In the Guardian today: Councils in England need to hire 1,400 more educational psychologists at a cost of £140m to meet demand from children with special needs such as autism, according to a new report. Research by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) found huge regional variations and chronic shortages in qualified educational psychologists working with schools, and concluded that a 40% increase in the workforce was needed to iron out the differences between the best and worst-off areas. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/apr/16/english-councils-need-to-hire-1400-more-educational-psychologists-says-report The Guardian article does not say how many educational psychologist there are in England. There are 2 700, 2 200 FTE. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england/2024 With a … Continue reading With rising demand from children with special needs Scotland has nearly twice as many educational psychologists

Alex Cole Hamilton, Lib Dem leader, currently at home preparing for government, is a regular FOI man. Goodness knows how many thousands he’s wasted digging for dirt on the SNP. Often he doesn’t get what he wants, just adds up enough years to get a big number, forgets to mention an improving trend such as the babies born with drug and alcohol addictions and the MSM operating in Scotland help him out. Today, it’s the Scotsman: So, 736 over 95s waited more than 12 hours in A&E in the period January to October 2025, 10 months. In an average 24 … Continue reading Alex Cole Hamilton wastes your taxes again to find in an average 24 hour period, only one or two triaged as safe, over 95 year-olds, waited more than 12 hours in only one or two of Scotland’s 30 full Type 1 emergency departments

In the UK headlines today, the above video but nothing in the MSM operating in Scotland. Here’s why: BBC UK have been reporting 517 incidents of fly tipping, 11 of them ‘super-sites’ like the one above, in England. BBC Scotland, Scottish Labour and other media, you can be sure, have been scouring the country for something they can use to confirm that things are just as bad here. Nothing so far. Could this be why? So a major increase in interventions by police and Sepa inspectors in one year? Newsworthy but not for them? Comparisons with England where all 11 super-sites … Continue reading Why there are no fly-tipping ‘super-sites’ for Scottish media to report – more than twice the level of inspection

The Herald today has the above headline and, in the text, this basis for it: Is it true? No, the NIA has a clear agenda to promote nuclear energy regardless of the facts. Prices for Scottish consumers [electricity and gas] are driven by international gas prices, worsened by the war in Ukraine and despite the fact that Scotland is a net exporter of gas. https://www.gov.scot/publications/energy-statistics-for-scotland-q3-2025/pages/electricity-generation-and-supply/ The NIA’s calculations are industry-produced and though they plausibly make a case for nuclear stabilising the system during volatile periods, they do not prove the reverse that the absence of more nuclear is the reason … Continue reading Herald’s ill-informed acceptance of the nuclear industry’s sums makes their claim of ‘trusted journalism’ laughable

The Isle of Wight’s two ferry services, Red Jet and Wightlink, have a long history breakdowns, of mass cancellations and rocketing prices in an effort to keep paying shareholder dividends and executive bonuses. This very real fiasco, fuelled by greed at the top, is currently attracting attention from the Conservative Party, shamelessly forgetting their key role in enabling the kind of unregulated business activity that has created the situation in the first place. From Isle of Wight County Press, two weeks ago, the above, and: Shadow Transport Secretary Richard Holden has slammed the government’s levy on ferries as ‘a tax … Continue reading Isle of Wight ferries – breakdowns, cancellations, rocketing prices, THREE times the cost of the Oban to Mull crossing and unfair taxation compared to Scotland

Above the only 27 year-old, Spanish-built, MV Aratere, retired after a sequence of breakdowns including two incidents of drifting out-of-control toward rocks with hundreds on board. Cook Strait Ferries, linking the north and south islands of New Zealand, currently runs only two quite young (under 30) ferries but the service is a national scandal of poor service with dangerous incidents, unreliability and the utter fiasco of the government cancelling urgently needed replacement contracts. The consequence of this unreliability, not of any media frenzy as there has been little, is the serious damage to tourism. From RNZ, two days ago: Fed-up … Continue reading New Zealand’s Cook Strait Ferries – unreliability alarms international tour operators in sharp contrast to Scotland’s island tourism surge ignoring media ferry frenzy