In an interview with the BBC, reported in the Telegraph today, expressing disappointment that only 10% of 12-15 year-olds in England had been vaccinated because of the flawed government strategy of only doing it in schools, Prof Calum Semple OBE said: I can’t step on the toes of the policymakers [but] I do think some flexibility would be great. And I’m sure there are people thinking about it. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/englands-slow-vaccine-rollout-children-risks-new-covid-spike/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1633787996 Really what sort of public intellectual is that? That’s what makes a real prof, challenging lazy uncritical thinking in the public interest, stepping on toes. Compared to Sridhar, Bauld and others … Continue reading Really? English profs ‘can’t step on the toes of policymakers?’

In the Telegraph today: England is vulnerable to a new spike in coronavirus cases because it is taking so long to inoculate children, experts have warned. While Scotland has vaccinated more than a quarter of all 12- to 15-year-olds and several European countries have vaccinated nearly all of them, England has only got first jabs to 10 per cent of the age group nearly a month after receiving the go-ahead. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/englands-slow-vaccine-rollout-children-risks-new-covid-spike/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1633787996 The gap is actually greater than suggested above. Scotland has vaccinated 36% of 12-15 year-olds: https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/covid-19-vaccination-in-scotland/resource/9b99e278-b8d8-47df-8d7a-a8cf98519ac1 Why has England vaccinated so few? Devi Sridhar, a professor of global public health at … Continue reading History repeats itself as Tories botch vaccine rollout again

The level of new Covid infections is now 50% higher in England, 100% higher in Northern Ireland and 200% higher in Wales than in Scotland. BBC Northern Ireland has reported but has not noted any issue while BBC England and BBC Wales are more excited about Tyson Fury and local violence. This dramatic news is clearly not in the public interest as BBC Scotland busy themselves trying to blame the SNP for gas shortages in a country producing 4 times the supply it consumes. George Foulkes has, I sense, just blamed Nicola Sturgeon for getting the infection rate down on … Continue reading Sturgeon accused of cover-up as infection levels surge everywhere apart from in Scotland

BBC Scotland has no Covid news today and BBC UK has only the above good news. Could BBC Scotland have had this? So, in the last week, Scotland vaccinated around twice as many pro rata as the rest of Rumpuk. Newsworthy? Imagine, England was vaccinating twice as many as Scotland, we’d be lagging behind all over BBC Scotland. Continue reading Scotland’s vaccination rate soars to TWICE that of England!

Gordon Bennet! That’s a corker of a front page. Will it work? Will it attract or repel Sunday-readers? Natural disaster? What, really? Have the wind turbines killed all our birdlife? Are they causing a surge in ear cancer? Are they attracting UFOs? Is the headline a bit National Enquirer? Seriously though, this is another disgraceful piece of misrepresentation by the Herald. Leaving aside the irrelevant references to job creation, the headline above and the sub are based on UK data from the UK Department for Business Energy, for April to June 2021, indicating a fall of 9.6% across the UK … Continue reading Herald uses UK data to blame Scotland for UK ‘surge’ in fossil fuel use

In the Times today, co-written by John Boothman, former head of news at BBC Scotland before being moved on after bullying the daughter of Margo MacDonald: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/16/bbc-scotland-news-executive-john-boothman-moves-jobs BBC ‘bully’ finally moved out of top news job after staff protests Nicola Sturgeon kept Scotland in the dark over its first mass Covid outbreak against the advice of her health minister and the deputy chief medical officer — and a leading scientist says it potentially exposed more people to the virus. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nicola-sturgeon-overruled-covid-aides-cover-up-outbreak-nike-conference-edinburgh-sd7zszg3p?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1633848594 The remit of the health minster and the deputy chief medical officer is to put public health as a priority … Continue reading Sturgeon decision on Nike conference shown to have been wise

Foreword: I am of course, like Prof Pennington, not an epidemiologist or a virologist, though I do, again like him, know what it is to have turned up my nose at Wishaw spam. On the 20th June, the Sunday Post, reported: Scotland faces an influx of 6.4 million visitors this summer as UK staycationers head here in record numbers, according to industry data. Tracking research commissioned by GB national tourist boards, including VisitScotland, is used to measure UK residents’ holiday intentions, with the latest Scotland report, up to the end of last month, showing a “more positive” outlook than at … Continue reading Is this why Covid soared in Scotland from mid-August?

ACH (Write your own acronym – a complete….) is getting heavy media coverage with his call for weekly reporting of ambulance waiting times given the titchy size of his party. Shouldn’t the Greens have a bigger presence? Anyhow, it seems that his boss Sir Ed Davey is not calling for the same from NHS England where they are only prepared to make them up monthly despite them having been ‘off the scale’ according to BBC UK. Was ACH prompted by one of the two opposition leaders he’s keen to ally with, Douglas Ross, based on a typically dyscalculic report from … Continue reading Will Alex Cole Hamilton get Ed Davey to demand ambulance waiting times every week too?

There are five columns on this Scotsman page and former New Labour minister, Brian Wilson, with Lord McConnell’s special adviser, Susan Dalgety, make up the fifth column. These two are regular attack mutts on the SNP on an almost daily basis. Unhampered by any responsibility to offer evidence or, heaven forfend, the truth. I probably don’t need to remind of just how venal they can be but: Anyhow, Fifth Columnists: A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or nation. The activities of a fifth column can … Continue reading The Fifth Columnists?

There were around 18 000 new cases of Covid-19 in the same week as the TRNSMT festival: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases. Around 50 000 attended and according to BBC Scotland, 551 of new cases had been at the festival, though it is not clear home many picked up the infection there. Either way, that looks like 3% of all infections in Scotland or 1% of those attending – not big news. Continue reading TRNSMT transmitted a tiny 1% of cases