over a month and so half the December figure. Oooh, I think I might not go to A&E because the Herald says … Continue reading A&E 12 hour waits: Herald prefers last month’s news to this month’s because this month’s news is too good

Above, the Holyrood constituency and regional support poll results since May 2021. Looks bad doesn’t it. A massive lead ‘thrown away’ by gender recognition. Wait a minute though. Why has the Alba vote dipped again? And, why has the Act-supporting Labour vote climbed? If supporting the Act is bad for support, why isn’t it always so? See these for 2021: The constituency and regional poll support graphs above reveal previous dips in SNP support, even below 40%. Does anyone remember the previous ‘throwing away’ of support? Texting a 16 year-old boy who, in my day, would have just told the … Continue reading Trans woman child abductor butchers SNP support? Don’t panic it’s a moral panic

This post is almost entirely due to the work of new TuS Health and Safety Correspondent (SFA Remuneration Rules), Robert Martin. I’ve just quickly assembled the bits for a quick post. From insurance giants, Zurich, today this gnomish report: From the 2023 revision of Scottish Building standards: Continue reading UK Gov rejects fire safety measures to save lives in English schools which are already in place in Scotland

In December 2022, NHS England’s Type 1 (full) A&E departments only saw 49.6% of attendances within 4 hours. In Scotland, the figure was 62.1%, 25.2% better. Sources: https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/ae-attendances-and-emergency-admissions-2022-23/ https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/ae-activity-and-waiting-times/ae-activity-and-waiting-times-month-ending-31-december-2022/ Continue reading Scotland’s A&E 25% faster in December 2022

From Public Health Scotland today: 70.3% of ED attendances were seen and resulted in a subsequent admission, transfer or discharge within 4 hours, up from 70.1% in the previous week. 1,996 patients spent more than 8 hours in an Emergency Department, down from 2 331 in the previous week. 851 patients spent more than 12 hours in an Emergency Department, down from 1 031 in the previous week Attendances were up from 21 517 to 22 430 https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/nhs-performs-weekly-update-of-emergency-department-activity-and-waiting-time-statistics/nhs-performs-weekly-update-of-emergency-department-activity-and-waiting-time-statistics-week-ending-29-january-2023/ Continue reading Surge in A&E improvement across all waiting times maintained