By Alasdair Galloway In today’s edition Tom Gordon suggests we are approaching the end point of Nicola Sturgeon’s time as First Minister and leader of the SNP. He may be right in this assertion or he may be wrong. I certainly wouldn’t adopt his certainty. Assuming she goes on to 2024, she would have been in the job for 10 years, or nearly as long as Thatcher and Blair, though much longer than any of the last four incumbents. Then again, the contemporary example is perhaps Angela Merkel, colloquially known in Germany as “mutti”. While I have to congratulate Mr … Continue reading The Gerald  – don’t criticise the talent!

So, based on the above NRS data, after a fall of only 1% in 2021, Scotland still has a drug misuse death rate 5 times that of England and 4 times that of Norway, the next highest in the EU. Why does it seem implausible? Well, first, it’s quite unusual to such a gap between negative health indicators in globally quite similar areas. Life expectancy or cancer death rates fluctuate but to nowhere near this extent. Second, the 1% fall doesn’t correlate with Police Scotland data which show that in 2021, there were 8% (116) fewer drug deaths overall than … Continue reading There’s just something implausible about this

With so many indicators of superior performance by Scotland’s public services, BBC Scotland and the newspapers have clung to this issue like a dark comfort blanket. Something’s up. Yesterday the Tories were warning the SNP not to spin today’s data as a success if the numbers are still ‘high.’ This morning Reporting Scotland told us the news, that the figures are coming, and gave us a heavy dose of ‘worst in the UK and in the EU’ in case we had forgotten. We also got the sister of an older (60 plus) drug user who had just passed away to … Continue reading One last cheer for the ‘worst drug deaths in the EU?’

Studiously ignored by the MSM though covered by local press and, only the increase in rapes, by the BBC, Police Professional reports: A total of 6.3 million crimes were recorded in the year to March 2022 – four per cent higher than the previous all-time high of 6.1 million in 2019/20. It is also up 16 per cent on 2020/21, when crime levels were affected by Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. The figures, which have been published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show knife crime, theft and domestic abuse all increased in the 12 months to March. Police-recorded offences of … Continue reading Media blackout on SNP success as crime surges in England & Wales

In the Guardian today: Transport secretary rules out meeting unions. Grant Shapps [Conservative] has ruled out meeting rail unions, as RMT members went on strike on Wednesday. “This is just a game by the unions,” the transport secretary said in an interview on Sky News. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2022/jul/27/train-strikes-rail-disruption-uk-live-latest-travel-updates From the Scottish Cons in May 2022: Yet despite Scots’ fury, the SNP is already trying to wriggle out of responsibility for the chaos on our railways. Instead of taking control of this dire situation, Nicola Sturgeon is hiding behind ScotRail – a company her government fully owns – as an excuse for her failures. Don’t … Continue reading Rail strikes only a government responsibility in SNP Scotland

Scotland’s drug deaths, according to Police Scotland, have been falling, since peaking in 2019, against a background of media silence on the facts and modified language changing from ‘record’ to just ‘high.’ The Scottish Tories seem worried about the figures to be released tomorrow, Thursday 28 June 2022. Does Sandy Gullane know something and is whinging this sort of thing: The number of fatalities has risen year on year on Nicola Sturgeon’s watch to last year’s appalling record high of 1,339. These figures mean Scotland has not just the worst death rate per head of population in Europe – but … Continue reading Falling drug deaths tomorrow? The Tories are worried

In the Guardian today: The decades-old routine of visiting an NHS dentist for a six-month checkup is being scrapped across England and Wales for most adults as part of changes designed to address the dire lack of access to dental care for many people. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/27/dental-checkups-less-frequent-england-wales-nhs From the Scottish Government in March 2022: We’re delivering record investment in dentistry – with a 9% increase in the budget for NHS dental services in 2022-23 – and there has been a 39% increase in the number of high-street dentists in Scotland between 2007 and 2021. Last year there were 55.6 dentists per 100,000 of the … Continue reading Not counting Anas Sarwar, Scotland has 40% more NHS dentists

Posted by u/caufield88uk on Reddit Scotland, today: I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this with the GERS data and specifically the graphs available. There are two, showing Scotland’s cumulative fiscal deficit and the other is the year on year fiscal deficit. The sdata on the year on year graph shows that Scotland was a massive net contributor to the UK budget up until 1992, then we become a net extractor, this continues until 1997 and then gets slightly worse after 1997 until 2012 and then from 2012 to 2015 gets massively worse and since 2015 has got much … Continue reading ‘Something I just realised about GERS’

While the BBC Scotland channel is sort of exposed, if bizarrely, by the Express, Reporting Scotland’s popularity is concealed within the ratings for BBC 1 News which, across the UK, is actually more popular, at 51%, than ITV/STV, at 45%. We do know that, in 2020, STV News beat Reporting Scotland with 390 00 viewers (30%) against 380 000 (28%). 6.9% of the population! https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/stv-wins-scottish-news-rating-21296399 That Ofcom avoids a breakdown of the BBC News popularity suggests, I’m sure, things are now even worse at Pacific Quay. Continue reading Ofcom protects Reporting Scotland from scrutiny

Despite desperate attempts by opposition parties and their MSM lackeys to somehow suggest that the ‘SNP’ minimum pricing policy is not working in Scotland, their arguments do not survive a collision with the evidence. While alcohol-related deaths, in Scotland, did rise during the period of pandemic lockdowns in 2020, they had fallen for the 3 previous years, after the implementation of the policy in May 2018. The above BBC report suggests: Heavy home drinking during the pandemic may have set habits that will lead to rises in alcohol-related deaths and illness in England, forecasters warn. The work, commissioned for the … Continue reading English alcohol-death experts stumped