Scotland has vaccinated 99% of all care home residents and 93% of all over-80s: https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/ England’s world-beating system claims 90% of all ‘eligible’ care home residents but has, according to Channel 4, managed only 80% of all care home residents and 88.1% of over-80s. Worryingly for any attempts at future relaxation of lock-down, London has only done 74.9% of its over-80s. From the World Health Organisation: The percentage of people who need to be immune in order to achieve herd immunity varies with each disease. For example, herd immunity against measles requires about 95% of a population to be vaccinated. The remaining 5% … Continue reading Scotland surges ahead on vaccination of over-80s

I don’t know where to begin. I hope Kate Forbes has a look at this before given any of our money to the newspapers. The Herald tells us how many there have been of new cases, deaths and hospital admissions but doesn’t ever tell us what the trends are so that we can know how to react to that news. More on that later. First, though, the graph above, supposedly updated on the 4th February 2020. Why then does the Daily Cases line stop in October 2020? At first sight we’re in trouble. More later. Second, what’s the good in … Continue reading Herald graph hides SNP strategy working impressively: Should we be assisting or advising NHS England now?

90 year-old Margaret Robertson of Dunfermline has accused Scotland’s media of weakening the vaccination programme by demoralising the teams working hard to get the vaccines done with negative reports like the one above. She told Talking-up Scotland: Just had visit from GP Vaccination done Over 80s were completed last week Our surgery staff will work in local vaccination hub all weekend All working their socks off & fed up with criticism fired at Scotland from media for lagging behind when we’re NOT Soul destroying Continue reading 90 year-old shielder accuses Scottish media of demoralising vaccinators

The ‘pressure’ is of course from the press to give them money to keep writing rubbish and often anti-SNP rubbish. The opposition parties, who often deliver the rubbish to them, of course agree. Nobody trusts journos these days. Everybody knows they serve corporate and UK state interests above those of their readers. That’s one reason why they have so few readers. 20th out of 24 in this 2017 UK poll but, if we had a Scottish poll, bottom. In this 2020 international poll, the UK media come second bottom. Could this sort of thing from the Herald be a reason? … Continue reading Trusted Kate Forbes acts on the evidence to dump the Scottish press

Reading of the story of a teacher’s allegedly offensive video regarding Ruth Davidson (centre), I noticed that she had been the beneficiary of Scotland’s world-beating IVF programme. I feel this gives me the opportunity to repeat our 26th August report on an NHS Target regularly busted but never reported. I feel sure Ruth would want the world to know. I have it on authority, from a reliable source, that she knows it’s world-beating. SCOTLAND’S WORLD-BEATING IVF SERVICE MAINTAINS 100% RECORD DESPITE COVID-19 The Scottish Government requires NHS Scotland to measure the length of time people wait for treatment. The target … Continue reading Ruth Davidson ‘knows’ Scotland’s IVF is world-beating

By stewartb Tucked away in the BBC News website on Thursday (4 February) there appeared an article by Jennifer Scott, online political reporter. It is entitled: “Labour: Historic divisions over patriotism pose challenge for Starmer”. I had considered, and initially rejected, the notion of commenting but my Friday morning read of the Source Direct newsletter convinced me. Today’s issue has a link to a piece by David Jamieson entitled: “Starmer’s ‘national’ turn makes little sense in a fractured Union”. He provides a link to the Guardian of 2 February 2021 and the headline: “Leak reveals Labour plan to focus on … Continue reading More flags please – we’re British Labour!

After three days of ill-informed reports suggesting that Scotland is behind England in rolling out vaccines, we get this headlined: The Deputy First Minister warns that snow could disrupt Covid vaccinations over the next day. Here is the news, based on what he said: Number of cases well down at 895. Positive cases below 5% for second day, satisfying WHO criterion for infection under control. R number between 0.7 and 0.9 so ‘comfortably’ below 1. Fewer in hospital, fewer in ICU. Record number vaccinated for 4th day in a row. 99% of residents in older care homes. 93% of all … Continue reading Never mind the successes, Snow could disrupt Covid vaccinations!

Professor Richard Murphy has utterly debunked the LSE report suggesting Scotland would be poorer after independence. You can read it here: I’ve written already to expose the LSE’s willingness to give you what you want, for a price but, today, George Kerevan has drawn our attention to this footnote in the report: We are grateful to Angus Armstrong, Jim Gallagher and Mairi Spowage for useful discussions about the Scottish economy and Scottish data. Who is Gallagher? He’s the main researcher at Gordon Brown’s Our Scottish Future thunk tank and a member of the Scotland in Union Board. And NO, he’s … Continue reading ThE LSE report on poor Scotland and their non-critical friend

I wrote to complain about Andrew Marr’s use of statistics in his interrogation of Nicola Sturgeon on November 29th 2020. The next day, the email below noted that they aimed to reply within 10 working days. Yesterday, February 4th 2021, 66 days later, after several apologies for delay, they still have no answer. It’s difficult, I suppose as there is no answer that could ‘survive a collision with the evidence.‘* I watched again recently, the late Christopher Hitchens use that line in debating the existence of God. I’ve been meaning to use it for years. You’ll see it again. Continue reading Even after 66 days BBC explanation cannot ‘survive a collision with the evidence’

At around 06:30am, we heard: Police Scotland has been carrying out a survey on how the public has perceived its performance during the pandemic. They say they’ve had over 30 000 responses from the public since April last year. While offences in public spaces have dropped along with retail crimes, officers are concerned about a rise in hidden crimes like cyber crime and domestic violence. 85% say they feel safe in their local area. Imagine that last bit had been different, say only 15% had felt safe? Would that have been the opening line? Think back to the drug deaths … Continue reading What should be the headline?