Second peak, second peak, second peak! Click and read on but warnings of any second peak ‘in Scotland’ as promised above, are not there: Try that one bottom-right there, and you get: Coronavirus in Scotland? Are we still there? Michelle Roberts? Let’s see if we know the scientists? Sridhar? Bauld? Pennington? Nope. Sir Patrick Vallance commissioned the research from Prof Stephen Holgate, a respiratory specialist from University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust and they came up with this modelled scary image: Matt Hancock gets a mention but England is never mentioned so it must be based on UK-wide data. Yes? No. … Continue reading There is no evidence for a second peak in Scotland

Junior minister for the Home Office, Christopher Ian Brian Mynott Philp, has been dispatched north to ‘clean’ the situation in Glasgow after the stabbing incident in a hotel housing asylum seekers. Philp, who has a Masters degree in quantum physics insists the Home Office has a proud record of protecting vulnerable asylum seekers though he could not say in which parallel universe, of the infinite number quantum physics chappies like he, and his many versions, believes exists, this was the case. In an effort to ‘clean’ the situation, Philp and his colleagues have approached the SNP leader of Glasgow Council … Continue reading Tory minister to blame Glasgow’s SNP hotel inspectors for the asylum seeker hotel deaths

In the Herald yesterday, we heard from Scotland in Union‘s only health expert that he is confident the Scottish Government’s strategy will ‘see off‘ the virus by the end of the year. The Herald’s health correspondent, Helen McArdle, had clearly hoped the professor would be more pessimistic after the massive spike in cases on Friday taking it up to a tiny fragment of that in England and the evidence of the SNP Government failing to get cases down to zero for some weeks now. Professor of bacteriology, Hugh Pennington’s comments in the Herald stand in stark contrast to those of … Continue reading Leading anti-SNP group must sack their top health expert as he predicts complete success for SNP Government’s Covid strategy

In the Scotsman yesterday, plain ‘Hugh Pennington’ now claims he’s a virologist though he’s a bacteriologist everywhere else and writes a letter of such simple inaccuracy you wonder if maybe it’s from another Hugh Pennington or if he’s not well. He opens with: ‘As a virologist and someone with a bit of experience of outbreak investigation’ he tells us it’s too soon to judge the success or otherwise of the Scottish strategy. He’s not a virologist. Does he feel the need to pretend to be one in case readers know the difference? Experience of what viral outbreak? The small-scale E-coli … Continue reading Now Scotland in Union’s leading professor goes undercover to argue Scotland has achieved little

Amnesty International has reported: Amnesty has collated and analysed a wide range of available data showing that more than 3,000 health workers have died after contracting COVID-19 in 79 countries, though the figure is likely to be a significant underestimate due to under-reporting. According to Amnesty’s monitoring, the countries with the highest numbers of health worker deaths thus far, are: Russia (545), UK (England and Wales: 540, including 262 social care workers), USA (507), Brazil (351), Mexico (248), Italy (188), Egypt (111), Iran (91), Ecuador (82) and Spain (63). https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/uk-among-highest-covid-19-health-worker-deaths-world Typically Anglocentric, London-based Amnesty, did not think to check the Scottish data … Continue reading Health workers in England and Wales more than twice as likely to die from Covid-19 as those in Scotland

I love the radical, critical media such as the Canary and SKWAKBOX. I take pleasure in their forensic examination and exposure of establishment lies but every now and then they remind me that we cannot rely on them to help us in our own anti-establishment struggle, the Yes campaign. Today SKWAWKBOX, like the Guardian or the Telegraph conflate England with the UK. Have they checked the Scottish data and found them comparable to those for England & Wales thus justifying their headline? No, they have not even bothered to try: 540 health workers lost their lives to COVID-19 in England … Continue reading How the casual Anglocentrism of even the critical media reveals we cannot trust them to report Scottish health worker deaths properly

In the Herald today, Alistair Grant writes: SCOTLAND’S historic homes and castles face a mounting backlog of repairs amid a “catastrophic” fall in income during the coronavirus lockdown, it has been warned. Historic Houses, which represents more than 200 independently owned houses, castles and gardens in Scotland, said an existing backlog worth £53 million is set to grow even further. Think about it. How did one family manage to gather such an obscene pile of wealth as a stately home? Brutal exploitation of the local peasantry and the craftsmen who built it? Money from the slave trade? Imagine the lives of the servants … Continue reading Let these monuments to crushing inequality and psychopathic brutality crumble into romantic ruins the tourists will love

Panorama tonight looks at how Glasgow has cut violent crime. BBC 1 news had a piece on it but Reporting Scotland did not. I haven’t got the archives to prove this but I feel sure that when these stories were featured in documentary programmes later that night, Reporting Scotland was more than keen to encourage its viewers to catch it: Deaths in Scottish care homes PPI shortages in Scottish care homes Investigations into infections in Scottish hospitals The export of young calves to Spain Readers will, I’m sure, remember others. Whether this is conscious editorial practice or unconscious habit, the … Continue reading Reporting Scotland not interested in Panorama’s good news about Scotland?

In the Herald today: Mark Smith is the latest to join the list of supposed journalists forced to retain their sanity by pretending that the SNP leader and her team are not actually doing better but just seem to be. Just who is doing the PR job for them is not clear when you look at the list of those who regularly perpetuate this myth – Brewer, Marr, Smith, Gordon, Macwhirter, the wee guy at Channel 4, the wee guy at Newsnet.scot, even those at the Guardian. Going by the opinion polls the public see things differently. The Scottish Government … Continue reading Debunking the myth again and again: The First Minister is not just appearing to handle the crisis competently

Resisting pressure from the Scottish Tories to follow the UK decision to scrap taxes for more affluent house-buyers, for properties up to half a million pounds, Kate Forbes, the Finance secretary, has limited the relief to properties under £250 000. According to Insider: House buyers in Scotland will not pay tax on properties sold for for less than £250,000 after the Scottish Government responded to the Westminister Government’s Stamp Duty holiday. The change will mean about eight in 10 house buyers in Scotland will not pay LBTT. The average cost of a residential property in Scotland was £178,991 in 2018-19. … Continue reading Further SNP progressive taxation decision enables additional £50 million for first-time home-buyers