Starting the day as I do with the BBC Scotland news insert at 06:26am, fuelled only by coffee, is a high-risk strategy. They had only murder on their minds. There were two killings, one which was decades ago, to start with, then another of those reports by some pressure group reminding us that one of the best health services in the world and the best in the UK by far, isn’t doing something as well as they’d like. Their strategy of murdering the popularity of NHS Scotland, with a thousand wee cuts, preferably early in the morning when the old and the inform voters are at their most vulnerable, may turn out to be the only effective weapon they have.
Luckily BBC Salford are not ‘with’ the BBC Scotland ‘project’ and report galey on WWF Scotland’s highly encouraging news on wind power. See this extract from Evwind:
- Wind turbines generated the equivalent of 98% of all Scotland’s electricity demand in October, according to new analysis.
- WWF Scotland said that National Grid demand for the month was 1,850,512 MWh and that almost all of this could have been provided by wind turbines, which provided record levels of power.
- Turbines generated the equivalent of 98% of all Scotland’s electricity demand or enough to power nearly five million homes last month, the group said.
- On 27 days generation was over 100% of households while on 16 days generation was more than 100% of demand.
- The best day was October 23 when turbines generated 105,900.94 MWh, enough to power 72 million homes or 356% of households, according to WWF Scotland analysis of data from Weather Energy.
Once more, you do wonder how we’d cope if we got independence. Mind you there’s all that oil to get rid of and at troublingly high prices too. Maybe the UK Treasury could just give it away for us? They already are? Phew, saved!
Talking-up Scotland 
This has been the practice for many, many years. For much of the time it has been releases from the Scottish Conservatives. As the programme unfolds often, these stories change or get dropped, but, usually resurface on reporting Scotland on the TV news. I can recall an aside in a piece by Derek Bateman in which he made a passing comment about the poshly named young women who drafted these pieces for inclusion in the bulletins.
It is clear that the presenters are capable of doing research and asking meaningful questions. This morning there was a fairly informative interview of Finance Secretary, Derek MacKay by Gary Robertson. There were no interruptions and the questioning sought to open up the nuances of the situation. However, almost immediately after, there was an interview by Gilliam Marles of Mr John Lauder of Sustrans regarding an appeal to reduce the speed limit in rural areas to 20mph (most serious injuries and fatalities occur in rural areas rather than Edinburgh and Glasgow) and to improve cycling infrastructure on these roads. Immediately Ms Marles claimed that ‘motorists pay for roads’. She is flying the old canard of ‘Road Tax’. Britain has never had Road Tax. Winston Churchill rubbished this assertion back in the 1920’s. Road building is funded from general taxation. She has form on this as has BBC Scotland which is strongly pro-motoring.
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