The morning after 37 die, in an astonishing sequence of reports challenging the Scottish Government’s strategy to reduce the infection rate and thus the death rate to come, BBC Scotland’s agenda is a sequence of stories questioning the strategy and headlining ‘damaging covid curbs on jobs and businesses’. We then hear what is meant by business – just non-essential consumption, drinking and leisure, temporarily closed pubs, gyms and less Christmas shopping. I’m sorry, lives come first. Worst of all, we hear of the threat that nightshift taxi driving will ‘cease to exist.’ It seems they’re getting other daytime jobs. Wait, … Continue reading Sorry First Minister some old folk will just have to ‘cease to exist’

The Scotsman yesterday with three reports questioning the Scottish Government’s strategy. The Irish Independent, informative and educational. BBC Scotland casting doubt on compliance, portraying the Scottish Government as ‘Big Brother’, highlighting death and suggesting businesses are victims of harsh treatment. RTE, the equivalent to BBC, informative and educational, helping it’s audience without demoralising them. There urgently needs to be a critical discussion of the role journalists play in UK society. Does this include education, or should the focus just be on holding others to account combined with human-interest stories? Currently, there is a debate about the UK’s comparative failure in … Continue reading How a normal country’s media help fight a pandemic

By sam Outsourcing resulted in the degradation of the terms and conditions of the workers in care homes. Privatisation of care homes was much more marked in England than Scotland. It is likely to be easier to take social care out of private hands in Scotland than England. Here is why. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/adult-social-care-is-privatisation-irreversible/  In England “Market Penetration:….In 1979, 64% of residential and nursing home beds were still provided by local authorities or the NHS; by 2012 it was 6%. In the case of domiciliary care, 95% was directly provided by local authorities as late as 1993; by 2012 it was just … Continue reading Outsourcing Care for the Elderly

By Brenda Steele: Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: David Nabarro says ‘circuit breakers’ should be reserve rather than primary measure National lockdowns should be used only as a “reserve” measure to control coronavirus, according to the World Health Organization’s special envoy on Covid. Dr David Nabarro said “circuit breakers” should not be a “primary measure” for tackling the spread of Covid, as France prepares for its next national lockdown and Germany introduces tighter national measures. The UK government continues to say it will do “everything we can” to avoid a national lockdown, despite pressure from its own advisers … Continue reading Latest from WHO on ‘circuit breakers’ and England’s teenage contact tracers

David Bol from the Herald at the FM Briefing today: Care home size is much more strongly associated with the risk than the discharges but on June 4th Jeanne Freeman told Holyrood’s Health Committee that smaller care homes appeared to do better in handling the virus. Given that was known in June, have larger care homes been given any tailored advice or rules, given that the Scottish Government has been aware of that increased risk for almost five months? It’s a jaw-dropper of a question. Does Bol think there’s some scientific law operating here? It’s a correlation not cause and … Continue reading Why did SNP not help the tax-avoiding corporate care home-owners to keep their residents alive?

From our Glasgow Sport Correspondent, Brian McGowan: Stobhill hospital has launched a same-day hip replacement programme and has successfully treated its first patient. The programme is built on established principles from the pioneering partial knee-replacement service established at the hospital two years ago. Orthopaedic services were temporarily paused due to the pandemic but have now relaunched with expanded capacity. William Clunas, 29 from Kilsyth, was admitted as an outpatient to Stobhill ACH on the 13th of October and discharged the same day after successfully receiving a full hip surgery to replace his right hip. Electrician William initially thought he had … Continue reading Glasgow Hospitals are Miles Better than BBC Scotland would have you believe!

By stewartb The Church of Scotland has just announced that the Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords, Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Jim Wallace) has been chosen as next Moderator of the General Assembly. Older readers will recall that Lord Wallace has been a prominent party politician since becoming leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats in 1992. He has held senior positions in Westminster and, post devolution, at Holyrood. He entered the House of Lords in 2007 and served as the Advocate General for Scotland between 2010-15 in the Tory/Lib Dem coalition government. What now for the noble Lord? … Continue reading Long read: Lord Wallace of Tankerness – still sure & steadfast in his (Unionist) faith, regardless?

Today at Holyrood, reporting on First Minister’s Questions, BBC Scotland’s Brian Taylor told us: She [the FM] was also questioned very closely indeed about the impact on care homes of transfer from hospital of patients who either had not been tested or had tested positive for Coronavirus. He did not tell us that the report being used by opposition politicians to question her very closely had concluded that those ‘transfers’ played no statistically significant part in the outbreaks in care homes and, in his terms, had no meaningful impact. The omission of the key conclusion of the report to protect … Continue reading Bias by Omission: Brian Taylor misses out the key point in the News

There are two words missing, from the 59 pages of the above report released yesterday to the enormous disappointment of the opposition parties and the media which act as a conduit for their attacks on the Scottish Government. Typically blinkered when the news does not suit their agenda, they have just ignored the report’s main conclusion, that hospital discharges played no meaningful, statistically significant, role in the outbreaks and returned to their playground chant: Oooh, you did discharge 78 people who tested positive into care homes! That these homes willingly accepted the patients, for big bucks, have infection control procedures … Continue reading The Care Home Deaths Report: The Guilty Parties Unnamed but obvious

Opening with dramatic announcements from the leaders of Germany and France, Newsnight, proceeds to discuss the future for the UK ignorant of the fact that things are moving differently in Scotland. We hear: As UK case numbers continue to surge are country-wide lockdowns inevitable across the UK? So could we and would we follow stricter rules if necessary in a national lockdown? Introduced with UK figures, two English academics attack the UK Government’s messaging and predict less than solid compliance with lock-down rules. Meanwhile, in a land not that far away, things are already very different: In Scotland, the infection … Continue reading There need be no nation-wide lockdown here