Tag: food

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Scottish cereal harvest achieves a ten-year high! Enough to feed 7.5 million before we get to the salmon and whisky to wash it down

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Professor John Robertson OBA From Cereal and oilseed rape harvest: final estimates – 2025 published yesterday: Cereal production is up nearly 10% on the last days of Labour (Table 2 in Supporting Documents). How many people could survive for a year on a harvest of 3.14 million tonnes of cereal including 1 million tonnes of wheat, 363 thousand tonnes of winter barley, 1 556 tonnes of spring barley and 185 thousand tonnes of oats? This harvest (≈1.55 million tonnes of cereal, of which 1 million tonnes is wheat) could keep roughly 7.4 to 7.5 million people alive for one full … Continue reading Scottish cereal harvest achieves a ten-year high! Enough to feed 7.5 million before we get to the salmon and whisky to wash it down

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Let’s be sure we learn this lesson from history as global uranium demand and Labour’s nuclear plans threaten the lives of the people of the Orkney Islands: Edited

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Professor John Robertson OBA Thanks to Frances McKie for alerting us to this again, as she did in March 2025. In Investing.com, two days ago, the above graph and: When the U.S. government announced an $80 billion commitment to build new nuclear reactors, Cameco Corp (NYSE:CCJ) became the talk of Wall Street. The stock skyrocketed 20% in a single day, adding $9 billion to its value and reaching an all-time high of $106.91. Analysts gushed. Investors piled in. It was the obvious winner. But here’s what almost nobody noticed: America is about to need far more uranium than it can get, and the companies … Continue reading Let’s be sure we learn this lesson from history as global uranium demand and Labour’s nuclear plans threaten the lives of the people of the Orkney Islands: Edited

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More than 500 avoidable baby deaths implicated in reports across 14 NHS England maternity services but not one in Scotland – here’s why

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Professor John Robertson OBA From BBC West Yorkshire today: An independent inquiry into “repeated failures” at an NHS trust’s maternity units has been announced by Health Secretary Wes Streeting, following potentially avoidable harm to babies and mothers. Earlier this year a BBC investigation revealed that the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTH) over the past five years may have been prevented. Streeting said a thorough investigation was required to understand what had “gone so catastrophically wrong” at the trust’s maternity units at Leeds General Infirmary and St James’s University Hospital. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gpxnk9n4po … Continue reading More than 500 avoidable baby deaths implicated in reports across 14 NHS England maternity services but not one in Scotland – here’s why

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Home visits in Dumfries and Galloway are being done much quicker, much sooner in the day, and therefore care gets started sooner, admissions to hospital get done faster, but that was quickly turned around to bad news just as research revealed they did over and over in 2014

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Professor John Robertson OBA From BBC Scotland‘s short insert in BBC Breakfast this morning: GPs are attending 45% fewer home visits in Dumfries and Galloway, after a trial scheme with the Scottish Ambulance Service. Paramedics can now attend routine home visits, after which they report back to GPs fro further action. It’s hope the scheme could be replicated in other rural areas. GP – ‘Historically you GP would do house calls at the end of the morning surgery or perhaps in the afternoon. But the busier we get, the later visits were getting done, so now the people are being … Continue reading Home visits in Dumfries and Galloway are being done much quicker, much sooner in the day, and therefore care gets started sooner, admissions to hospital get done faster, but that was quickly turned around to bad news just as research revealed they did over and over in 2014

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Watch out for Jackie Baillie telling us we need Martha’s Rule too but failing to tell you that hospital acquired infections under the SNP are between a fifth and a half of the level in 2006, under Labour, an eighth of the level in England and a third of the level in Europe?

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Support Talking-up Scotland’s work to counter the lies and get you the facts, daily, at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/checkout/help-talking-up-scotland-tell-truth-about-scotland/payment/nBQxjVzq/details or by direct bank transfer method – Sort code 08-91-04, Account 12266421 Professor John Robertson OBA Being broadcast widely by BBC UK and in BBC Health, the above and: Martha’s rule, a way for families to seek an urgent second opinion if they are concerned about the care their loved ones receive, will be rolled out across all English hospitals delivering acute or short-term treatment. The telephone helpline, the result of a campaign by the parents of 13-year-old Martha Mills who died after serious failings in … Continue reading Watch out for Jackie Baillie telling us we need Martha’s Rule too but failing to tell you that hospital acquired infections under the SNP are between a fifth and a half of the level in 2006, under Labour, an eighth of the level in England and a third of the level in Europe?

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There might be one elsewhere in the UK but there is no healthcare postcode lottery of any kind in Scotland

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Support Talking-up Scotland’s work to counter the lies and get you the facts, daily, at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/checkout/help-talking-up-scotland-tell-truth-about-scotland/payment/nBQxjVzq/details or by direct bank transfer method – Sort code 08-91-04, Account 12266421 Professor John Robertson OBA The above 100 000 refers of course to the whole of the UK and not just Scotland. I don’t have time to fully investigate another scare story like this, but quickly: First, overall, there is no postcode lottery in Scotland’s hospitals and Glasgow’s super hospital is actually safer than average From Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios April 2024 to March 2025 published today, the above graph reveals that all of Scotland’s hospitals … Continue reading There might be one elsewhere in the UK but there is no healthcare postcode lottery of any kind in Scotland

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The morning after Fiona Bruce’s barefaced lie about NHS Scotland, BBC Health offer you the awful truth of how bad NHS England is on the key life-or-death 18 week wait

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performing so poorly? Professor John Robertson OBA BBC Question Time last night and Fiona Bruce was in fast with the above uninformed claim to bias proceedings. The following morning BBC Health has: How is your hospital doing as NHS battles to bring down waiting times? and the opportunity to just enter your postcode and get performance on the 18 week waiting list. This is the key waiting list, unlike the 2 year list, as it concerns treatment for ‘acute‘ life-threatening conditions such as heart disease, stroke and cancers, as opposed to ‘chronic‘ non-life-threatening’ (life-limiting I know), such as arthritis. A … Continue reading The morning after Fiona Bruce’s barefaced lie about NHS Scotland, BBC Health offer you the awful truth of how bad NHS England is on the key life-or-death 18 week wait

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A closed breastfeeding support service and failed hospital disinfectants research but no mention that Scotland has the lowest stillbirth rate and the cleanest hospitals in the UK

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By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS BBC Scotland today, headlining: A breastfeeding support service which has helped mums of newborn babies for a decade has closed down after funding was withdrawn. Breastfeeding Buddies was run by the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) charity in five hospitals in Greater Glasgow and Lothian, offering peer support to mothers who wanted to breastfeed. The Scottish government had previously funded the scheme directly but this year it said it had allowed the health boards to decide how to meet local need. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian will no longer fund … Continue reading A closed breastfeeding support service and failed hospital disinfectants research but no mention that Scotland has the lowest stillbirth rate and the cleanest hospitals in the UK

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More than 300 published studies prove that safe drug injection facilities reduce mortality and crime in surrounding areas but Reporting Scotland find a handful of locals to claim otherwise.

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….about the number of discarded needles that are being left outside it. Now the council have introduced bins to try to address the problem Professor John Robertson OBA BBC Reporting Scotland tonight reporting for the area around the pilot safe injection facility in Calton in Glasgow, now six months in operation, are uncritically accepting a few local residents’ claims that it has increased drug taking in the area. No reliable figures are offered. The report, typically, has no balance and lazily does not refer to the large body of existing published evidence on such facilities. From 8 years ago: The … Continue reading More than 300 published studies prove that safe drug injection facilities reduce mortality and crime in surrounding areas but Reporting Scotland find a handful of locals to claim otherwise.

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Reporting Scotland Darkly – how research reveals only BBC Scotland’s editors select the nightmares to make you so anxious you fear big changes such as independence

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Professor John Robertson OBA BBC Scotland’s short inserts in BBC Breakfast would have you not leave the house today. In a quickfire, punchy sequence, the editor had chosen for you – a surge of uncontrolled paedophilia on social media; cuts in social care; the restraining and seclusion of pupils with additional needs and the Scottish Government supposedly failing to manage the NHS [the best in the UK] to tackle long waiting lists. Then quickly, before the weather might cheer you up, a funeral. BBC Wales, always shorter with fewer stories, only had worries over low credit scores; a group evicted … Continue reading Reporting Scotland Darkly – how research reveals only BBC Scotland’s editors select the nightmares to make you so anxious you fear big changes such as independence