They rebuked her here, they rebuked her there, they rebuked her everywhere. Hell hath no fury like a Unionist able to join in a pile-on to rebuke the First Minister. Had she used the stats she used, in an essay for me, I’d have advised a qualifying statement or two to explain their provenance but rebuking? No. No rebuking here. However, since then, the Tusker’s own statistician, Dr Mark Mycard has rebuked her, before I could stop him, because she has seriously understated the extend to which the infection level in other parts of the UK is higher than that … Continue reading Updated: Cybernat statistician ‘rebukes’ Sturgeon for understating Covid-19 gap with ‘England’

Maybe it does not pay to disrespect the status quo? I didn’t fully understand the surge in readers to 400 000 plus in May and remain unsure as to why they have fallen in number over the last two months, to not quite 300 000. What do you think, team? We’re still in the pink, imperial pink, with a global presence or ‘world service’ to please the uncritical eye. Barrhead Travel, Good Morning Scotland and a Spook attracted readers. If you wrote something for us and want to know how many you got, let me know. Will we consolidate at … Continue reading Down down deeper and down? The July Statistics

Foreword: I have invited this report from Jane Lax after I wrongly accused her of being a member of the undemocratic Scotland in Union letter-writing group and of having shared her letter with a known member of the group so that he could copy it and send it to a different newspaper. I have apologised unreservedly for any damage I may have done to her reputation. Jane has taken up my offer to write a piece for the Tusker defending the Union. Readers are of course invited to respond but to focus entirely on the issues raised and to use … Continue reading Has Covid-19 ended the SNP dream of independence?

Only the members of the current extreme right Conservative Government have the sociopathic gall to try to blame others for their every sin. Responsibility for the ‘failure to protect care home residents‘ can be laid at three ‘doors’ and none are in Edinburgh. First, the UK Conservative Government with it’s callous ideological attachment to a herd immunity strategy, later denied but then replaced with a willingness to let the virus circulate in the community, to let the elderly, the sick and the poor be culled or after Boris, to ‘take it on the chin’, to protect the economy, and the … Continue reading Miles Brigg’s party, their not-so-immune herd of SAGE advisers and private care home donors and owners should be charged over the avoidable deaths

Today in one of his typically shambolic briefings, the PM announced that the ONS estimates that there are now 4 900 new infections each day in England. The 7 day average in Scotland is now 13.9 new cases per day. I’m not aware of any NRS estimates doubting that: https://spice-spotlight.scot/2020/07/29/coronavirus-covid-19-in-scotland/ Scotland has one tenth of the population so scaling the rate here up you might expect 140 for England but it’s 4 500, 35 times higher! Continue reading PM reports infection rate in England is 35 times higher than in Scotland

From Insider, today: Sentiment amongst Scottish businesses is showing signs of improvement as lockdown restrictions begin to ease, according to a survey of Scottish companies. The Addleshaw Goddard Scottish Business Monitor, produced with the Fraser of Allander Institute, also found that the volume of business activity is expected to recover significantly over the rest of the year, despite the economic uncertainty. and: However, there is encouragement to be found in the survey data. Nearly half of companies say they expect no change to their workforces and 61% of companies described their cashflow position as secure or very secure for the … Continue reading Business activity expected to recover significantly

Back again as just Hughie, the Scotland in Union covert writing group member, seems to have lifted my sources from repeated rejections of the argument that hospital discharges caused the care home infections. We seem to agree that they were inadvertently caused by agency staff untested on arrival in care homes, often from as far away as Kent. The research is here: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/07/29/why-were-hospital-discharges-into-care-homes-only-dangerous-in-scotland/ But then, astonishingly, he thinks the Scottish Government was to blame for not testing them even though they were bussed in by profit-seeking corporations, making up to £1 000 per week for a resident. Might the care … Continue reading Prof Pennington lifts my research and then misuses it to blame Scottish Government

By Alex Marshall Its not even ‘HAD’: ONS v Euromomo Excess mortality Z score indicates how much excess deaths there are per head of population looking at euromomo’s graphs: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country I’ve copied the maximal Z scores for the epidemic in some european countries: spain 43.58england 39.6france 24.31belgium 24.29wales 18.9italy 16.65scotland 15.92sweden 12.93 The base width in weeks is about the same for each country’s hump. As you see Scotland is way down the list. It has only been in 3rd place in 2020 weeks 19 and 22 long after the peaks . I wonder why ONS chose these weeks for … Continue reading Scotland had the 3rd highest Covid-19 death rate in only 2 weeks out of 28 but the ONS chose those for media consumption

Our appalling MSM cling desperately to the corpses from the initial coronavirus surge, sucking on the draining lifeblood of faded statistics That headline is a lie. Scotland had the third highest rate of excess deaths in Europe but no longer does. This perverse inverted pride is sickening. Get up to date! Leaving how we got here for another time, Scotland has had NO confirmed coronavirus deaths in the last two weeks and only six in the last month, just over 1 per million. England has had well over 2 000, 30 to 40 times higher per capita! Scotland has with … Continue reading HAD! Some viewers have been…