In the Guardian today: Transport secretary rules out meeting unions. Grant Shapps [Conservative] has ruled out meeting rail unions, as RMT members went on strike on Wednesday. “This is just a game by the unions,” the transport secretary said in an interview on Sky News. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2022/jul/27/train-strikes-rail-disruption-uk-live-latest-travel-updates From the Scottish Cons in May 2022: Yet despite Scots’ fury, the SNP is already trying to wriggle out of responsibility for the chaos on our railways. Instead of taking control of this dire situation, Nicola Sturgeon is hiding behind ScotRail – a company her government fully owns – as an excuse for her failures. Don’t … Continue reading Rail strikes only a government responsibility in SNP Scotland

Scotland’s drug deaths, according to Police Scotland, have been falling, since peaking in 2019, against a background of media silence on the facts and modified language changing from ‘record’ to just ‘high.’ The Scottish Tories seem worried about the figures to be released tomorrow, Thursday 28 June 2022. Does Sandy Gullane know something and is whinging this sort of thing: The number of fatalities has risen year on year on Nicola Sturgeon’s watch to last year’s appalling record high of 1,339. These figures mean Scotland has not just the worst death rate per head of population in Europe – but … Continue reading Falling drug deaths tomorrow? The Tories are worried

In the Guardian today: The decades-old routine of visiting an NHS dentist for a six-month checkup is being scrapped across England and Wales for most adults as part of changes designed to address the dire lack of access to dental care for many people. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/27/dental-checkups-less-frequent-england-wales-nhs From the Scottish Government in March 2022: We’re delivering record investment in dentistry – with a 9% increase in the budget for NHS dental services in 2022-23 – and there has been a 39% increase in the number of high-street dentists in Scotland between 2007 and 2021. Last year there were 55.6 dentists per 100,000 of the … Continue reading Not counting Anas Sarwar, Scotland has 40% more NHS dentists

Posted by u/caufield88uk on Reddit Scotland, today: I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this with the GERS data and specifically the graphs available. There are two, showing Scotland’s cumulative fiscal deficit and the other is the year on year fiscal deficit. The sdata on the year on year graph shows that Scotland was a massive net contributor to the UK budget up until 1992, then we become a net extractor, this continues until 1997 and then gets slightly worse after 1997 until 2012 and then from 2012 to 2015 gets massively worse and since 2015 has got much … Continue reading ‘Something I just realised about GERS’

While the BBC Scotland channel is sort of exposed, if bizarrely, by the Express, Reporting Scotland’s popularity is concealed within the ratings for BBC 1 News which, across the UK, is actually more popular, at 51%, than ITV/STV, at 45%. We do know that, in 2020, STV News beat Reporting Scotland with 390 00 viewers (30%) against 380 000 (28%). 6.9% of the population! https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/stv-wins-scottish-news-rating-21296399 That Ofcom avoids a breakdown of the BBC News popularity suggests, I’m sure, things are now even worse at Pacific Quay. Continue reading Ofcom protects Reporting Scotland from scrutiny

Despite desperate attempts by opposition parties and their MSM lackeys to somehow suggest that the ‘SNP’ minimum pricing policy is not working in Scotland, their arguments do not survive a collision with the evidence. While alcohol-related deaths, in Scotland, did rise during the period of pandemic lockdowns in 2020, they had fallen for the 3 previous years, after the implementation of the policy in May 2018. The above BBC report suggests: Heavy home drinking during the pandemic may have set habits that will lead to rises in alcohol-related deaths and illness in England, forecasters warn. The work, commissioned for the … Continue reading English alcohol-death experts stumped

By stewartb On the Ofcom ruling on the BBC: ‘Ofcom has found the BBC in breach of due impartiality rules in relation to a news item broadcast on The World at One, BBC Radio 4, on 24 February 2021. The news item discussed the dispute between the Scottish Government and former First Minister, Alex Salmond over its handling of harassment complaints against him and the consequent Holyrood inquiry. It included an interview with Baroness Ruth Davidson who expressed, at length, strongly critical views about the Scottish Government WITHOUT DUE WEIGHT BEING GIVEN TO ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES. (my emphasis) We received a … Continue reading More on the BBC bias toward Ruth Davidson

From BBC UK today: The large number of unfilled NHS job vacancies is posing a serious risk to patient safety, a report by MPs says. It found England is now short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, calling this the worst workforce crisis in NHS history. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-62267282 In a report where former Con Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt only suggests that tackling the shortage must be a “top priority” for the new prime minister when they take over in September, there’s no suggestion that the Health Secretary should resign. All forgiven; fresh start? It’s Steve Barclay … Continue reading NHS England facing ‘worst staffing crisis in history’ yet no calls for resignations

You’ll remember that the public have right to know when things are worse in Scotland than in England, so our media remind us regularly of our higher drug deaths or lower employment rates but we don’t hear, because that would be tasteless whitabootery, when Covid deaths or our child poverty rates are lower or when our A&E is faster. Today we heard about the 54 Monkey Pox cases in Scotland but not, of course, about the 2208 cases, across the UK. We have the lowest rate at only a quarter of the UK level. Should you want to see how … Continue reading Scotland’s Monkey Pox rate one of lowest in the World!

Ever determined to give their elderly Scots audience a fright and keep them change-averse, Reporting Scotland lead off with The World Health Organisation has declared the outbreak an international public health emergency. 16 000 cases of the viral disease have been reported in more than 70 countries. Then in reverse order with what are the real headline messages to inform viewers, a clearly PO Prof Bauld tells us: The risk for the public in Scotland remains low We’ve had 54 cases with an increase of only 3 since the last count in mid-July These are really small numbers This is … Continue reading Monkey Pox: It’s a totally different situation to Covid 19