In the Herald today: NEARLY one in three of Scotland’s 32 council areas have registered drops in life expectancy of over a year with levels of deprivation being blamed in many cases. New figures show that Scotland has the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe having increased since the early 1980s but has now remained virtually unchanged for eight years. Leaving aside the headline problem of how you can have a national slump if it’s been virtually unchanged for eight years, who is to blame for this sad state of affairs? We know what’s coming. Conveniently forgetting the last century, Scottish Labour will … Continue reading Narrow shoulders: Three centuries of Westminster control have produced the lowest life expectancies in Europe

The Scotsman and the Herald this morning. I suppose she does do the announcements of those figures every day so maybe that’s understandable. Two questions: Is it a kind of demonising subconsciously perhaps damaging her reputation and that of the SNP? or Is it, paradoxically, perhaps due to how well she does it, having the opposite effect? It’s certainly different: The Guardian choosing not to use Matt Hancock’s mug and the Times not even interested: The Telegraph was no more interested. The wrong comparisons for the Herald and the Scotsman? How about the Daily Mail? Their readers will want to … Continue reading Sturgeon finds cure for cancer!

Oh so intelligent, oh so visionary but oh so neglected by those pesky SNP politicians and by the ungrateful working-classes, Common Weal‘s oh-so disappointed leader returns to oh-so inaccurately find fault in the SNP administration’s Covid-strategy. I’m certainly not going to take this paragraph by paragraph. Maybe I shouldn’t bother at all given the traffic on the site: The above traffic checker gave the Tusker 60 000 and Wings 900 000! So, just three things The SG had the courage to go well beyond the 10pm curfew to ban all visits to other households, contrary to England, and would have … Continue reading Common Wail

In the last 24 hours, Glasgow City recorded 167 new case and in the previous period it had recorded 173, up from 132 and 75 in the preceding days. https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/ On its own, this does not yet confirm evidence of a plateau or a decline in the infection level. However, we do know that 124 of the Glasgow cases are from the University campus, suggesting only 43 in the rest of the city. Does this mean that the measures imposed on the city and the efforts of the contact tracing teams are beginning to bear fruit? The North Lanarkshire figures … Continue reading Is the Glasgow household outbreak under control?

On Monday 21st, MSM_Monitor spotted the BBC double standards, in only BBC Scotland and opposition parties seeing the need to ‘politicise a health briefing during a pandemic‘ and effectively ‘provide a platform for the new Scottish Tory leader.’ BBC Wales did not do the same to their Labour FM and there was, to my knowledge, no pressure from the pro-independence opposition demanding the right to provide ‘other voices and perspectives‘ as Donalda MacKinnon, BBC Scotland director claimed were needed here. Yesterday, we could see evidence of the same double standards in action. In Covid-19 in Wales: What do the stats … Continue reading Three examples of double standards: Comparing the BBC in Labour Wales and the BBC in SNP Scotland

England has 10 times the population of Scotland but, today recorded 11 times as many new cases. Wales has half the population of Scotland but recorded three-quarters of the number of new cases. England has 10 times the population of Scotland but, today recorded 36 times as many deaths. Continue reading Scotland records lowest number of new deaths

In the Herald today, Iain Macwhirter writes: As the Herald’s coverage of the latest Aberdeen outbreak confirms, track and trace has lost its way there. That’s both untrue and offensive to all the hard-working members of the team. How about some facts? On the Aberdeen outbreak: Of the people identified as requiring contact tracing only 3 individuals out of 925 could not be contacted. In other words, teams traced 99.7% of those positive cases which is quite a remarkable achievement. Based on that work, the teams also traced more than 5,000 contacts. And they have been successful in contacting 98.8% … Continue reading Iain Macwhirter insults Aberdeen track and tracers and our intelligence

In a piece of writing saturated with after-the-event wisdom Iain Macwhirter gloats, thinking he’s scored over the First Minister and Professor Sridhar. I was going to leave it, ‘e’s not warf it‘, but then thought, if this stops just one person believing him, my time is not wasted. See his gloomy ‘It’s looking like a six month sentence‘ and his Christmas warning? Here’s what the First Minister actually said: I also want to address talk that there has been in recent days about restrictions being needed for six months or more. It is certainly the case, that until scientific developments … Continue reading ‘Clever’ Macwhirter gets it all wrong

In a report today from BBC Essex, we read: Ten workers at a mental health unit have been suspended amid claims patients were “dragged, slapped and kicked”. Inspectors said CCTV footage recorded at the Yew Trees hospital in Kirby-le-Soken, Essex, appeared to show episodes of “physical and emotional abuse”. The details emerged in a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report after the unit was inspected in July and August. A spokeswoman for the care provider said footage had been passed to police. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-54255514 The report does not mention Matt Hancock, the Minister. Why would it? He can’t be expected to deal … Continue reading Update: The politicising of health but only in Scotland

On Channel 4 News but not, to my knowledge, on the Scottish broadcast media, a clear explanation of why ‘Scotland [and not England] has banned visiting other people’s homes.‘ Professor Sridhar explains at 02:24 into this clip (link below): The scientific advice is pretty much aligned. The group I’m on, the Scottish Government Advisory Group works closely with SAGE and SAGE works closely with us. Independent SAGE is also sharing their papers. I think in general the scientific advice is quite aligned. It’s just then a policy and a leadership decision. Which decision are you going to take? How do … Continue reading Covid-19 Update: The Scientists are saying the same thing about visiting other homes to Boris and to Nicola