There are more than 5 000 consultants in NHS Scotland. One, just one, has allegedly, but anonymously, told the Herald this: The pandemic has reinforced a belief amongst NHS staff that they should be willing to “sacrifice their own health for a salary”, a consultant working on the front line of Covid care has said. The doctor said the decision to delay the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine coupled with insubstantial testing and PPE meant that a lot of NHS staff had “lost confidence” in public health strategy around the virus. Remember this is: How can we trust the words of … Continue reading 0.018% of consultants complaining means ‘patchy supply’ of sources for journalists

At around 07:20am, BBC UK had a special report on the anxiety in English and Welsh care homes that they were being left behind in the vaccine rollout. They had the above graphic and the percentages showed Scotland to be well ahead on the curve, so to speak. By 07:27am, BBC Scotland’s wee insert ignored that story altogether and spent some time with an English professor who had found that more than 70% of people showing symptoms of coronavirus aren’t following the rules in self-isolation. That the data are UK-wide was admitted but not commented on. Might the infection level … Continue reading BBC UK reveals Scotland’s care home vaccination success but BBC Scotland have some English stuff for you

You won’t find Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland mentioned in the above reports, often featuring the thoughts of highly educated professors, though England will appear at times. In some ways that’s strange given that the UK doesn’t hold the record death rate, England does: I wonder why they don’t use the data for England and headline those? I’m sure they know heath is a devolved matter. Don’t the corporate press chief execs and editors want their old Eton and Oxbridge chums to be embarrassed at their failures? Anyhow, don’t get cocky Jocks. BBC Scotland will keep you in your ‘box’: Continue reading Devolved nations help UK not be worst in world

Every MSM journalist’s favourite graph, showing Scotland behind the other nations, on vaccinating its population because it followed the JCVI guidance on preventing another ‘tsunami of death’ in its care homes. The graph you won’t see: The percentage vaccinated of those most at risk in the population, in care homes, based on statements to media by both health secretaries, in week beginning 18th January 2021. Continue reading You take the high road and you’ll be in the cemetery before us?

Analysis by the Herald above. The news for an adult population that can be trusted with the truth and not go daft with house parties, below: The number of new cases has fallen now, every day for 14 day from 2 323 on Jan 7th to 1 591 yesterday. Slow but steady. It’s working. Hospital admissions have begun to level, with only 1 more yesterday, at around two thirds of capacity (3 000+). ICU admissions too are beginning to stabilise at 25% of capacity (700+). As day follows even the darkest night, the death rate will fall too. Don’t go … Continue reading 7-day average infection level falls for 14th day in succession

By brobb I find myself feeling umpteen contradictory thoughts on this issue. I was a strong supporter of Wings until the main focus of posts turned to trans issues and then an all out attack on NS/SNP despite the Westminster mess and opps for dissecting what was going on there. I feel his relationship with AS has pushed him into taking sides regardless of circumstances and now wonder if this tendency to see black or white was always there I always thought AS was a good politician well able to argue his points and moved us a long way in … Continue reading Further thoughts on the SNP leadership

in the Daily Mail yesterday: Thousands of ‘probable’ cases of Covid caught in hospitals in NHS England have been excluded from official figures.  Health officials calculating the rate of cases in hospital settings omitted instances where patients contracted coronavirus between seven and 14 days after admission – despite the fact the virus has an incubation period of up to six days in 95 per cent of cases. This practice goes directly against official advice to staff to categorised these cases as ‘hospital onset’ infections, and allowed NHS England to claim that its ‘nosocomial rates – referring to Covid patients infected in hospital – are down to … Continue reading NHS England fiddles hospital-onset Covid infection rate but still reports it at three times the rate in Scotland

He took us from nowhere, by force of will, political acumen and sheer courage, to the edge of freedom. His principled stand against the UK establishment’s war agenda in the form of the Blair regime, the frankly awful human being that is Alistair Campbell and the security services, brought upon him their revenge in the form of a brutal legal process based on minor alcohol-fuelled misbehaviour against a few women. His repeated mediated humiliation by the likes of that other awful human being, Kirsty Wark, shocks in the light of her colleagues long neglect of the Jimmy Saville case, that … Continue reading What this man and this woman have wrought Together can be improved upon

By Alasdair Galloway, the Thinking Mans’s Galloway Earlier today, Wings triumphantly posted extracts of a piece in his newspaper, the London Evening Standard, by George Osborne, basically saying that the only “legal way to independence” is through a referendum, voted by the House of Commons, and since, for now at least, the best way not to lose this is not to approve one. Simple really. Or maybe its not. First of all, I suspect the dogs in the street know already that when the Section 30 question is put to Johnson, assuming the SNP win a majority in the assumed … Continue reading The Thinking-Man’s Galloway: ‘If only it were so simple’

A Panelbase poll funded and scripted by Wings over Scotland suggest that 68% of Scots think that Nicola Sturgeon should resign if it is found that she lied to Parliament. My quick twitterpoll is not intended to be taken as reliable evidence, especially given its self-selecting sample method akin to that favoured by the BMA, but in a sample of 1 250 from 5 200 following Talking-up Scotland, the lack of trust in the results of the Wings poll does seem interesting, perhaps surprising. Like the four Survation polls for Scotland in Union, showing support for staying in the UK, … Continue reading Do only 3 in 10 believe poll suggesting 7 in 10 believe First Minister should resign?