Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 In the Guardian today the above interactive map and: Hundreds of dentist practices are abandoning NHS work as the service drifts towards a two-tier system, new analysis suggests. Data analysed by the Nuffield Trust found that nearly 600 practices in England have withdrawn from NHS dentistry over the last 10 years. The decline has been particularly sharp in parts of the South West and East of England, raising concerns about growing inequalities in access to care. The analysis suggests more than one in 10 … Continue reading NHS dentist access in Scotland – 95% and twice as many satisfied as in England and three times more than in Wales

Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Sir Ewan Brown, above, retired merchant banker and Church of Scotland Assembly member, currently writing for Sir Jack McConnel’s Enlighten think tank is in the Herald today with: Scotland’s health service is a “colossal and complex behemoth” overseeing nearly £20 billion of public money without proper scrutiny, one of the country’s most senior business figures has warned. https://talkingupscotlandtwo.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=115983&action=edit The report is barely 2 A4, utterly devoid of evidence (not one source), an uncalled for opinion piece from a past-it non-academic, justifying an attack on … Continue reading Merchant banker and Jack McConnell ‘thinktank’ writer in unsurprising attack on NHS Scotland under SNP

___________________________________________________________ Help Talking-up Scotland keep going. Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 ____________________________________________________ Scotland on Sunday today, desperately trying to upset your breakfast with the above claim, is all wrong. Why? It reports, gutter-low in informative value, telling viewers little they might use to understand and to act logically within the actual society they live in rather than an imagined drama where violence lurks at ever corner and on every day. What would any decent, intelligent service tell them? First, that ‘recidivism’, re-offending: The return-to-custody rate [not just re-offending but also breaching licence conditions] for the early 2025 … Continue reading Far more probation officers and far less re-offending – that’s where you live, really.

___________________________________________________________ Help Talking-up Scotland keep going. Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 ____________________________________________________ The above from the Express is easily rebutted: From Statistics on policing published in May 2026: There were 16,430 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in Scotland on 31 March 2026. This was 196 (+1.2%) more officers compared to the position on 31 March 2007. As staffing levels have been maintained how has the level of crime faced by these officers changed? Total recorded crime in Scotland was about 419,257 in 2006/07. By the year ending December 2025 it was 308,532, down 26% https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-2011-12/pages/7/?utm_source=chatgpt.com. Violent crime peaked around the mid-2000s. Official … Continue reading No ifs and buts we already have more police on the beat

___________________________________________________________ Help Talking-up Scotland keep going. Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 ____________________________________________________ The above terrifying Telegraph front page story and this below from BBC UK, have not hit the BBC Scotland news website in ‘SNP nuclear-free Scotland,’ contrary to the enthusiasm they had recently for a BBC Wales story of sex gang grooming where two of the gang now live in Scotland. It’s rumoured that this is about a small gas-fired plant but I’m not sure that nuclear power stations are essentially more difficult once their control systems have online connection. Why? Remember this … Continue reading Iranian hackers shutting down a UK power plant is surely the ‘final nail’ in Labour’s nuclear energy plans