Professor John Robertson OBA The two recent polls by Ipsos and Norstat showing Yes leads, have reversed what seemed to be a counter trend with four No leads, from Survation but especially, with bizarre whopping No leads, from YouGov. These four polls were ‘counter‘ in the most obvious of ways – counter to the plummeting reputations of Labour in late 2024 and early 2025, as they went full-on austerity two and especially for the poor, the elderly and the disabled. How did they manage it? Simple, they adjusted their sample to look just like the sample in the 2014 referendum … Continue reading Want a No lead? Ask Survation. Want a crazy big No lead? Ask YouGov. Want a Yes lead? Don’t fiddle with the sample

Professor John Robertson OBA In a classic primary school method (failed), the Herald writer gets the Scottish Water figures for sewage spill clear-ups, spots the falling trend, shrieks, then just ignores that and adds them all up to get a big number and still pretend it’s bad news. The costs were: 2021 – £397 745 2022 – £539 717 2023 – £344 303 2024 – £136 268 Couldn’t be clearer, a sharply falling trend, down to less than a third in the last two years – rejoice? No? I wonder, what have the costs in England been? Later. Continue reading Cost of sewage spill clear-ups plummets for second year in a row but the Herald ignores it’s own figures to get a big headline number

Professor John Robertson OBA From Closing Statement of behalf of Public Health Scotland (PHS) in the UK COVID-19 Inquiry relative to the Module 4 hearing, published today: PHS would highlight two parts of the evidence in this regard. Firstly, the inquiry heard that data from the Traveller Movement was not included in the NHS [England] “data dictionary”. The point made was that inadequate data capture led to services not being commissioned for this group, which did not form part of local planning. Yvonne McNamara, Chief Executive Officer of the Traveller Movement spoke about this as did the experts, Dr Ben … Continue reading Traveller movement was included in Covid data systems for vaccination but only in Scotland

..to tackle the exploitation of vulnerable people by drug dealers. Officers went to more than 40 addresses where dealers were believed to have taken over vulnerable people’s homes. Police say they’ve helped more than 100 people and seized hundreds of cannabis plants worth more than a quarters of a million Professor John Robertson OBA BBC Scotland’s insert in BBC Breakfast this morning had the above short report on what is widely known as ‘cuckooing‘. There’s no mention of there these gangs come from but the words of Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston in the Daily Mail are suggestive of the … Continue reading 100 vulnerable Scots exploited by violent drug gangs from somewhere but that’s not in the public interest

Professor John Robertson OBA Summers does not, of course, answer her own question truthfully. She dare not. Here’s why: Continue reading Lisa Summers asks ‘How does Starmer’s NHS plan compare to Scotland?’ before completely ignoring the facts