Ludo Thierry BBC Scotland weren’t able to keep this bit of really good news off the website – Welcome aboard the Indy Express Baillie Anne McTaggart, former MSP for labour sub-branch and current Glasgow City councillor. Anne, amongst many other credits – has a proud Scottish Parlt history of trying to improve the legal framework to promote the harvesting of organs for transplant (to increase access to these life saving/ life transforming procedures for those who require it). I for one would like to say “good on you Anne” and I look forward to you pursuing multiple further good, progressive … Continue reading ‘Labour hasn’t done anything positive for a long time in Glasgow’

On Good Mourning Scotland today, Dr Paulo Geraldo of Kings College, London, reinforced the evidence already offered here only a month ago, that political street protest movements can have an effect. Of course, Gordon Brewer didn’t raise the example of All Under One Banner in Scotland. He’s a House Jock complicit in the repression of the truth. Why would he. However the good doc said this and it clearly applies: In some cases, success is more invisible more subterranean as often the change these movements make is more cultural is more long-term but often ion many cases when you look … Continue reading BBC Scotland get a prof to repeat the good news that movements like AUOB can succeed

From Hong Kong to Chile popular revolts appear to be gaining traction on a global scale. On the face of it there’s little if anything that connects movements such as the Gilets Jaunes in France or that which has engulfed the streets of Baghdad in recent weeks expect social media. What might be the long-term impact of social media on global democracy? After the above opener, Brewer introduces Dr Paulo Gerbaldo, Director of the Centre for Digital Culture at Kings College in London and they talk to that question with Brewer causing my ears to prick up when he mentions … Continue reading On Good Morning [anywhere but] Scotland: Gordon Brewer and an academic discuss 12 popular political movements but can you guess which one they miss out?

After a Parliamentary question from Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Scottish Labour), we can reveal the number of finished admission episodes (FAEs), for patients resident in Scotland, who have received elective or emergency treatment as an inpatient or day case in hospitals in England, in each year since 2009-10: Click to access WA20191031.pdf Continue reading 15% drop in Scottish patients having to be treated in England under SNP administration

From Energy Voice yesterday: With more offshore wind installations than any other country in the world and a number of pioneering projects, offshore wind represents a huge opportunity for Scotland and the north-east region. Offshore wind – both fixed and increasingly floating – will be a critical part of this country’s energy mix over the coming decades and the UK (sic) is well positioned having more offshore wind installations than any other country in the world. Hywind, off Peterhead, is the world’s first and largest floating wind farm and the Kincardine floating wind project, just south of Stonehaven, will take … Continue reading Scotland has more offshore wind installations than any other country in the world

Continue reading Today’s tweets: Wildlife, prisoners, babies, liver cancer, Welsh Tories and Feeding Boris

According to a FOI request published today: https://www.scotland.police.uk/assets/pdf/434027/526774/526830/19-2380-response?view=Standard Remember that not all of these officers would be absent on the same days. What! Up by 2 from 2017/18. That’s 0.53%! It’s a crisis! BBC Reporting Scotland headline: ‘Scottish police officers’ absence due to stress slightly up.’ There are 17 259 police officers in Scotland, up by 1 025 or 6.3% under the SNP. https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-scottish-police-numbers-under-the-snp In 2018/19, according to a FOI request by the Telegraph published in June 2019, 10 684 officers across the UK were absent due to stress. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/21/police-officers-signed-sick-stress-anxiety-doubles-five-years/ The UK has roughly 12 times the population of Scotland … Continue reading Scotland’s police officer absence rate due to stress less than HALF that of UK and NOT increasing

On the 5th October 2019, I wrote to the BBC to complain about the above and their reply after some delay, yesterday, is a masterpiece in evasion and denial. First, here’s the complaint I sent: The key points are that their claim does not appear anywhere in the report and that the report repeatedly warns against comparisons between different countries because the data is based on differing methods of classification. Here is their response to these fatal flaws, in reverse order: Our online report stated that average numbers across a range of species had fallen in Scotland by 24% since … Continue reading Scotland’s ‘faster wildlife decline’: BBC Scotland ‘can say what they like’ and lie about changing it

In the Guardian yesterday, a piece on the bedroom tax with not a mention of the Scottish Government’s actions to mitigate it fully: Introduced in 2013, it was the most controversial of the so-called welfare reforms of the coalition era, punishing hundreds of thousands of the poorest social housing tenants – many of them disabled – for having a spare room in their home. It was a minor detail that the “spare rooms” in question were often filled with hospital-style beds or boxes of medicine, or that there were generally no smaller properties for families to move into. Flick through news … Continue reading English welfare experts and their amnesia on the SNP government’s £50 million mitigation of the cruel bedroom tax

Increased prison deaths can be a consequence of reducing the number incarcerated. After an extended headline story drooling over the Lord Provost’s above-board underwear expenses, today, they gave us this: ‘Three men have died in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow in four days. A fourth prisoner was also found dead over the weekend at Low Moss Prison in East Dunbartonshire. Fatal Accident Inquiries will be held into each death. Holyrood’s Public Audit Committee heard that ten of Scotland’s prisons are overcrowded and that staff sickness levels are up to 50%. All that’s increasing pressure on the service and the Auditor General … Continue reading Reporting Scotland Down get it all wrong on prison deaths