In the Scottish Sun this morning: A MEDIC warned that Nicola Sturgeon’s test, trace and isolate regime may do “more harm than good” — as up to a third of results could be false negatives. Dr Margaret McCartney claimed the system has a “fatal error” which leaves patients with coronavirus at risk of being wrongly cleared to mingle. The story is based on a thread in the GP’s Twitter feed. Here’s what she actually said around 7am yesterday: The test and trace programme may end up ironically doing more harm than good. We need protect and survive – this needs … Continue reading Scottish Sun takes GP criticism of Matt Hancock’s drive through testing and dishonestly applies it to Scottish testing

In a Zoom clip acquired by the right-wing blog, Guido Fawkes, Ian Murray makes the most outrageous, bitter and bizarre claims (in italics) in an effort undermine the Scottish Government at any cost to the reputation of his own home and people. He says: I’ll just give you some stats. Our care home deaths are double that of England because PPE is a shambles. We’re still not testing in care homes. We always slag of the UK Government for not hitting a 100 000 a day. If we were doing the equivalent in Scotland we should be doing 10 000. … Continue reading Ian Murray lies and lies again for an English audience comparing Scotland with Uganda and Walthamstow

‘Demands mount‘ like ‘Calls for’ is one of those largely meaningless phrases which newspapers like the Scotsman use to fabricate pressure on, commonly the Scottish Government. You read on, only to discover that it’s just Ian Murray or perhaps him and Jackson Carlaw or even both of them and Willie Rennie (the Lib Dem guy!). When you wonder which journalist is presenting the case, ‘in the public interest‘, again you find a small set. It’s Sarah Smith or Tom Gordon or even some minor politician pretending to be a journo, like John McLellan or Brian Monteith or Brian Wilson. As … Continue reading The Nike Conference attracted 0.03% of those at the Cheltenham Festival caused no deaths compared to hundreds there yet Ian Murray and Sarah Smith want a public inquiry

As of yesterday, the 7 Day Average for New Deaths in Scotland was 14: travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/ As of yesterday, the UK 7 Day Average for New Deaths was 287: The UK has 12.6 times the population of Scotland so, all being equal, it should have a 7 Day Average of 12.6 times 14 or 176 deaths. It has 287 or 63% more. Note: The UK figure is, of course, primarily made up data from England and a spike (see above) caused, perhaps, by the VE Day celebrations there will have widened the gap. Note2: The UK data is based on UK … Continue reading UK Covid-19 mortality level now at least 63% higher than in Scotland

Bad news for Jackson Carlaw and Richard Leonard as Professor Alyson Pollock spoke of the English and Scottish systems on BBC Newsnight, last night: We already know it’s [the centralised Serco system] getting into problems. The call handlers couldn’t log on today. There were crashes there in the system. Scotland has got its contact tracing system in place and rolling out, and they’re doing it at local level. I’m tempting fate here to go so soon here, but one day into the programme all is quiet in media coverage of the Scottish contact tracing system. BBC Scotland, the Herald and … Continue reading Scotland’s contact tracing ‘in place and rolling out’ while England’s system ‘has problems’ and will not run fully till end of June

Though at first sight Scotland comes in second, to Greater London, in this EY Attractiveness Survey of Foreign Direct Investment, 2019, the two are almost equal per capita. The population of Greater London is around 1.6 times greater than Scotland, the number of jobs created in Greater London works out at 1.7 times greater so, as near as damn, the level of job creation is about the same per capita and given the unfair advantages London derives from being the capital, Scotland wins! Origins of FDI projects in Scotland: the US retains its lead … In 2019 the US remained … Continue reading Scotland leads UK on foreign investment jobs

In the wake of evidence of higher death rates among BAME staff in England, this has been published by the RCN today: The latest RCN member-wide survey shows that for nursing staff working in high-risk environments (including intensive and critical care units), only 43% of respondents from a BAME background said they had enough eye and face protection equipment. This is in stark contrast to 66% of white British nursing staff. There were also disparities in access to fluid-repellent gowns and in cases of nursing staff being asked to re-use single-use PPE items. The survey found similar gaps for those … Continue reading No evidence for BAME nursing staff experiencing greater PPE shortages in Scotland

Why in England are ministers able to call for inquiries into health trusts’ handling of crises but in Scotland opposition leaders are platformed calling for inquiries into the ‘SNP’ government’s handling of performance into boards or private providers which they are not directly responsible for? Regardless of how this has come about, the effect is propaganda. In Scotland: In the midst of fabricated stories of the FM needing to be being pressurised into holding an inquiry, by the likes of Leonard and Carlaw, Scotland’s media persist in their unique habit of picturing her and her health secretary as the images … Continue reading Only in Scotland: Why is this the face of a scandal of deaths in a private care home which fails inspection?

It looks like this is meant to attract readers who want to be informed on how these ‘alarming’ results might affect how ‘we’ go about exiting lock-down. You get an early indication, however, of where ‘we’ are going with this report: Given that the UK’s death rate from Covid currently ranks third highest in the world behind Belgium and Spain (555 deaths per million compared to 574 per million in Spain and 815 per million in Belgium), it is hardly a success story. Hmmm..is the death rate in Scotland just the same, so not really that important to mention, in a Scottish … Continue reading Why does the Herald’s health correspondent have no Scottish data or even a ‘decent’ Scottish photo to inform ‘us’

From Ipsos MORI, yesterday, based on a poll 1 000 16+ respondents, 66% of Scots want another independence referendum within 5 years. This compares with the Panelbase poll in March which had 49% saying there should not be another referendum in the ‘next few years.’ Continue reading Increase in support for second independence referendum