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Survey reveals shocking standards of research by trade union affiliated with Labour in Scotland

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By reader George S Gordon On Wednesday the Scotsman had an article based on Unison Scotland surveys of its members in the NHS, headlined – “Exclusive: Survey reveals ‘shocking’ concerns over health and care staffing”. The article refers to two surveys, one in December 2025 and the other in February 2026.  Odd that they’re reporting those now! Very unusually, the article provides survey response numbers – 2,000 for the December survey and 3,000 for the one in February. The NHS Scotland headcount is around 188,000, and the headcount of Unison employees in the NHS is around 60,000. The full article … Continue reading Survey reveals shocking standards of research by trade union affiliated with Labour in Scotland

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Will Anas Sarwar be asked about Starmer’s ‘disastrous’ pharma deal with the US that could cots Scotland £6bn and 30 000 deaths

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Thanks to Dottie for alerting us to this: From the Canary fact checker yesterday: Keir Starmer’s disastrous trade deal with Trump for US pharmaceuticals may end up costing the UK £64bn. That’s massively over the £1bn estimate that the government itself gave to the public. Worse still, the money diverted from other NHS services may cost hundreds of thousands of lives over the coming decade. That’s according to explosive reporting from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The Bureau, in turn, used economic modelling from a team at the University of York, lead by professor Karl Claxton. This professor previously sat on the appraisal committee for the the National Institute for … Continue reading Will Anas Sarwar be asked about Starmer’s ‘disastrous’ pharma deal with the US that could cots Scotland £6bn and 30 000 deaths

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BBC Good Mourning Scotland – 12 years of uninterrupted interrrupting of SNP guests

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Fiona Stalker in 2026 and James Naughtie in 2014 MSM Monitor’s post today reminded me of something 12 years ago. Research I did then reveals that nothing has changed at BBC Good Mourning Scotland. In May 2014, Newsnet Scotland published a report on an extensive study I did for them on possible bias in the reporting in their flagship news radio show. With particular regard to interrupting guests, I found the following: Where interviewers are not consistent in their approaches regarding tone, difficulty or tendency to interrupt, this is unfair. Where witnesses of clear bias or incompetence or where evidence … Continue reading BBC Good Mourning Scotland – 12 years of uninterrupted interrrupting of SNP guests

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Have the Scottish Labour MPs joined the campaign against the ‘shameful’ Palantir NHS contracts which the SNP already rejected two years ago?

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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?

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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

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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

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With rising demand from children with special needs Scotland has nearly twice as many educational psychologists

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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

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How diplomacy by the Scottish Government helped to avert all planned health service strikes in Scotland

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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