Today, repeated throughout the day, nine times, we’ll hear, headlined and with a worried face: The number of times people needed compulsory mental health treatment in Scotland reached a record high last year. As always, the report opens with drama based on a single source and allows toward the end a brief response from the Scottish government as context. In the online version, it is only by the 23rd statement that we hear something that should turn the headline round: The low rates in some areas are a real concern for us and we hope that our data will be … Continue reading Only days after health professionals warn them Reporting Scotland Down ‘chase an ambulance’ on mental health issues

Ludo Thierry Here’s something to get the Better Together crowd gnashing their (not so) pearly whites. Yes – further stats showing the dramatic improvement in the state of Scotland’s children’s dental health continues under an SNP Scottish Govt and YES majority Scottish Parlt. (SNP just can’t help themselves – Bairns Not Bombs is part of the Indy political DNA). By the way – the story is being carried by beeb Scotland and beeb Health pages. Link and snippets below: (Note the continuing efforts to reduce the health ‘gap’ around family economic/social circumstances – SNP Scottish Govt showing just how public … Continue reading The number of children in Scotland with no obvious sign of tooth decay has hit a record high

Continue reading Today’s Tweets: Target-busting NHS Borders, Tory Leave voters happy to lose Scotland and Vive Quebec Libre!

Here’s what Lynn, regular in those Conservative and Unionist organs, the Telegraph and the Spectator, had to say today, under a patronising and puzzling picture of a Highland Coo: You will be taxed more than anywhere else for parking your car at work. You will have to pay an extra levy if you spend the day exploring a historic site. If you buy or sell a property there will be another charge, and you will owe higher income tax as well. This is propaganda based on lies. I was in Warwick earlier in the year. Parking and castle visiting were … Continue reading MoneyWeek allows Tory PROPAGANDA based on LIES about Scotland’s taxation

Research by RSU/TUS ‘truffle hound’ Brian McGowan In the Guardian yesterday: Britain’s cheapest “virtual battery” could be created by hoisting and dropping 12,000-tonne weights – half the weight of the Statue of Liberty – down disused mine shafts, according to Imperial College London. The surprising new source of “gravity energy” is being developed by Gravitricity, an Edinburgh-based startup, which hopes to use Britain’s old mines to make better use of clean electricity at half the cost of lithium-ion batteries. Gravitricity said its system effectively stores energy by using electric winches to hoist the weights to the top of the shaft when there … Continue reading Scots company suggests dropping 12 000 tonne weights down a mine shaft to generate and store electricity

In the Herald today: ‘MEDICAL schools in Scotland must increase their overall intakes and ensure a much greater share of places go to Scottish students, doctors’ leaders have said. A report by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and Faculties in Scotland (AMRCFS) said it was vital to stem a growing workforce crisis and limit a post-graduate brain drain.’ That’s a mighty fine title the AMRCFS have. Makes you feel small and unable to question them don’t it boy? The Scottish Academy Chairman is London-based Professor Derek Bell OBE. As for the basis for their claims, I haven’t read their report. I’m tired of … Continue reading Herald and Royal Academy misleading the public on doctor training

[T]here is no automatic reason to presume that independence divorce talks would face the perfect and chaotic storm that UK politics is in over Brexit.’ Hughes, 2019 If you were still quite wee, say under 12, that 300 hundred years thing might fool you but if you were the leader of a political party you might be expected to know a bit more about the history of other nations who have left the violent and suffocating embrace of the British Empire and to have read what some constitutional experts have written about the process. A total of 63 have left … Continue reading Dim Leb leader tries to tell us well-worn path to independence will be harder than hacking through jungle of EU nettles and thorn bushes

For a reminder of how bad news in the early morning is the most effective propaganda, see: Continue reading Today’s tweet: One of the starkest examples of bias by omission

Interviewed too politely by Gordon Brewer this morning, Luke Graham, not-so-high-profile Tory MP for Ochil and South Perthshire and former accountant for the Tough Mudder franchise in the USA, tried to  tell us that negotiating a new fisheries agreement, with EU access to Scottish fishing waters and with quotas, post-Brexit, was fine because ‘we will still want to fish in their waters!’ I suppose coming from Eldene, Swindon, his family will have a deep-rooted feel for the fishing industry. Will we want to fish in their waters as much as they will want to fish in ours? I do remember … Continue reading Mysterious Tory MP’s daft claims on EU fishing rights in Scottish waters

This image under the headline: Crime in Britain’s most affluent areas soaring at faster rate than anywhere else in UK, seems to reveal all-too-graphically the growing need for a hard border between Scotland & England. The headline and the opening lines conflate the UK and Britain with England, as usual, but the article (safely behind another wall, a paywall) is, no doubt based on statistics for England & Wales: ‘Crime in Britain’s most affluent areas is soaring at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country, a Telegraph analysis of official data has revealed. Robbery, theft and drug offences … Continue reading Daily Telegraph image illustrates Reporting Scotland Up’s call for a hard border