Tag: scotland

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‘The Home Office and policing do not have a shared understanding of the resource implications of changing demands’

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By stewartb The National Audit Office (NAO, November 3, 2025) published this report: ‘Police productivity – Home Office. Report HC 1380’. (https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/police-productivity.pdf) It is concerned with policing in England and Wales. The NAO notes that the Home Office allocates the majority of police funding for England and Wales. Why relevant to TuS and to Scotland? In common with other devolved public services, what the UK government decides on resources for policing in England and Wales impacts financial resources made available to the Scottish Government via the so-called Block Grant. And it is not only the size of the Block Grant that is impacted but … Continue reading ‘The Home Office and policing do not have a shared understanding of the resource implications of changing demands’

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Wealth Extraction – Another supposed supporter of independence works against it by denying colonialism and blaming the SNP

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Professor John Robertson OBA Like Wings and Craig Murray and Kevin McKenna, Robin McAlpine of Common Weal cannot get over the SNP leadership’s failure to recognise his supreme intelligence and usefulness to their policy development back in 2014. Still in the huff, he’s in the National today with the above and: If you support independence then I urge you to take a moment’s break from strategising about how to get a referendum (or whatever alternative plan you’re hatching) and take a look at a graph. It should be a rocket up our arse. It is time we took independence an … Continue reading Wealth Extraction – Another supposed supporter of independence works against it by denying colonialism and blaming the SNP

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Scots have ‘critically low’ democratic well-being staying in UK but are ‘twice as likely to have high trust’ in SNP Government even after 18 years – How did BBC Scotland cope with this?

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Professor John Robertson OBA From a large survey by Paris-based Ipsos for Carnegie UK, into wellbeing index for Scotland in 2025, highlighting collective wellbeing scores across various domains and demographic factors, BBC Scotland in their BBC Breakfast insert this morning, ignored the document’s built-in ‘Generative Summary‘, from the AI Assistant in order to extract their own agenda-driven headline points: Wellbeing has improved slightly in spite of the cost of living crisis. The Scottish Government continues to be trusted more than UK Government although trust in Westminster did improve while it stayed the same for Holyrood. Democratic well-being has not improved … Continue reading Scots have ‘critically low’ democratic well-being staying in UK but are ‘twice as likely to have high trust’ in SNP Government even after 18 years – How did BBC Scotland cope with this?

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UK Labour deny England’s under-22’s the ‘transformative benefit’ of Scotland’s free bus scheme as it hits more than 200 million journeys

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Thanks to Dottie for alerting me to this: From BBC Business two days ago: A proposed plan to trial free bus passes for under-22s in England will not go ahead as it is “unaffordable” at the moment, the government has said. The trial was one of a number of recommendations put forward by the Transport Committee, a cross-party group of backbench MPs,in a report this August – with the suggestion it would boost access to jobs and education. In its response, published on Friday, the government said no money was available for such a scheme during the current spending review period, which … Continue reading UK Labour deny England’s under-22’s the ‘transformative benefit’ of Scotland’s free bus scheme as it hits more than 200 million journeys

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There are NO places in Scotland where anything close to this horrific claim of ‘almost 100% of children live in poverty’ but there are 73, SEVENTY-THREE, in England

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Professor John Robertson OBA Thanks to Dottie for alerting us to this. In the Guardian yesterday, the above and: Almost 100% of children in 73 neighbourhoods in England are living in income-deprived families, according to new measures that factor in the impact of soaring rents. Changes to official measures reveal the neighbourhoods where in effect all children live in low-income households. Of these, 31 are in inner London boroughs with high housing costs such as Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Haringey and Westminster. The new indices of multiple deprivation confirm that attempts at levelling up have failed to shift stubbornly high levels of deprivation in so-called … Continue reading There are NO places in Scotland where anything close to this horrific claim of ‘almost 100% of children live in poverty’ but there are 73, SEVENTY-THREE, in England

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The case for or against approval of Western Link 2 from Ayrshire to Wales and the West Midlands

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Professor John Robertson OBA In the map above you can see the full range of networks transferring electricity from wind farms in Scottish waters, across the border into England & Wales. It’s a dramatic illustration of the UK’s increasing dependency on Scotland’s electricity generation. Just how much? From Energy Statistics for Scotland – Q2 2025 published today: In the second quarter of 2025, 8.1 TWh of renewable electricity was generated in Scotland. This is the most renewable electricity generated in the second quarter of any year in Scotland Scotland’s capacity for electricity generation from renewable sources has continued to increase and currently stands … Continue reading The case for or against approval of Western Link 2 from Ayrshire to Wales and the West Midlands

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There is no ‘care home crisis’ really as 14% of places are unfilled, just as in 2015, ten years ago

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Professor John Robertson OBA The Scottish media is awash with reports of a care home crisis as ‘elderly people struggle to access care‘ based on feeds from opposition parties. Typical is this from the Scottish Lib Dems in The Democrat yesterday: The crisis in social care is spiralling under the SNP after new figures revealed almost one in five care homes for adults has closed over the past decade. Scottish Liberal Democrat MP Angus MacDonald has today revealed the new census figures for this section of the care sector. West Dunbartonshire Council refuse to reveal the local figures to readers … Continue reading There is no ‘care home crisis’ really as 14% of places are unfilled, just as in 2015, ten years ago

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In only 4 minutes, four out of four BBC Scotland broadcast reports aim to worry viewers and three are explicitly associated with Scottish Government responsibility

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Professor John Robertson OBA Following on from a tale of ‘serious’ concerns in a maternity unit, BBC Scotland’s four morning inserts were all equally concerning and three of them were explicitly linked to Scottish Government (SNP) responsibility as in the first, above, on prison overcrowding. I’ve discussed several times before how such a morning diet for viewers, especially the elderly and the vulnerable, predisposes them to conservative political preferences and against change such as Scottish independence. For research evidence of this see: Reporting Scotland Darkly – how research reveals only BBC Scotland’s editors select the nightmares to make you so … Continue reading In only 4 minutes, four out of four BBC Scotland broadcast reports aim to worry viewers and three are explicitly associated with Scottish Government responsibility

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Scotland’s homicide rate plummets by more than half in last 20 years, below Denmark and well below rUK, in wake of 18 years of reducing inequality, predicted by researchers but the story falls off BBC Scotland in only hours

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Professor John Robertson OBA From Homicide in Scotland, 2024-25 published yesterday: Scotland’s Chief Statistician today published Homicide in Scotland, 2024-25. The publication provides information on crimes of homicide recorded by the police in Scotland in 2024-25. The main findings are: In 2024-25, 45 victims of homicide were recorded, 21% (or 12 victims) less than the 57 victims recorded in 2023-24. This is the lowest number of recorded homicide victims since comparable records began in 1976. Over the latest 20-year period from 2005-06 to 2024-25, the number of homicide victims in Scotland fell by 53% (or 51 victims) from 96 to … Continue reading Scotland’s homicide rate plummets by more than half in last 20 years, below Denmark and well below rUK, in wake of 18 years of reducing inequality, predicted by researchers but the story falls off BBC Scotland in only hours

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BBC Scotland – forced to apologise 5 times in 2025, often ‘politically slanted against the SNP’ and shockingly outnumbering those from all other UK BBC regional/national offices combined!

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Professor John Robertson OBA This is, for reasons of load, reliant almost entirely on Grog AI but I have checked it over and see no misunderstandings on its part. Critics of that must be asked what is wrong with the content or the sources? Recent Apologies by BBC Scotland for Inaccurate or Misleading ReportingBBC Scotland, like other BBC regional outlets, maintains a public corrections and clarifications page where it acknowledges errors in reporting. These often involve factual inaccuracies, misleading phrasing, or unchecked claims that can influence public perception, particularly on sensitive topics like politics, economics, and social issues. Based on … Continue reading BBC Scotland – forced to apologise 5 times in 2025, often ‘politically slanted against the SNP’ and shockingly outnumbering those from all other UK BBC regional/national offices combined!