A week or so after World Health Organisation special envoy, David Nabarro, refused to play ball for Good Morning Scotland and criticise Glasgow’s readiness to host COP26, our MSM have managed to scrape something up with this: Seeing huge queues of people waiting to get into COP26 is “really concerning” amid the pandemic, a public health expert has said. The UN climate change conference at the SEC in Glasgow was hit by a second day of queuing on Tuesday, with crowds waiting for more than an hour to get inside. https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19690497.cop26-queues-concerning-amid-covid-pandemic-devi-sridhar-warns/ Sridhar does, of course, go on to be quite empathetic with the organisers … Continue reading How do we know a case surge is ‘looming?’

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has estimated that more than 230 people have died in Scotland this year because of long delays in emergency departments. No such data is collected so, based on their assertion that data show that for every 67 patients waiting 8-12 hours ‘one of them will come to harm’, they then just use that to divide the total waiting for that time in 2021 to come up with their 230. This is shoogly peg statistics as any student would know. Leaving aside the uncertainty of how ‘coming to harm’ becomes ‘die’ in the headline, doesn’t … Continue reading No real evidence of ‘patients dying because of long waits’ as NHS Scotland sees nearly 20% more than NHS England in 4 hours

The ‘Oxford’ Astra Zeneca vaccine had little to do with capitalism or greed for that matter. See: At least 97% of the funding for the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has been identified as coming from taxpayers or charitable trusts, according to the first attempt to reconstruct who paid for the decades of research that led to the lifesaving formulation. Using two different methods of inquiry, researchers were able to identify the source of hundreds of millions of pounds of research grants from the year 2000 onwards for published work on what would eventually become the novel technology that … Continue reading Greed and capitalism no longer working as England’s vaccine rollout falls behind

We’ve already seen Mark Drakeford standing up for Wales against the UK Government. He’s the most popular party leader in Wales. Here he is having an adult conversation with three other adults. But, Anas Sarwar? The millionaire, second least popular party leader in Scotland, just ahead of Douglas Ross, is here busy trying to get refuse workers to refuse the best pay offer in the UK and trash their own city just to get at ‘Nicola.’ Surely one of the refuse workers has a brother working for Sarwar’s mum, on minimum pay? Continue reading Labour Wales First Minister and Labour ‘Scotland’ Rubbish Minister?

In another of the reports on the big push to save NHS Scotland, BBC Scotland tell us: The number of vaccinators and nurses for the health boards is: Ayrshire and Arran: 5 and 1 Borders: 5 and 1 Dumfries and Galloway: 5 and 1 Fife: 10 and 2 Forth Valley: 10 and 1 Grampian: 15 and 2 Greater Glasgow and Clyde: 10 and 1 Highland: 10 and 2 Lanarkshire: 15 and 2 Lothian: 5 and 1 Tayside: 10 and 1 So, 15 qualified nurses to boost our existing 58 000 nurses, by 0.025%. I can’t find out how many vaccinators … Continue reading 15 Army nurses to boost current NHS Scotland staffing of 58 000 by 0.025%

Official data show that there were 121 deaths related to COVID-19 among people in prisons in England and Wales between March, 2020, and February, 2021. This is 3·3 (95% CI 2·7–3·9) times the rate of death due to COVID-19 among people of the same age and sex in the general population.  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00137-5/fulltext In Scotland, in a parliamentary response by the Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf on 31st March, there were 8 deaths in the same period, there were 8 deaths in Scottish prisons. Leading to call for action by Scottish Labour. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19198536.call-action-scotlands-covid-prisoner-death-toll-revealed/ England and Wales have 10.85 times the population of Scotland and … Continue reading Scotland’s prisons 40% lower Covid deaths

Saving the best for last, as always, BBC Scotland have plucked out their plumb of negativity to headline with the above and relegate the huge achievement in keeping infections and deaths to a lower level than anticipated. I still can’t access the report. Do they send a paper copy to the MSM to give them a head-start in misrepresenting it? Last year, the report headlined the pandemic measures ahead of the prisoner numbers which, of course, neither the prison system nor the SNP Government can control if judges won’t cooperate. Last year at this time, BBC Scotland were working with … Continue reading Scottish government commended for “swift action” to respond to the virus in prisons.

Might that include the word ‘peaceful’ to reassure readers that the Herald on the 31st was wrong? Here’s all they have to justify the 10 000 riot police sent North by Boris: More protests across Scotland’s two biggest cities have marked the second full day of the COP26 climate summit. One group of activists called on world leaders gathered in Glasgow to make strong commitments that fulfil pledges laid out in the Paris Climate Accord. A protest themed on the Netflix show “Squid Game” took place at the Clyde Arc, near the conference venue. Another demonstration took place in Edinburgh outside … Continue reading Chaos as staff are handed leaflets as they arrive for work?

That’s from an apparently ‘financially secure’ but bitter and economically illiterate contact of the Express. The subsidy myth is alive and well. We need to keep it fed until Middle England’s rage is so strong they can force the Tories into adopting a policy of expelling us from the Union. The Tories’ full adoption of an anti-immigrant and anti-EU position, under pressure from the UKIP/Brexit parties, shows it can be done. Given the stubborn reluctance of 50% of Scots to jump, maybe that’s a better bet? Continue reading ‘Scotland doesn’t pay for prescriptions at all. The fact that they don’t pay because we subsidise it and we have to pay is a bugbear of mine.’

From Alasdair Galloway The utter venality of the GMB action over the weekend to reinstate strike action is difficult to exaggerate. Let’s put to one side (for now at least) the obvious intention of embarrassing the Scottish Government in front of the whole world, and thus support (they think) their chums in the Labour Party. I am not suggesting this is not relevant – far from it – remember who Richard Leonard is married to. My point is that the GMB position is weak enough without making that charge. First of all, something which seems to be getting forgotten is … Continue reading The GMB and Venality