‘The attack on Mr McColl’s competence is despite his success in running engineering companies around the world. He gets closely involved in management and is reckoned to be a billionaire. His advice was sought by the Scottish government as a member of its Council of Economic Advisers.’ BBC give petulant ‘billionaire’ platform to attack SG: ‘The attack on Mr McColl’s competence is despite his success in running engineering companies around the world. He gets closely involved in management and is reckoned to be a billionaire.’ Oooooh he must know better. Let’s throw the toy boats out of the pram? Should … Continue reading BBC give petulant ‘billionaire’ platform to attack Scottish Government

‘8% of the population but only 2.5% of the police taser firing’ It’s all over the English media but from BBC UK today: The use of Taser stun guns by police and England and Wales reached a record high last year, Home Office figures show. They were deployed in 23,000 incidents in the 12 months to the end of March – up by more than a third on the previous year and double the 2016 total. The weapons – which deliver a high-voltage electric shock – were fired on 2,500 occasions between April 2018 and March 2019, which is thought to … Continue reading Police Scotland’s taser restraint not reported because….

Ludo Thierry Further encouraging stats regarding employment, unemployment and economic activity among Scotland’s 16 – 24 year olds carried on news.gov.scot today. Link and snippets below: https://news.gov.scot/news/employment-unemployment-and-inactivity-for-young-people-16-24-years-scotland New statistics from the Annual Population Survey have been released which show that 336,000 young people aged 16-24 years were in employment in Scotland in October 2018 to September 2019. The employment rate for young people was 59.0 per cent, higher than a year ago (57.9 per cent). In the same period, 34,000 young people aged 16-24 years were unemployed. The unemployment rate for young people was 9.1 per cent, lower than a … Continue reading Youth employment climbs

By: Ronald Maclean, Island of Lewis, a story of one man’s treatment, lacking the ‘public interest’ that the Reporting Scotland editor desires. Now if he could modify the story and introduce excessive delays and a bird-related infection leading to his near-death, then….. I live some distance from major medical centres. I was recently referred from my home area to the Glasgow Hospital Area for investigation, diagnosis and treatment for a very rapidly deterioring ondition. I received a quick appointment and was seen on time.The consultant soon decided that the suspected diagnosis did not explain the distress I was in. He … Continue reading FOUND! IN THE GLASGOW TRIANGLE: A PATIENT’S TRAVELS THROUGH THREE GLASGOW HOSPITALS

Too wee too poor: ‘Shell companies paid $10.1bn in corporate income tax and $5.8bn in royalties around the world’ but NONE for Scotland’s oil Continue reading As Shell steals the oil Scotland fights homelessness

The above headline is credit to the work of Jamie Greene (West Scotland) (Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party) who helpfully asked the Scottish Government on Tuesday how much had been spent on trunk road maintenance, inclusive of all roads under its, and its agencies’, financial or statutory responsibility in each year since 2007. Michael Matheson replied that: The following table summarises Trunk Road maintenance and operation investment by financial year. The totals include road and bridge maintenance, routine/cyclic maintenance, minor improvements, winter service and road safety improvements. The totals also include expenditure in respect to operational Design Build Finance and … Continue reading Jamie Greene MSP reveals SNP road maintenance spending up whopping 81%

https://www.gov.scot/publications/housing-statistics-scotland-quarterly-update-published-17-december-2019/pages/1/ In 2018/2019 there has been dramatic growth in housebuilding across most sectors with starts up 22% and completions up 18%. Some particularly encouraging extracts from Housing statistics for Scotland quarterly update: December 2019: New Build Housing – All Sectors – up to end June 2019 There were 5,342 new build homes completed between April and June 2019; a 2% increase (111 homes) on the same quarter in 2018. This brings the total for the year to end June 2019 to 21,403, up 18% (3,210 homes) compared to the 18,193 completed in the previous year. There were 5,620 new build homes started between April … Continue reading Significant growth in house building in Scotland with council house completions SIX times higher per head than in England

This graph shows what the infection rate in a Scottish hospital cancer ward really looks like. The blue column represents the number of patients on any one day. The tiny marks along the bottom represent the average level of infections reported each day. In April to June 2018 there were around 70 episode counts of bacterial infection in the blood samples of some of the 400 children being treated for cancers in a Glasgow hospital. This was the worst case, April to June 2018, from the graph below. The graph was used to suggest a spike in infection which then … Continue reading Making a mountain out of a miniscule number of bacterial infections in a Scottish hospital

I complained on November the 9th that, in covering a child death, Reporting Scotland had wrongly identified a ‘spike’ in the above graph provided by Health Protection Scotland: Coverage of child death in Glasgow hospital: The reporter claims that ‘Earlier this week an official report found a spike in infections around the time of Millie’s death at the hospital.’ This is untrue. The word ‘spike’ is not used in the engineers’ report because the increase in cases reported is statistically insignificant. The false impression given of a spike is due to a failure to read a graph properly. It’s a classic often … Continue reading Responding to another complaint Reporting Scotland Editor admits she and her team are too dim to understand graphs

The Times headline above, from December 3rd 2019, was typical of the repeated attempts in the run-up to the General Election, to blame the SNP for imagined weaknesses in Scottish education. Leaving aside the obvious fact that no credible academic uses Pisa scores to say anything at all, readers should have ready this evidence for the next time they meet someone taken in by the media narrative: Only 66.9% of English 16-year-olds gained 1 or more GCSE awards in 2018 while 86.% of Scots 16-year-olds gained 1 or more of the equivalent SQA Level 5 awards. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-45282518 Click to access … Continue reading A more meaningful ‘international’ comparison as 20% more Scottish 16-year-olds gain qualifications in SNP Scotland than those in Tory England do