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Drug-related hospital admissions fall steadily by a third for two years to ease pressure on wards due to Scottish Government’s world-first opioid overdose reversal programme, last and only time mentioned on BBC Scotland, by Reevel Alderson in 2016 before he was removed!

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Professor John Robertson OBA From Rapid Action Drug Alerts and Response (RADAR) quarterly ​report July 2025 published today, we can see a monthly fluctuating but steady, long term falling trend, in drug-related hospital admissions, from around 210 per month in July 2023 to around 140 in 2025, a 33% fall which must be easing pressure on wards. While there will be more than one factor explaining this trend, this seems key: What is the Naxolone Initiative? After a pilot phase ending in 2018, the Scottish Government began to embed Naloxone opioid overdose reversal kits across NHS Scotland. Shortly after, the … Continue reading Drug-related hospital admissions fall steadily by a third for two years to ease pressure on wards due to Scottish Government’s world-first opioid overdose reversal programme, last and only time mentioned on BBC Scotland, by Reevel Alderson in 2016 before he was removed!

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Steady growth in rental properties revealed in official figures contradicts media scare based on insider ‘research’

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Professor John Robertson OBA From the Scotsman in March 2024: Almost 22,000 rental properties MAY have been removed from the market in Scotland in the past year, research has revealed, with “anti-landlord rhetoric” from the Scottish Government cited as a reason for the drop. The Scottish Association of Landlords (SAL) said such rhetoric, combined with “short-term, ineffective policies” from ministers, was “harming investment in private rented housing in Scotland”. https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/rent-scotland-almost-22000-rental-properties-removed-from-market-amid-anti-landlord-rhetoric-research-claims-4541621 From Housing statistics: Scottish Landlord Register data published today, we can see that the number of registered landlords in Scotland has fallen slightly, by 1.1% or around 2 000, but the number of registered properties available to rent … Continue reading Steady growth in rental properties revealed in official figures contradicts media scare based on insider ‘research’

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Scotland’s 16-24 year-olds – significantly more employment, less unemployment and more activity

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Professor John Robertson OBA In February 2025, BBC UK had the above headline and: More young people were not in work, education or training at the end of 2024 than at any point in the past 11 years, new data suggests. but from Labour Market Statistics for 16 to 24 year olds: Scotland and the United Kingdom – January to December 2024 published today: Compared with the United Kingdom as a whole: the estimated employment rate for 16 to 24 year olds in Scotland was higher (54.8% compared to 51.3 per cent) the estimated unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year … Continue reading Scotland’s 16-24 year-olds – significantly more employment, less unemployment and more activity

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The Herald’s misleading headline – The UN is NOT ‘probing’ any ‘Scots judge-led body’s ‘breach’ of international law

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By stewartb The Herald headline states that the UN body ‘IS PROBING’. The information from the complainant, the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) states that it IS URGING the UN body to intervene. These are two quite different things: we have yet to find out if the URGING will bear fruit. The ERCS statement quoted in the main blog post has this: ‘In October 2021, the governing institutions of the Convention required the Scottish Government to act ‘as a matter of urgency’ to ensure access to justice is no longer ‘prohibitively expensive’ and address its breach of the Convention’s Article … Continue reading The Herald’s misleading headline – The UN is NOT ‘probing’ any ‘Scots judge-led body’s ‘breach’ of international law

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How much will the current doctor strikes and imminent nurse strikes further widen the already massive gap between Scotland’s NHS waiting list and that in England

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Professor John Robertson OBA In the Guardian yesterday, the above and: NHS bosses and the British Medical Association are accusing each other of endangering patients during the ongoing resident doctors’ strike. Their war of words centres on “derogations”, local agreements under which doctors who have joined the strike can cross picket lines to provide clinical care in a hospital. The escalation of the resident doctors’ pay dispute comes as it emerged that nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have voted to reject their 3.6% pay award for this year. Scotland’s media are very quiet on this issue yet with the … Continue reading How much will the current doctor strikes and imminent nurse strikes further widen the already massive gap between Scotland’s NHS waiting list and that in England

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Road deaths – A falling trend and the lowest level in the UK but ‘your’ media won’t tell you that

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Professor John Robertson OBA BBC Scotland reporting om a fatal crash on the A96 yesterday noted that this was the 3rd fatal crash in less than 2 weeks. Tragic, I agree but, dear public service broadcaster taxpayer-funded, what is the trend on this road and across Scotland?. Tabloid media coverage suggests a worsening situation and the above BBC comment seems to reinforce that impression. In the above report, they note: Last year, a 2011 commitment to upgrade 86 miles (138km) of the route by 2030 was abandoned by the Scottish government. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c776xmk47gzo The actual data for the rising death toll is … Continue reading Road deaths – A falling trend and the lowest level in the UK but ‘your’ media won’t tell you that

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This has nothing to do with the minister – It’s just another case of the demonising of SNP politicians

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Professor John Robertson OBA The Herald’s headline image and story above is just another in a long toxic trail of misinformation aimed at associating SNP ministers with controversies in which they have little or no influence, in order to undermine her and the SNP. The actual complaint from the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland opens with: The Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) has today urged a top UN body to intervene against the Scottish Civil Justice Council (SCJC) for breaching our right to public participation in environmental decision-making, which is enshrined in the Aarhus Convention. In October 2021, the governing institutions … Continue reading This has nothing to do with the minister – It’s just another case of the demonising of SNP politicians

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UK youth unemployment 40% higher than in Scotland which has one of the lowest rates in Western Europe

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Professor John Robertson OBA For some reason, the above 2022 survey does not include the recent data from the UK. For Scotland in 2023/2024: The estimated unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds was 10.4 per cent in October 2023 to September 2024. This was 0.7 percentage points (pp) higher than a year ago (9.7 per cent) 1 For the UK, in 2023: The unemployment rate for young people was 14.2%, up from 13.8% from the year before.2 These data would put Scotland in the second lowest category (8-12%) with Finland and the Baltic States, while the UK (England) would be … Continue reading UK youth unemployment 40% higher than in Scotland which has one of the lowest rates in Western Europe

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Never mind lionesses, only Scotland protects kindly dog-adopters from infectious diseases and aggressive behaviour

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From groaver: They want us to be part of “Great England”. It’s a shame that their nurses are planning to strike, their doctors already are and they let in foreign canines without licensing for rescue organizations as we do in Scotland: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwq40vjw8lo Still, mustn’t grumble. We’ve won the European championship and we’ll let you know about it ad nauseum. In the above BBC England report today, This: Continue reading Never mind lionesses, only Scotland protects kindly dog-adopters from infectious diseases and aggressive behaviour

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After ten years, robbery in England & Wales still FOUR times as common than in Scotland

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Professor John Robertson OBA The above map is getting a lot of traffic in social media but critics will pounce on the fact that the UK data is from 2017, 8 years ago. I’ve quickly accessed the 2024/2025 data. In Scotland: Between 2023-24 and 2024-25, recorded crimes of Robbery decreased by 7% from 1,922 to 1,782 crimes.1 That works out at 33 per 100 000, slightly up on 2017. In England & Wales: Police recorded 78,804 robbery offences in year ending (YE) March 2025. 2 That works out at 131 cases per 100 000, essentially the same as in 2017, … Continue reading After ten years, robbery in England & Wales still FOUR times as common than in Scotland