In February 2021, in Scotland: 86.2% of attendances at A&E services were seen and resulted in a subsequent admission, transfer or discharge within 4 hours. https://beta.isdscotland.org/find-publications-and-data/health-services/hospital-care/ae-activity-and-waiting-times/ In England only 77.4% were seen within 4 hours. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/ae-attendances-and-emergency-admissions-2020-21/ The gap is probably even greater because. BBC Scotland has accused NHS England of fiddling the figures by selection which departments are included: https://fullfact.org/health/fiddled-accident-emergency-statistics/ NHS England starts the clock again after patients are admitted while NHS Scotland counts from arrival in A&E: https://inews.co.uk/news/health/nhs-england-covering-up-true-scale-of-12-hour-hospital-waits-1335856 Continue reading NHS Scotland Accident and Emergency departments much faster than NHS England

The son of an unelected governor in Pakistan cares little for the democratic will of the Scottish people? Who’d have thought? From SNP Media today: The SNP has challenged the Labour Party to “stop denying democracy” and back a post-pandemic independence referendum, to give people in Scotland a choice over their future. It comes as former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish urged Anas Sarwar to ditch the party’s opposition to a referendum because it “will happen some time” and Labour’s decision to side with the Tories has “never been a vote winner”. Commenting, SNP Deputy Leader Keith Brown said: “The … Continue reading Sarwar accused of anti-democratic values

The above graph shows that great equality is the most effective way to close attainment targets. It’s from: From SNP Media today: Deputy First Minister John Swinney will today (Tuesday) pledge to tear down barriers to learning as he unveils a package of practical measures designed to reduce the cost of the school day. The Education Secretary will confirm that an SNP government will end the practice – common in practical subjects such as art and design, music, home economics, hospitality and technology – of pupils being expected to pay fees for materials or provide their own. Mr Swinney will … Continue reading SNP to push for greater equality in Schools

From the SNP Press Office today: Boris Johnson’s Tory government is under mounting pressure over the “rampant cronyism” driving his government, with the SNP demanding senior Cabinet ministers come before Parliament to disclose their full exchanges with David Cameron. SNP MP Stewart Hosie warned that the Tory government was “rotten to its very core” as revelations around the Greensill scandal continue to develop. The Greensill episode has so far revealed that David Cameron lobbied the Chancellor and Health Secretary, as well as senior Government officials, to try and secure access for Greensill Capital to taxpayer funded Covid loan schemes. He exchanged casual text messages … Continue reading SNP MP Stewart Hosie: Tory government “rotten to its very core”

We’ve seen this many times. When you ask people to prioritise things like the economy, health, education, the pandemic and independence, the latter tends to come last. Unionist pounce on the findings to suggests Scots are really that not bothered about it but it’s a classic misunderstanding of the limits of opinion polls. The first examples represent values that almost everyone would rate as high priorities and if they consistently put the pandemic above the economy that does tell you something because a government can allocate more resources to either, pass more legislation to deal with either but independence is … Continue reading Scots apparently not prioritising independence is misunderstanding of opinion

This Daily Express England report alerted me to the Opinium Westminster voting intentions poll for 8th April. In it only 34% opposed Scotland leaving the UK and a majority of Labour and Lib Dem voters supported the idea. Only Conservative voters (50%) were predominantly opposed. UK: Voting intention – 8th April 2021 In March 2014, an Opinium poll found 61% of English and Welsh respondents wanted Scotland to stay. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/01/english-welsh-majority-against-scots-independence The data for the Tory voters above are interesting given the Ipsos MORI poll in 2019 which asked party members whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead … Continue reading Support for keeping ‘verminous Scots’ in the Union almost halved in 6 years

From Recharge, yesterday: Renewables developer Iberdrola has unveiled plans to wire its 540MW Whitelee wind plant in the Scottish Highlands (sic) together with a solar array, battery facility and the UK’s largest electrolyser to create a new giant hydrogen production complex. Leaving aside the usual confusion about Scotland’s geography, this is a big deal, to wire together wind, solar and battery facilities to generate industrial-scale volumes of H² (hydrogen). From the report: The Whitelee-connected project, which will produce some 8 tonnes of H2 per day, will also be to Green Hydrogen for Glasgow, a scheme to deliver carbon-free transport for the … Continue reading Scotland’s renewables energy production keeps soaring

Ever ready to find something, anything that we, their readers, have suffered, the Herald finds that Wales has vaccinated 50.4% of its population overall while Scotland has only managed 48.8%, and headlines that Reporting Scotland favourite notion of Scotland being behind. OMG. How awful is that? Not. Wales has had a very good reason to push on hard with vaccinations. Their death rate since their Labour administration took them foolishly out of lockdown too quickly in November, soared above that experienced in Scotland. Over the whole pandemic, Wales has lost 175.4 per 100 000 while Scotland has lost 139.7, 20% … Continue reading Covid deaths: How far behind is Scotland?

From the Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is an international human rights treaty which sets out the rights every child has. The UK ratified the UNCRC in 1991 but it has not yet been made part of domestic law. This means that many of the protections contained within it are not accessible to children and young people across the UK. Scotland is in a unique position to make children’s rights part of its laws. This process is called incorporation. In March 2021, after over 10 years of campaigning by children, young people and wider … Continue reading Working as if we live in the early days of a better nation for our bairns/weans

By stewartb The House of Commons Library (HoCL) has just published (9 April 2021) a briefing paper entitled: ‘Pensions: international comparisons’. It is described as “A look at how UK pensions compare with those in other countries. The note compares the UK state pension with similar systems in Europe and goes on to look more broadly at the structural differences in the sources of pensioner income across economically advanced countries.” Source: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn00290/ From the paper’s conclusions: the UK provides a lower level of pension than most other advanced economies relative to average earnings the UK devotes a smaller percentage of … Continue reading Simply not the best – very far from it! The state of UK pension provision that without independence Scotland can’t fix.