From SNP Media: Scottish Ministers will enter structured talks with the Scottish Green Party, supported by the civil service, with a view to reaching a formal Co-operation Agreement. The initiative is part of a refreshed pledge to change politics in Scotland for the better by working with opposition parties to find the best solutions to the toughest of problems, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said. In the weeks leading up to the next Parliamentary Recess talks will be ongoing and focus on agreeing policy areas which the government and the Scottish Green Party will co-operate on. During a statement to … Continue reading Scottish Government and Scottish Greens try to reach formal Co-operation Agreement

From Number Cruncher Politics with 1 001 18+ on 27th and 28th May 2021: All Con 44% Lab 32% LD 7% SNP 5% PC 1% Green 8% Reform 2% This 12% lead is the same as the average lead in the previous four polls before Cummings spoke. Scotland Con 24% Lab 3%! LD 5% SNP 55% PC 0% Green 8% Reform 3% A pro-Indy lead of 63 to 37 but with a small sample of only 85. Continue reading Tories unharmed by Dom and Indy parties surge

In the Herald today: MATT HANCOCK has disputed claims he mishandled care home discharges and said the Scottish Government had the “same issues” to deal with as he did. Speaking to MPs this morning, the health secretary was put under pressure to explain the allegations made against him yesterday by former senior aide Dominic Cummings. He’s right, we did have the same issues. To make sure hospitals were not overwhelmed and to protect the vulnerable more at risk in hospitals than back in care homes, NHS Scotland and NHS England discharged patients, some not tested, more quickly from hospital wards back into … Continue reading In defence of Matt Hancock

In the Herald, from Tom Gordon: NICOLA Sturgeon has effectively accused Boris Johnson of adding to the death toll from coronavirus by failing to take quick and decisive action during the pandemic. Despite Scotland broadly mirroring the lockdown south of the border, the First Minister said “bitter experience” had shown the importance of “responsible decision-making” by leaders. I’ve just read a letter by friend of TuS, Leah Gunn Barrett, rebutting the same suggestion by Ian Murray and using TuS-sourced evidence. It’s typically well-put so why reinvent the wheel: Tom Gordon tries to assign equal blame for the UK’s catastrophic Covid deaths on Holyrood, knowing full … Continue reading Tom Gordon knowingly repeats the lies about pandemic control

For three years now this story, with the parents ‘probably’ groomed by Anas Sarwar, has returned to MSM reports at least eight times, according to my records. Most recently in the days before the election, Anas Sarwar shouted ‘what about Millie Main’ as a debating point with Nicola Sturgeon. Today, 27th May 2021, the story of the death of one child has returned to headline for BBC Scotland in the above ridiculous terms. On May 3rd, in time to not help Labour’s vote at all, it seems, Reporting Scotland headlined the story. As for the cause of death, it was … Continue reading Sarwar nominated for creepiest politician of the year

The evidence they work for everyone: The largest review ever undertaken, of 349 research studies, from across the globe though mostly in Europe, carried out by the Centre for Criminology at the University in South Wales in 2017, found that ‘safe’ or ‘supervised’ injection rooms significantly reduced drug-related harms, dramatically cut mortality and offered a range of benefits for the wider population, in terms of reduced crime, nuisance in public spaces, violence and trafficking. https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-01/180320atisn12038doc2_0.pdf Today from SNP Media On the 50th anniversary of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the SNP has pledged support for the all-party campaign to … Continue reading Renewed calls for drug consumption rooms.

Virtually all Scottish MSM ‘SNPbad‘ headlines like the one above take little effort to rebut. This is about the decision to build a shared campus in Edinburgh. The alleged ‘fire‘ is no more than corks from a pop-gun as one professor and one anonymous or invented spokeswoman misread ‘a general presumption‘ as ‘a manifesto commitment‘ and a ‘pledge‘. Here it is: So, if there was wider agreement in the Gaelic-speaking community, you’d think there’d be more than one prof and a rep not prepared to come out into the open. Are they representative? Would there be enough bairns in Edinburgh … Continue reading Unrepresentative and ill-informed on bilingualism?

The QEUH did have more deaths but then it does have more beds so that doesn’t tell us much. When you divide the number of deaths by the number of beds you get a more useful ratio. It was 0.56 for the QEUH, the same as in Ayr, a bit higher than in Kilmarnock at 0.5 and lower than for the Royal in Glasgow at 0.67. How difficult was that for BBC Scotland’s several graduate staff? Needless to say such open transparent data is not available, as far as I can see, for hospital in England. Continue reading BBC Scotland fails P7 sums test on Covid deaths

We’re still beating round the bush as the terrible truth emerges that care services based on the profit motive care less and in a pandemic allow more to die. The above, from the BBC based on a Care Inspectorate report, takes us ever closer to confirming what I was sure of a year ago: The rate of residents dying from Covid was higher in larger care homes than smaller ones, new data reveals. Care Inspectorate figures show there were 2.1 virus deaths per 100 places in care homes with up to 20 beds. This contrasts with 12.6 deaths per 100 … Continue reading Large private sector care homes had six times more Covid deaths