Under the headline: More than 500 deaths in England last year after long ambulance wait, the Guardian today offers the above data and claims: More than 500 seriously ill patients died last year before they could get treatment in hospital after the ambulance they called for took up to 15 hours to reach them, an investigation by the Guardian reveals. The fatalities included people who had had a stroke or heart attack or whose breathing had suddenly collapsed, or who had been involved in a road traffic collision. In every case, an ambulance crew took much longer to arrive than … Continue reading Scottish ambulance waiting times on target as Guardian finds more than 500 deaths in England after ‘long waits’

Only the non-Tory press, The Mirror and the i make this a front page story. HS2 is already 8 years late and expected to exceed it’s projected cost in 2010 of £33bn by a huge amount. It’s already at £71bn and some think it may go beyond £100bn. When I saw that 2041 and thought of trains, I remembered this 2004 SF film: In the future, a rail network connects Earth. Lonely souls try to reach a mysterious room called 2046; nothing ever changes there so there is never loss or sadness. No one has ever returned from 2046 except … Continue reading HS2 will be 8 years behind and triple the cost but no heads need roll

From SNP Media today: The price of the biggest scandal of the Devolution era – Scottish Labour’s PFI catastrophe – continues to increase after it was revealed the cost to the public purse ballooned by an extra £1million every week in just the last year alone. In response to a question from Kenneth Gibson MSP, Deputy First Minister John Swinney confirmed that the amount the Scottish Government and local authorities must find to pay for the botched Scottish Labour initiative had increased from £1,410 million last year to £1,460 million this year. Now, after many years of payments and 16 … Continue reading Cost of Scottish Labour’s PFI Incompetence balloons again by £770m to £1.46 BILLION

The Dowey husband and wife team, Tory council leader (1) and not-really-elected Tory MSP (2), have been caught out by this news: South Ayrshire achieves glowing report for positive school leaver destinations The School Leaver Destination Report (SLDR) recorded an impressive 98.6 per cent of pupils across South Ayrshire progressing from school to a positive destination. https://www.inyourarea.co.uk/news/south-ayrshire-achieves-glowing-report-for-positive-school-leaver-destinations/ Has this happened elsewhere in Scotland? Yes, see: Latest figures published by Scottish Government show a record number of 2022 school leavers are in work, training or further education, with the proportion in unemployment at its lowest. https://childreninscotland.org.uk/magazine-school-leavers-in-positive-destinations-reaches-record-high/ Why have the Tories been … Continue reading Just arrived Ayr Tories embarrassed by ‘glowing’ school report fail to praise Education Secretary

Tory Lord Ashcroft owns the Holyrood mag and the right/Unionist drift in coverage has been notable. Today, see the above. Who is this expert? Prof James Mitchell is a long-time critic of the SNP, deluded New Labour enthusiast, with a clear Unionist agenda making him far from ‘expert’ in the full academic sense of the word. See: Labour’s revival puts SNP on the defensive: https://sceptical.scot/2022/10/labours-revival-puts-snp-on-the-defensive/ Take the issue of independence out of Scotland’s election and the SNP would be struggling: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/03/take-independence-out-scotland-elections-snp-struggling and SNP’s independent Scotland would be a ‘little Britain’ as expert tears into ‘dismal’ second Indyref2 paper: https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/snps-independent-scotland-would-little-27509049 Try searching for … Continue reading Academic non-entity wheeled out by Tory rag to peddle sad wishes

The above is from BBC Family& Education but was headlined on the BBC Scotland site without any helpful clarification of actual costs in Scotland: BBC analysis shows the cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two in Great Britain varies greatly. It costs an average of £285 a week, the equivalent of 44% of the average pay for full-time workers. Costs are lower in Scotland. But in inner London, despite people earning more, disproportionately higher nursery fees amount to more than half of the average full-time wage. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-64865602 Based on the above percentages then, nursery costs for … Continue reading Average UK nursery costs for under 2’s nearly 25% higher than in Scotland

Today’s poll by Redfield & Wilton Strategies has No 9% ahead, is the 9th in a row with a No lead, and is worrying Yes supporters but we’ve been here before, actually in much worse places, before. The current leadership debates are being blamed for the dip. They probably are but the scale of the dip and the longer history of such polls tells us not to worry. It will pass. The wikipedia graph above is bit counter-intuitive for Yes supporters with a No lead in the upper half and Yes leads in the lower half. Once you get used … Continue reading Support trends for Yes in last 4 years much stronger than in the previous 4 years

From the Scotsman for your early morning scare: A snap survey of British Medical Association (BMA) Scotland junior doctors revealed nearly half (44 per cent) have actively researched leaving the NHS in the past 12 months due to pay and conditions in Scotland. Only 15 per cent of the 730 respondents said they were sure they would stay in the UK and work in the NHS long term. https://www.scotsman.com/health/nhs-scotland-health-service-facing-mass-exodus-of-doctors-4055339 There are more than 5 800 junior doctors in Scotland. The BMA Scotland press release admits a response of 730 but does not tells what percentage that is. It’s only 12%, 1 in 8. … Continue reading Only 321 out of more than 5 800 junior doctors have looked at leaving NHS Scotland

Critical infrastructure for UK emergency services: “After eight years and almost £2 billion, it is extremely worrying that the Home Office does not now know when the Emergency Services Network will be ready or what it will cost. (Gareth Davies, head of the National Audit Office,  8 March, 2023) By stewartb Unlike reporting cost overruns on ‘ferries’, and unlike reporting carefully selected extracts from Audit Scotland reports, the corporate media and the BBC seem to shy away from reporting the work of the National Audit Office (NAO). Perhaps this is because the NAO’s work is not concerned with the Scottish … Continue reading Not Scottish Government – not ‘ferries’ –  so not covered by the BBC!

From SNP Media today: Speaking to the Work and Pensions Select Committee this morning, Robert Joyce – Deputy Director and Head of Income, Work and Welfare at the IFS – stated that:  “They [Scottish Government] are making pretty substantial increases. They have just made clearly a distributional choice (…) to channel a lot more money towards low-income families with children in particular and that has a meaningful impact on incomes.” That view was echoed by the Director of ‘The Poverty Alliance’, Peter Kelly, who said: “The principles that are embedded into the social security system in Scotland (…) I think … Continue reading Three leading poverty experts praise SNP Government’s social security system