Today, Jackson Carlaw, using a Channel 4 report as evidence, attacked the First Minister for the lack of testing of staff in Highgate Care Home, Uddingston, and by association the deaths there. On August 16th 2019, the Care Inspectorate rated the HC-One Highgate as follows: Among the many problems, one was life-threatening: In August 2019: Requirement 2 The provider must ensure healthcare professionals are involved in assessing and reviewing residents support needs if appropriate. Timescale: by 31 January 2019 This requirement was [also] made on 11 September 2018.Action taken on previous requirement: We looked at residents who experienced falls. We … Continue reading Jackson Carlaw attacks First Minister for deaths in another HC-One private care home which failed inspection in 2019 and 2020

Where GPs cannot be found to run a practice in some area, it is always presented as some kind of failure and, often, used to accuse the Scottish Government of something. In 2017, there were 52 health board run surgeries out of a total of more than 1 000 in Scotland. Intuitively, I’d have thought that being run by a health board with all its expertise and quality control mechanisms might be a safer bet for the patients than the risk implicit in control by a small number of individuals for whom the profit motive is a factor. I see, … Continue reading Might locals feel safer if a health board runs GP practice?

I guess most readers here might have even more to say about the horrific waste of human life that nuclear weapons cause but, accepting that, this Government is probably more sensitive to attack on it’s budgeting, so this is a story worth exposing and sharing. Here’s what Peter Grant MP had to say about the £1.35 BILLION waste: Continue reading SNP MP reveals massive £1.35 BILLION waste of tax-payers money by UK Government

What a lovely graph, with SNP support at 50% or above and climbing for the last 5 polls and the Carlaw effect on the Tories now clear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election Continue reading Polls show Jackson Carlaw has not been good for the Scottish Conservatives

From BBC response to the Government’s consultation on decriminalising TVlicence evasion 31 March 2020 at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/bbc-consultation-response-decriminalising-licence-fee.pdf Note that evasion, UK data, has been falling since 1991 when it was 13%. This correlates with the results of the Survation poll with data collected on 16-23 April. Overall, it suggested 51% of Brits trust the BBC ‘to provide you with information about covid-19.’ With trust for the Scottish Government at 70%, social media was alive with gleeful commentary on the gap but it’s far better than that, when you see the regional breakdown. It’s better because we can reasonably link the responses to the … Continue reading TV Licence evasion much higher in Scotland

In the Herald yesterday, McArdle, uncharacteristically refers to the FM without crticism: The number of ‘extra’ deaths from any cause since the Covid outbreak began is a fifth lower in Scotland than in England and Wales. The discrepancy in excess death rates was highlighted by Nicola Sturgeon as she was asked during the daily briefing “why the percentage of deaths in care homes is so much higher” in Scotland than south of the Border. It’s a victory of sorts but a small one in the light of the ‘extra’ deaths, as she puts it, to help the slower readers (?), from the European … Continue reading Sturgeon’s statistics accepted by the Herald!

The UK lock-down was put into effect on 23rd March. In the Telegraph, yesterday and repeated widely by opposition politicians and journalists, including BBC Reporting Scotland: More than 2,000 coronavirus deaths could have been prevented if Scotland had locked down two weeks earlier [9th March], according to a study published as Nicola Sturgeon urged people to ignore Boris Johnson’s exit plan. A team of epidemiological scientists at Edinburgh University estimated that around four out of five deaths could have been stopped with earlier action, based on the behaviour of the Scottish population. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/11/four-five-scottish-covid-19-deaths-prevented-lockdown-had-started/ The scientists and the media missed something … Continue reading Fact-check: Scottish Government COULD NOT have locked down earlier to save lives

Once more BBC Scotland report on the Skye care home infections and deaths without reference to the November 2019-January 2020 Care Inspectorate inspection report which demanded that the owners do something about the staffing level and the unavoidably connected failures in infection control. Crucially by March 2020, the demands had not been addressed to their satisfaction. https://www.careinspectorate.com/index.php/care-services?detail=CS2011300714 Astonishingly given the evidence of the report and local reports of agency staff from England being brought in, this statement goes unchallenged: Owners HC-One said the “likelihood” was that Covid-19 had been present in the local community. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52631708 Who accused BBC Scotland of … Continue reading BBC Scotland accused of cover-up as Skye care home owners blame the locals

The latest ONS mortality statistics for England and Wales show that 237 health and care workers and 47 teachers have been killed by the coronavirus up to 23 April – deaths in the three weeks since are not included. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/datasets/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales In Scotland: As at 5 May, we have been notified by Health Boards or the Care Inspectorate of 7 deaths of healthcare workers and 6 deaths of social care workers, related to COVID-19. We are not able to confirm how many of these staff contracted COVID-19 through their work.  https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/ The UK has 12.6 times the population of Scotland so, pro rata, we might … Continue reading The sad reality of PPE failure? Deaths among England and Wales’ health and care workers 73% higher than in Scotland

You have to read some way in to find that the accusation below comes only from Ian Murray, Tory MP for Morningside. Here’s what the FM had to say: Why would we have been trying to cover anything up? We were reporting figures on this. I stood up here every single day to be open and transparent with you, the public, as possible. There is no interest in covering these things up, so that is nonsense. And actually, I don’t know where that accusation comes from, but it sounds like highly politicised nonsense as well. To say that cases were associated with … Continue reading For highly politicised nonsense you can trust to be highly politicised nonsense, support the Herald