Professor John Robertson OBA Thanks to Dottie for alerting me to this. From BBC England today: HS2 has confirmed that its aim to get trains running between Birmingham and London between 2029 and 2033 “cannot be achieved”. Birmingham’s Curzon Street Station is currently taking shape in the heart of the city but the divisive high-speed railway project has been plagued by serious challenges. Earlier this year, HS2 CEO Mark Wild acknowledged that construction had been “harder than thought” and “needed a reset” involving a review of the project’s cost and schedule. The high speed track, including the branch to Birmingham, … Continue reading HS2 despite chopping link to Scotland to take 2 to 3 times as long as Japanese and French equivalents – Con and Labour governments not to be blamed as it’s not a Scottish ferry is it?

Professor John Robertson OBA The Herald at the weekend had two stories on a supposedly high number of sailings cancelled by ‘technical faults.’1, 2 They claimed that ‘more than 16 000 (16 039) such cancellations from 1 January 2023 to October 2025, based on a Freedom of Information request by the Lib Dem’s Jamie Greene meant islanders were being treated as ‘second class citizens.’ CalMac makes around 160 000 to 170 00 sailings per year3 so for that strange period chosen, 2 years and 10 months, they made around 450 000. 16 000 is only 3.6% of the total sailings … Continue reading ‘Second class citizens, Jamie?’ Islanders have actually been treated far better than the rest of us by this government

Professor John Robertson OBA The Daily Record, the Herald and the Scotsman are now fully dedicated to platforming Scottish Labour’s stash of manipulated Freedom of Information data on any aspect of public service that might look bad for the SNP Government. Recently, it’s been police officers giving up on the job or failing training courses. I could try to dig into these and find the usual lack of any methodology and sneaky fiddling with the figures, I’ve found several times in the past, but it’s wasted effort because none of that matters. This does: First, see graph above, Scotland has … Continue reading Never mind the media trivia scramble for a few police officers leaving or failing a training course, here’s what matters to you – 25% more officers in Scotland yet violent crime almost three times as common in England & Wales

Professor John Robertson OBA The Herald’s Martin Williams today has – ScotRail costs double under nationalisation as services fall – based entirely on a report by the Taxpayer’s Alliance a group known for hiding its sources of funding (above) and for highly selective analyses always predisposed to finding evidence in favour of privatisation. I really doubt the value of spending time looking in detail at the report. The group’s long history of cheating and lying on behalf of the rich and powerful makes them instantly unworthy of our time and Martin Williams knows that. What he is, in fact, arguing … Continue reading Cost of rail nationalisation in Scotland – Herald’s uncritical reliance on notorious Taxpayers Alliance’s known biases is very poor quality journalism

Professor John Robertson OBA Scotland, above, the most impoverished part of the UK, and yet: Continue reading More than 300 years of London’s economic management of Scotland yet still the most impoverished and most ‘milked’ part of the UK