What has he written? You expect me to read it? I’ve done enough of that before. The headline is quite enough. Why is Mackay getting the above award? For full text: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/?s=Mackay Continue reading Herald’s Mackay wins ‘The Pot Calling the Kettle Black’ award, again
stewartb This headline is on the BBC News website today (20 March): ‘‘Stagnating wages cost UK workers £11,000 a year, says Resolution Foundation’ It took me back to 2014 when HM Treasury was peddling nonsensical economic forecasts on behalf of the scaremongering NO/UKOK campaign before Scotland’s independence referendum. You may recall that news reports made much of this particular claim: ‘Scottish people will be £1,400 a year better off if the country remains in the UK, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said.’ ‘Introducing the report this morning, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said his fellow Scots … Continue reading ‘‘Stagnating wages cost UK workers £11,000 a year, says Resolution Foundation”
There are consistent tendencies amongst the pollsters with Survation and Savanta tending to get lower results for SNP support and YouGov coming in higher. The most recent YouGov poll has the SNP lead at 17%, up from 11% and 14% in their previous two and almost back to their January poll lead of 18% Wait, isn’t the SNP in deep doo doo? The Daily Express says so. And all of the others too! Might most SNP supporters be ignoring all of it? Continue reading YouGov poll: SNP lead highest since January!
NHS Wales is in the middle of a dentistry crisis. From the Rhyl, Prestatyn and Abergele Journal, on 15 March 2023 THE MS for Clwyd West, Darren Millar has challenged the First Minister, Mark Drakeford, on the action Welsh Government is taking to improve access to NHS dentistry in Conwy and Denbighshire. In yesterday (March 14)’s Senedd meeting, Mr Millar highlighted the problems his constituents are experiencing in accessing dental services. He told the First Minister that some are even travelling to Scotland to receive the dental treatment they need. Mr Millar said: “16 years ago, when I first became … Continue reading Labour Government in Wales asks Sarwar for help…..pulling teeth
Regulars may be tiring of this story but it’s getting more dramatic as time goes on. Last year, there were twice as many Covid cases requiring intensive care, per head of population, in English and Welsh hospitals than in Scottish ones. I still have no conclusive proof but it seems that this may have been the result of a better NHS, identifying serious cases and beginning treatment before ICU care becomes necessary, or because of greater compliance with mask-wearing in key areas, or because of greater vaccination rates, or because of free prescriptions for, especially, those with asthma. However, the … Continue reading Nearly 5 times as many ICU Covid cases in other parts of UK!
These are proper graphs with the vertical axis starting at zero. By shortening the vertical axis, starting at say 38, we could get some peaks and troughs going to suggest trouble for the SNP. The media would so love to see some evidence and they’re in full frothing frenzy today but, in the clear absence of any terminal decline in support, they’re making do with 1 ex-member getting a vote among the only 72 000 remaining, to create a ‘shambles’ and the party ‘rotting like a fish’ (Express). Am I conveniently ignoring that poll at only 39%? How about these … Continue reading The Party that will not end?
Neil Mackay, ever determined to tell us that white supremacism, anti-Catholic bigotry and any kind of hate crime you can imagine has not even begun to go away, even if the statistics say otherwise, is today using the personal recollections of one man, in the 1980s, to offer this headline: ‘Men with bats shouted the N-word’: Gary Younge on racism in Scotland https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23396522.men-bats-shouted-n-word-gary-younge-racism-scotland/ So, the headline misses ..40 years ago. No space? We get lots of anecdotes about being shouted at by youths and even threatened with a baseball bat but no actual account of violence suffered, 40 years ago. … Continue reading Racism in Scotland….forty years ago!
More than 1 million Iraqis died as a consequence of the combined US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Guardian fully supported the invasion in March of that year. Today the Guardian’s Editor and the writer Jonathan Freedland write self-importantly of the lessons that can be learned. Freedland claims to have argued against it ‘on these pages’ and the Editorial forgets that in 2003, it argued for the attack. In January 2003, the Guardian editorial explicitly made the case for what it called ‘decisive action.’ Friedland is referring to a piece in March 2002, a full year earlier. He wasn’t … Continue reading The Guardian needs to remember its own role in the Iraq war and its 1 million excess deaths
As of 2022, only one in 390.46 UK citizens could bear to carry the Con Party card. You have to think that after having that Truss fitted, then quickly pulled off, the numbers must be even worse now. As of 2023, 1 in 75 Scots is an SNP member, 5 times more appealing than the Cons. The Scottish Cons will not reveal their membership. UK Labour claimed 450 000 in 2022, 1 in 149 UK citizens, half as popular as the SNP. Again after another year of Starmering, that seems likely to have fallen. Scottish Labour, admitting even lower popularity, … Continue reading Only 1 in 390 cared enough to be in the Con Party last year
The above extract from a Herald piece, behind the paywall today, reminds that it is not a monolithic anti-independence media machine. Through it’s leading writers, it is a kind of septic think tank dominated by ill-informed and shoddy journalism aimed at undermining the SNP whenever and whenever it can but, now and again, something honest creeps through. This piece today US professor wants to spread news of Scotland’s renewables to world, opens with: Sometimes it takes an outsider’s eye to see what a country is doing well, someone, for instance, such as George Busenberg, Associate Professor of Environmental Management and … Continue reading Scotland and renewables, a model for the world but not for the UK it seems
