From Alasdair [THE] Galloway: The Letters they don’t publish This letter is a response to one published by Labour in Scotland’s redoubtable (now ex?) Councillor Alex Gallagher (or Millport Eck as a friend calls him), taking issue with whether “the Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) would deliver £212 million to projects north of the Border over the next three years compared to £549m that would be due from EU structural funds”. In the course of this he makes claim that I cite in the letter. Begins Alex Gallagher claims that had there been a Yes vote in September 2014, “Scotland would … Continue reading Labour Councillor of ill-repute gets it all wrong again, on EU funding this time

Scotland’s media love to pounce on a weekly dip in A&E performance, delighted that it can be used to imply a trend that even they know cannot be shown to be there. Monthly data are better. NHS England are fast at one thing; getting the monthly data out. Their November 2022 A&E data was out on December 8 2022. They saw 54.5% in their Type 1 (consultant-led) departments within 4 hours. 12 hours? Sneakily they tell us 37 837 but don’t do the percentage for us. It’s 6.8%. NHS Scotland data are just out. 67.5% were seen and admitted within … Continue reading Reliable monthly A&E data show NHS Scotland 58% and 24% better on 12 and 4 hour waits

The crisis with no context splattered across ‘our’ MSM. NHS Scotland is under pressure. The staff are pushed. None can deny these facts but, a national newspaper, thinking itself ‘quality’ and serving the needs of its readers to know what is happening in their world, must offer context to the dramatic personalisation used to draw readers in. First-year BA Journalism students are marked down for a lack of context in their writing yet experienced, well-paid writers abandon the notion because it dampens down the crises they lust for. The Scotsman report above is based on one or two cases and … Continue reading Scotland still has by far the best A&E performance in the UK

Leah Gunn Barrett Jill Stephenson fatuously claims [below] that Scotland benefits from UK largesse. This is simply not credible. Westminster, not known for its generosity, clings onto Scotland because it needs to continue its exploitation of our oil, gas and renewable energy, which it is taking without providing compensation to the Scottish people to whom it belongs.  In fact, it is Scotland’s oil and gas that dug the UK out of its financial hole in the 1970s which is why the UK government buried the McCrone Report that revealed the extent of the theft. The second great rip-off has started. Scotwind … Continue reading The fatuous claim that Scotland benefits from UK largesse rebutted once more

As the Guardian, above, celebrates the ‘UK’ setting a new record for wind power generation with no indication of just how much of that is due to Scotland and as BBC Scotland’s Douglas Fraser tells us ‘Energy prospects blow hot and cold‘, neither mention the Statistical Release on Energy Trends for Q3 2022 (July – September), which on 22 December 2022 offers us this revealing diagram: Note Scotland produces 15.6% of UK electricity supply but only needs 9.5%. The other 6.1% is transferred across the border. What about oil and gas production and consumption? For some reason that does not … Continue reading Producing 64% more electricity than we need!

Here’s an uncomfortable thought. In August 2019, 152 514 people attended A&E in Scotland. In August 2022, it was 135 700, 11% fewer. In August 2019, 90.6% were seen within 4 hours. In August 2022, only 69.6% were seen in that time. A negative correlation? Fewer admissions but longer waiting times? What the…is going on here. I can think of four explanations quickly. There are fewer staff employed in A&E today than there were three years ago. A&E staff are less efficient now than they were then. The patients are worse than they used to be. The figures are due … Continue reading If A&E attendance is still lower why are waiting times getting longer?

A union rep, once more described as a ‘leading physician’ is platformed by BBC Scotland to inaccurately and irresponsibly exaggerate the effects of current pressures on A&E: Several of Scotland’s A&E departments want emergency measures brought in because of concerns about patient safety, a leading clinician has said. Dr John Paul Loughrey, of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said patients were being kept in “inhumane” conditions due to high occupancy. On Sunday, RCEM president Dr Adrian Boyle said between 300 and 500 people were dying every week across the UK as a result of delays to emergency care – this appeared … Continue reading Fake News on Scotland’s hospital deaths will cause deaths

At the end of the BBC Scotland insert in BBC Breakfast, this morning: New figures suggest the gender pay gap between men and women is lower (sic) in Scotland than in the UK overall. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that the gasp was 12.2% last year compared with almost 15% UK-wide. However, the figures also reveal the gap here widening slightly. They didn’t, of course tell us about the more significant full-time gender pay gaps – 3.7% in Scotland, 8.3% in the UK overall, 124% higher! https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/politics/gender-pay-gap-in-scotland-is-lower-than-rest-of-uk-latest-ons-figures-show-3971711 As for the gap being ‘lower‘, I’ve often wondered about … Continue reading UK gender pay gap massive 124% wider than in Scotland

I’m grateful to my Researcher, Bernadette Robertson, for alerting me to this with a shout of: ‘Hey! BBC Wales is on our beach!‘ From BBC Wales as an insert in BBC 24, today around 4:30pm: But here on the West coast of Scotland, locals and environmental officials say that benefits are already being felt on beaches like this [Ayr South] one because of the work they’re doing with farmers on the River Ayr….Scotland’s environmental regulator spends £900 000 a year on a dedicated team of 12 inspectors and support staff just checking water pollution from farms. In Wales? No fully-funded … Continue reading ‘Have you done what the Scots are doing?’ BBC Wales praises Scotland’s river quality enforcement

We’ve been here before with Tom Devine confusedly defending Anas Sarwar’s claim that Scotland cannot be seen as a colony of the British (English) Empire because a few elite Scots were enthusiastic participants in the the imperial project. Now we have David Leask asking the above question. The answer is a simple ‘yes’ because the vast majority of Scots like the vast majority of the English, for that matter, were the very first victims of the colonising of these islands, by a Norman warrior elite, starting in 1066 and tidying up in the last corners by 1745. It’s been the … Continue reading Most Scots could never be colonisers and were among the first to be colonised