Detail at: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2026/04/17/john-swinney-helping-those-struggling-with-the-cost-of-eating-is-not-communist-but-bbc-scotlands-peter-smith-is-either-thick-or-just-another-right-wing-extremist-heres-why/ Continue reading The SNP’s essential food price caps are compassion not communism as ITV claimed – short video
In the Guardian today: MPs have queued up to demand the government scraps its £330m NHS contract with the spy-tech company Palantir, calling it “dreadful” and “shameful” in a debate on Thursday, after which the government said it was “no fan” of the US company’s politics. Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs led the calls for Palantir, which also works for Donald Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown and the Israeli military, to be removed as a supplier to the NHS federated data platform (FDP), with one Labour backbencher, Samantha Niblett, questioning whether it could be “trusted as a custodian of the intimate health records of … Continue reading Have the Scottish Labour MPs joined the campaign against the ‘shameful’ Palantir NHS contracts which the SNP already rejected two years ago?
From Police Scotland – 26-1005 – Clery Act Request (USA University) Date and time of release: April 15, 2026 18:36 Reference: 26-1005 – Clery Act Request (USA University), published today: https://www.scotland.police.uk/access-to-information/freedom-of-information/disclosure-log/disclosure-log-2026/april/26-1005-clery-act-request-usa-university/ This is the third such Freedom of Information request from people in the US interested in how safe their children would be on Scottish university campuses which Police Scotland has felt unable to assist with. I guess they are less free than we are here to use data less precisely comparable but still useful, than we are. So to repeat: This follows two identical requests and response in April 2025 with … Continue reading Third US request for data on campus safety cannot be provided despite on every English university campus you are significantly more likely to be a victim of violent crime than on any Scottish one
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
In the Guardian today: Many of us reluctantly supported industrial action at the beginning, with a government that wasn’t listening – wanting to support junior colleagues whose pay had fallen far behind contemporaries. Now we see how divided and conflicted resident doctors are too, and we long for a resolution. We recognise that the strikes are harmful. Communication and diplomacy are skills we pride ourselves on, and politicians have never needed them more than now. Diplomacy is the way to resolve this crisis for our NHS as well.Dr Helen HoltConsultant physician and chair of the medical staff committee, University Hospitals Dorset https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/apr/15/strike-is-harming-the-nhs-and-dividing-doctors To what … Continue reading How diplomacy by the Scottish Government helped to avert all planned health service strikes in Scotland
The essential MSM Monitor captured the above astonishing claim yesterday. This claim is nonsense. Communism requires the abolition of private property, elimination of the profit motive, central planning of the whole economy including actual ownership of the supermarkets. Swinney is merely telling the massively profitable supermarket chains to absorb some of the costs. In Imperial Rome, a slave based market economy, it often capped food prices.1 Medieval England, a feudal system identified by Karl Marx as utterly different from his ideas, often regulated bread and grain prices.2 During World War II, all of the allies, including the US and the … Continue reading John Swinney helping those struggling with the cost of eating is not ‘communist’ but BBC Scotland’s Peter Smith is either thick or just another right-wing extremist – here’s why
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
Talking-up Scotland 