In the Guardian today: Ministers have earmarked more than £170m extra to help build the Lower Thames Crossing road tunnel, fuelling concerns over the “spiralling” costs of one of the UK’s largest planned infrastructure projects. The proposed £11bn route under the Thames between Kent and Essex is already estimated to cost more each mile than the HS2 high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham. It was given the funding boost as part of a plan to spend £3.1bn of public money on the project, before a hoped-for injection of £7.5bn by a private sector firm. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/08/extra-cash-spiralling-lower-thames-crossing Do Scots pay 8% of the cost … Continue reading Scottish taxpayers to pay more than £300 million to share cost of Lower Thames Crossing and IFS doubts we’ll get anything for it through Barnett formula

In the Guardian today: Record number of people waiting for NHS diagnostic tests in England – One in five of the 1.92m patients on list wait longer than six weeks for tests such as CT and MRI scans, analysis shows. Demand for tests is outstripping the NHS’s ability to meet it and one in five of those on the waiting list – more than 400,000 people – are having to wait longer than the supposed six-week maximum, an analysis of diagnostic services in England has found. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/07/record-number-of-people-waiting-for-nhs-diagnostic-tests-in-england BBC Scotland and the other media operating in Scotland have no equivalent story. … Continue reading NHS England’s diagnostic tests waiting list is shocking 800 000 or 71% longer than NHS Scotland’s

In the Guardian today: Social housing lists ‘would take 119 years to clear at current building rate’ Research shows generations of children in England will grow up homeless unless government addresses council housing debt, charity says https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/07/social-housing-119-years-waitlist-current-building-rate Also in the Guardian, in October last year: According to the housing charity Shelter, in the 12 months leading up to March 2025, Liverpool city council received 2,048 applications for homelessness support, a 25% increase on the previous year. The most recent data shows 12,764 households on the city’s social housing waiting list. But one figure is particularly shocking: reflecting the fact that most local authorities … Continue reading SNP-run Glasgow City build 110 times more social rent homes than Labour-run Liverpool as Guardian predicts social housing lists ‘would take 119 years to clear’

Major and Blair – the men responsible for Scotland’s seemingly endless PFI debt. What!? £600m in one year ‘repaying private firms?’ Surely the headline should tell us who is to blame for this massive mistake? Let’s look. Paragraph 1? Nothing. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 – nothing. Ah, there it is in paragraph 10. We’ll hear more of those parties now! Well, no, that’s it. 22 paragraphs but no repeating of of ‘Conservative’ or ‘Labour.’ In total for all the PFI scheme building under the Conservative Government of John Major and the Labour Government of Tony Blair … Continue reading Hiding the blame for Scotland’s decades-long £28bn entrapment in London-based parties financial incompetence

From BBC UK today: Delays in publishing a report laying out government defence spending have undermined the UK’s credibility with its allies, a parliamentary committee that scrutinises public spending says. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was supposed to be published in the autumn but is now due to be released ahead of a Nato summit early next month. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says the hold-up means procuring the latest equipment will be more expensive, “hindering the government’s attempt to modernise the Armed Forces”. A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman said the DIP would “fix the outdated, overcommitted and underfunded … Continue reading With less than 4% of the defence spending UK has no credibility in Scotland

Top story today, just like the Record, three weeks ago: BBC Scotland have a tragic tale of breast cancer misdiagnosis, terrible, but a single case. How it came to their notice is not mentioned. From a family member or from a local non-SNP councillor to Fiona Stalker? How common is a breast cancer misdiagnosis? I can find no NHS Scotland research but this seems relevant. For certain cancers, researchers have estimated very low “missed cancer” rates after specialist assessment. For example, one UK study of breast clinics found an overall diagnostic accuracy of about 99.6%. https://www.nature.com/articles/6605082?utm_source=chatgpt.com Is there any reason … Continue reading BBC Scotland copies Daily Record technique to attract viewers with one cancer misdiagnosis but fails to mention 99.6% diagnostic accuracy across thousands of cases

The above follows immediately the British Dental Association‘s claim that ‘across the whole UK, the dentists union says it’s become much more difficult for people to access affordable care.‘ The report had opened with ‘the British Dental Association says the Government risks failing to deliver on its promise to save NHS dentistry in England. Labour has pledged to reform the struggling service in this parliament.’ Dentistry is not an issue, it seems, for the media operating in Scotland. Here’s why: Twice as many have NHS dental care in Scotland, hundreds queue for care in England but the Herald lets the … Continue reading Labour UK Government ‘risks failing to deliver on its promise to save NHS dentistry in England’ and Scots know what they’ve got