We’ve seen this many times. When you ask people to prioritise things like the economy, health, education, the pandemic and independence, the latter tends to come last. Unionist pounce on the findings to suggests Scots are really that not bothered about it but it’s a classic misunderstanding of the limits of opinion polls. The first examples represent values that almost everyone would rate as high priorities and if they consistently put the pandemic above the economy that does tell you something because a government can allocate more resources to either, pass more legislation to deal with either but independence is … Continue reading Scots apparently not prioritising independence is misunderstanding of opinion

This Daily Express England report alerted me to the Opinium Westminster voting intentions poll for 8th April. In it only 34% opposed Scotland leaving the UK and a majority of Labour and Lib Dem voters supported the idea. Only Conservative voters (50%) were predominantly opposed. UK: Voting intention – 8th April 2021 In March 2014, an Opinium poll found 61% of English and Welsh respondents wanted Scotland to stay. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/01/english-welsh-majority-against-scots-independence The data for the Tory voters above are interesting given the Ipsos MORI poll in 2019 which asked party members whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead … Continue reading Support for keeping ‘verminous Scots’ in the Union almost halved in 6 years

From Recharge, yesterday: Renewables developer Iberdrola has unveiled plans to wire its 540MW Whitelee wind plant in the Scottish Highlands (sic) together with a solar array, battery facility and the UK’s largest electrolyser to create a new giant hydrogen production complex. Leaving aside the usual confusion about Scotland’s geography, this is a big deal, to wire together wind, solar and battery facilities to generate industrial-scale volumes of H² (hydrogen). From the report: The Whitelee-connected project, which will produce some 8 tonnes of H2 per day, will also be to Green Hydrogen for Glasgow, a scheme to deliver carbon-free transport for the … Continue reading Scotland’s renewables energy production keeps soaring

Ever ready to find something, anything that we, their readers, have suffered, the Herald finds that Wales has vaccinated 50.4% of its population overall while Scotland has only managed 48.8%, and headlines that Reporting Scotland favourite notion of Scotland being behind. OMG. How awful is that? Not. Wales has had a very good reason to push on hard with vaccinations. Their death rate since their Labour administration took them foolishly out of lockdown too quickly in November, soared above that experienced in Scotland. Over the whole pandemic, Wales has lost 175.4 per 100 000 while Scotland has lost 139.7, 20% … Continue reading Covid deaths: How far behind is Scotland?

From the Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is an international human rights treaty which sets out the rights every child has. The UK ratified the UNCRC in 1991 but it has not yet been made part of domestic law. This means that many of the protections contained within it are not accessible to children and young people across the UK. Scotland is in a unique position to make children’s rights part of its laws. This process is called incorporation. In March 2021, after over 10 years of campaigning by children, young people and wider … Continue reading Working as if we live in the early days of a better nation for our bairns/weans

By stewartb The House of Commons Library (HoCL) has just published (9 April 2021) a briefing paper entitled: ‘Pensions: international comparisons’. It is described as “A look at how UK pensions compare with those in other countries. The note compares the UK state pension with similar systems in Europe and goes on to look more broadly at the structural differences in the sources of pensioner income across economically advanced countries.” Source: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn00290/ From the paper’s conclusions: the UK provides a lower level of pension than most other advanced economies relative to average earnings the UK devotes a smaller percentage of … Continue reading Simply not the best – very far from it! The state of UK pension provision that without independence Scotland can’t fix.

In the wake of the Herald headlining their campaign for ‘Eating out, dying out’, BBC Scotland have headlined the need for Scotland to copy England’s approach to pandemic control by opening pubs earlier. Here he is in few of his media appearances: Stephen Montgomery, who owns the Townhead Hotel in Lockerbie and is a spokesman for the Scottish Hospitality Group, said he would “love to be opening up at the same time as our colleagues down south”. “We’re going to be seeing people jump the border… for that long awaited pint of cold beer while we still remain closed,” he … Continue reading Just one publican persuades BBC Scotland to push for higher death and infection rates

In the Herald, today: Scotland’s leading retail association has demanded a firm Scottish Government commitment to an ‘eat out to help out’ style voucher scheme to help struggling shops survive Covid crisis. The report goes on at some length to back the idea with several business leaders lined up to offer a supportive quote. As soon as I saw it, I remembered somethings: Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme drove new COVID-19 infections up by between 8 and 17%, new research finds. Friday 30 Oct 2020 The government initiative, which cost around £500 million, caused a significant rise in new … Continue reading Eating out, dying out?

Before the pandemic, Scotland had far more doctors per head of population than any of the other part of the UK. I know this data is from 2019, but I’m not aware of a more recent report and, anyway, it’s more than likely that the gap has widened further in Scotland’s favour, after two more years of Tory-rule: In today’s Herald, another regular appearance from the GP’s trade union convenor Andrew Bust: THE impact of the Covid pandemic could leave Scotland with even fewer doctors than it had before, Scotland’s GP leader has warned. Dr Andrew Buist, chair of BMA Scotland’s GP … Continue reading We have far more GPs and there is no evidence of an ‘exodus’

Retired teacher-educator and former Associate Dean for Quality Assurance at the University of the West of Scotland, Dr John Robertson has reassured parents that Scotland’s schools are the best-equipped in the UK to help pupils recover from the effects of the pandemic. As the General Teaching Council has indicated without any expression of concern, around 2 600 new teachers were awarded full registration in each of the last five years while only around 500 dropped or lost their registration. This is a healthy turnover, bringing much needed ‘new blood’ into the system. Overall, Scotland’s schools are far better staffed than … Continue reading Thousands of new teachers being registered every year as only a few hundred leave