From senior editorial guy and specialist in Nicolaphobia, Tom Gordon, perhaps filling in for striking juniors, a task below his usual remit – the one week, statistically meaningless, A&E figures for NHS Scotland: A RECORD number of patients waited too long in Scotland’s A&E units last week, as performance levels fell back to close to their worst ever level. Official figures from Public Health Scotland showed 9,146 people waited more than the four-hour target in emergency departments in the week to August 14. https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20713169.new-record-people-waiting-long-scotlands-e-units/ Struggling for a story as he doesn’t find the lowest percentage seen in 4 hours 65.1% (64.8% and 65% … Continue reading Despite 6% increase in attendances Scotland’s emergency services meet the challenge

Interviewed by STV News last night but studiously ignored by Reporting Scotland, comedian Jo Caulfield wonders if the ‘Labour-Conservative council’ might be responsible for the unholy mess in Edinburgh. Wow! No one else has ever been allowed to think that on Scotland’s MSM. BBC Scotland has been carefully avoiding any such impression that a Labour council could be to blame for something so messy and suggesting that the Labour-Tory alliances, denied by Anas Sarwar, are actually real and creating chaos deliberately in the hope of passing the blame on to the SNP Government. Remember, Labour voted with the Tories on … Continue reading There’s a thought on refuse: ‘Is it the Labour-Conservative council?’

From SNP Media: Labour must urgently take steps to clean up the streets of Scotland’s capital after failing to prevent a 12-day strike by refuse workers. Festival goers are facing overflowing bins and rubbish lining the streets of the city after the Labour-led administration originally rejected plans to offer a 5% pay increase to workers. Despite residents demanding the Labour council take action to sort out the mess, the Labour council leader is missing in action and the Labour party, backed by the Tories and Liberal Democrats, are using the strike for political games instead of supporting residents and tourists by solving the … Continue reading SNP TO LABOUR: CLEAN UP OUR CAPITAL

From BBC Scotland today: Wind farm agreements have been announced for three new developments in the waters around Shetland. The projects, covering an area of just over 560km2, are expected to generate a total of 2.8 gigawatts per hour of electricity. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-62632865 This isn’t actually a huge increase in Scotland’s electricity production of 27.2 terrawatts per hour. A gigawatt is only a billion watts. A terrawatt per hour is one trillion watts. Between Quarter 1 2021 and 2022, net electricity transfers from Scotland to England rose by 12 per cent to 5.9 TWh, as weather conditions were particularly favourable for … Continue reading Enough renewable electricity to power all of the UK’s homes and being exported for hundreds of billions but we freeze

Today, after much revealing of rubbish heaps across Edinburgh and with the odd reference to ‘the Council’ but none to its Labour leadership, Reporting Scotland persuaded the First Minister to come on and thus be associated with the mess, in many viewers’ minds. Neither Labour Council leader Cammy Day nor Anas Sarwar were interviewed: When you then look at the coverage of the refuse workers strike in Glasgow 2021, you’ll see references to the SNP and to Nicola Sturgeon as the reports portray the problem entirely as one of the SNP’s making. Then, look at the coverage of the Edinburgh … Continue reading Only the SNP can be blamed for refuse piling up

Not for the first time, BBC UK produces a report that BBC Scotland won’t touch. Readers will remember the dirty blanket coverage of a single full bin and of Anas Sarwar with his GMB associates posing gleefully beside it as Cop26 in SNP Glasgow loomed. BBC UK are reporting today some really big heaps in Labour/Tory-run and Sarwar-free Edinburgh. Here’s how BBC Scotland is covering it: We saw a similar contrast last year between BBC coverage of rubbish strikes in SNP Glasgow and in Labour Sheffield: Planned industrial action by bin workers in Sheffield has been suspended to allow them … Continue reading BBC Scotland only interested in rubbish in SNP Glasgow as it piles up in Labour/Tory Edinburgh

The above is headlining on BBC UK. It’s not being covered by Reporting Scotland, though you can be sure they’re scouring for a dirty Scottish beach as I write, but in December 2021 from SEPA: Only 1 out of 85 sites failed, 1.17%. The 32 excellent sites is the highest in the past six years and nearly twice the 2015/16 number. *1 site failed, in 2021, a massive improvement from 17 down to 1. In the same year, DEFRA claim for England, 93% excellent or good, up from only 28%, 30 years ago, compared to only 67% in Scotland. Why … Continue reading Pollution warnings at 40 ‘British’ beaches but only 1* in Scotland

Only on Reporting Scotland tonight: Ministers are accused of ‘dragging their heels’ in replacing Grenfell-style cladding in Scotland. The bulk of the removal work is earmarked for 2025 and the programme was initially expected to be rolled out this year. More than 100 public buildings are believed to have the highly flammable material. Scottish Labour says the Scottish Government is not moving fast enough on the issue. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone This is, of course, just another feed from Scottish Labour and an opportunity for BBC Scotland to fulfil its duty to platform Unionist parties uncritically. Regular readers will have moved on by … Continue reading For the umpteenth time, there can be no Grenfell in Scotland

I stumbled across this – Educational achievement in English-speaking countries: Do different surveys tell the same story? – from 2004. It’s getting on a bit but seems unlikely to be off the mark given the trends in England over the past decade and the move there toward greater inequality across the board. The first graph, above, which combines data from England and Scotland, reveals the UK (GBR) to have a larger attainment gap (dispersion), between those getting the lower scores and those getting the higher scores, and to have below median achievement overall. In the same top-right quadrant (unequal and … Continue reading Scottish education revealed as more equal

There are around 15 000 doctors in Scotland. BMA Scotland only got responses from 3 100 and, of those who cared enough to respond, 78%, 2 418, indicated they were prepared, on paper, were to go on strike. 2 418 is only 16% of 15 000 and there may be more than 15 000 doctors in Scotland. This is another trade union survey based on a self-selecting, ‘squeaky-wheel’, thus unrepresentative, sample. It would fail an S4 Modern Studies project on its methodology. Continue reading 84% of doctors not prepared to strike