The Herald today, deploying all the lack of accuracy and honesty it’s become known for, delivers a howler of a headline. Even BBC Scotland has held back from such dishonesty: The SNP’s ruling body has ordered a review of transparency and the way the party is managed after recent controversy over its finances. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-65277808 That’s clear even to a wean/bairn. The SNP itself is not even imposing auditors on itself. All that has been proposed is: Party leader Humza Yousaf said a new working group would publish an interim report in June. It will be followed by a full report … Continue reading The SNP ‘might’ ‘invite’ new auditors just as it has always done anyway?

We’ve seen before just how imbalanced and generally predisposed to undermine the SNP in government, the Ferret Fact Service (FFS) can be. If you can be bothered see: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/?s=Ferret Today, alerted by reader kelticgirl, I see they’re at it again on A&E comparisons with England – Comparing Scotland and England’s A and E performance. First they other us this: In an attempt to suggest a kind of equivalence, they present the data for ‘ALL’ emergency departments and tell us England is doing better. This is irrelevant. The smaller ‘elastoplast’ departments are not A&E facilities in any meaningful sense. No other … Continue reading The Ferret’s FFS checking of A&E in England and Scotland

Rod Liddle, above, in the Times on April 2, still trying to fool us with a very old photo and still revealing he remains the nasty gammon he has always been: Nasty? Where to begin, or end for that matter. These: Quite a striking similarity with Jeremy Clarkson? The face of gammon. Humza useless? No health strikes at all, the best A&E, ambulance and cancer waiting times in the UK, the lowest Covid death rate, more nurses, doctors and health visitors….. Continue reading It’s not anti-English to be more than sceptical about Rod Liddle – I’m just just biased against nasty people

The above response to criticism of their way-out predictions, from @predictorelect is revealing – no rational, evidence-based argument in favour of their findings, just abuse. My comments, two days ago: This yesterday, from the very new (March 2023) Election Predictor is a dramatic outlier prediction of a collapse in SNP Westminster support with: Labour 27 seats (+26) SNP 20 seats (-28) Lib Dems 6 seats (+2) Conservatives 6 seats (no change). On the same day, Polling UK had this: 51 SNP seats and a tiny handful of Labour (1), Con (3?) and LD (4?). The most recent mainstream poll analysis from Electoral Calculus has the SNP … Continue reading Who is Election Predictor and who is funding them?

Back in February 2023, the Herald’s Health Correspondent, under the above headline, noted: At the time, we found that they had done that partly, at least, by sacrificing those on the still-long but less than two-year lists: The UK Government and NHS England have been sneaky again, as they did when they began restarting the clock for A&E patients, after they had been triaged. They knew how the media feasted on stories of patients waiting more than two years and regardless of the seriousness of the cases, threw money at them, rushing them through private hospitals and at the expense of other … Continue reading Scottish taxpayers helped to fund cost of eradicating England’s two-year waiting list

Another wee misleading scare story from the Herald today – why are Scotland and Wales not testing for PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) as much as they are in England? Might this suggest a reason? From the Guardian in February 2023: Is anyone suggesting that Ireland, Wales and Norway are behind Belgium or maybe it’s because they, like Scotland, have better environmental standards, better water quality, reducing the need for such testing? Continue reading Why is England behind Scotland on actual levels of toxic chemicals in our blood and birds?

News, sadly for us, is often the result of utterly cynical choices about what and how to report, for maximum effect and not for the truth. First is the SNP camper van ‘state-of-the-art’ or ‘high-end?’ According to the evidence below, the above camper van was bought for just over £80 000 in 2021. It’s hardly ‘state-of-the-art’ or ‘high-end’, given that you can pay up to $3 million for the Marchi Mobile EleMMent Palazzo. Even within the Niesmann + Bischoff motorhome range, the really high-end ones cost as much as £180 000! Why was it bought? ‘Down the page’, the Daily … Continue reading SNP praised for responsible approach to campaigning during pandemic with modest, basic, ordinary, low-cost camper van

By stewartb After a long-running campaign by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), NHS England has altered the way it reports monthly performance data on long waits by patients attending its major (Type 1) A&E departments. In evidence to a House of Lords committee (on 19 January 2023), the prevailing practice of measuring 12-hour waits from the time of a ‘decision to admit’ (DTA) rather than from ‘time of arrival’ (TOA – as in Scotland) was described by Dr Adrian Boyle, President of the RCEM as “a fundamentally dishonest way of reporting data. It is hiding and doing our … Continue reading Finally, NHS England sorts ‘dishonest’ reporting of long A&E waits – revealing much better performance by NHS Scotland!

Today, the Herald tells us gleefully that ONE of CalMac’s busiest lifeline service has lost its only boat – at a time when they would expect to have two – after yet another ferry breakdown. The actual details – the last sailing from Brodick yesterday was at 3pm with buses then laid on for transfers to the Lochranza ferry crossing in the north of the island. This morning on BBC 1, of all places, at 06:27am: From the Calmac status alert, up from yesterday: Friday 14th April Repairs have been successfully carried out on the vessel’s engine exhaust leak. Service … Continue reading Beyond a joke: The Herald’s ferry-reporting fiasco