As another campaigning group ask the Scottish Government to top up a UK Government-determined benefit, the Winter Fuel Allowance of £100, by £50, BBC Scotland fail to give us any context. That’d be because, still worrying, it’s a better picture here than in England and Wales. These are, crudely, small numbers, but the 4% difference with Labour-led Wales is more than 5 000 pensioners. Continue reading Pensioner poverty in Scotland second-lowest in UK

By stewartb I want no-one to be homeless ever, anywhere. And I want to live in a country where national government and local government and local charities and communities and voters all strive to end homelessness. And I would criticise severely any government – SNP-run or otherwise – not working hard to address this! Although of lesser importance on a basic human level, I am also glad to have this information from TuS because it calls out a potential additional example of ‘bias by omission’ by corporate media and especially the BBC in Scotland. (Have we not a right to … Continue reading The charges against our (so called) public service broadcaster mount by the day

Look out for the above story making it onto BBC Scotland but don’t hold your breath Their record is not good. In September, I had to source this from a Welsh free newspaper: Public Service Broadcaster? Aye right! Continue reading Another opportunity for Reporting Scotland to tell us the truth on homelessness

It’s a longstanding tendency at Reporting Scotland to conceal interviewees’ association with opposition parties or groups with a Unionist agenda but Eleanor Bradford, really? Five years after Bradford left to be replaced by the perhaps even-less-capable, Lisa Summers, Bradford pops up with no mention of her past to be presented as another ‘mother’ let down by agencies responsible to the Scottish Government. In a Drivetime interview, with old colleagues such as John Beattie, fully presented on the website, there’s not a suggestion of her former employment with BBC Scotland. It’s a tragic tale, most of us would prefer to reflect … Continue reading Do they really think we’ve forgotten her?

Above, from the only good Scottish Labour MSP ever, scientists’ reaction to growing BBC schadenfreude regarding Germanic lockdowns, and vaccine jingoism, easily exposed by simply looking at the data from the whole pandemic: Continue reading BBC England’s ‘great Covid success’ doesn’t survive collision with facts

like so-called street valium, has risen sharply during lockdown. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone Reporting Scotland content themselves with a negative view. Things are clearly getting worse, they imply but they leave out this, in the online version: The Scottish Prison Service said it has invested in new ways to detect drugs. Paragraph 4 of around 30 A spokesman for the SPS said it treats the issue of smuggling drugs into prisons “very seriously” and the service had “invested in technology to better detect suspicious substances and work closely with partner agencies to garner relevant intelligence”. “We have over the last few years pointed … Continue reading Scottish prisons: Major success in detecting drugs and protecting inmates

First-off this morning, a story, repeated throughout the morning, which does not feature on the BBC Scotland website or on the BBC Health website or on the front pages of any of the 12 newspapers featured on the BBC Scotland site. The women have not yet protested. They ‘are protesting later in Glasgow at ongoing delays to their treatment. The women say they’re having to be assessed in Glasgow for follow-up surgery.’ Isn’t that normal? Imagine they were not assessed and something went wrong? Imagine Anas Sarwar shouting the name of the sufferer at Nicola, everywhere he could, unconvincingly pretending … Continue reading Setting the agenda for the day

Dublin to Zeebrugge, 572 miles in 11 hours and 44 minutes. Rosyth to Zeebrugge, 467 miles so 9.5 hours. No brainer? What Brexit has done to England and to Ireland in one dramatic image. Continue reading Time for Scotland to go with this flow

For the first time since 1997, the number of patients admitted for drug-related stays has fallen quite sharply. Readers will know that drug deaths and presumably incidents of hospitalisation are most common among the older users, Thatcher’s Children. The increase in drug deaths also seems to have stalled in the last two years. See this recent post for fuller account: Scotland’s MSM and opposition parties have their fingers stuffed in their ears on this. Continue reading More evidence Scotland’s drugs harm surge has peaked?