Talking-up Scotland

The Founder rests after sorting his rubbish into 5 different bins!

From Dr John W Robertson, Professor Naemeritus, founder of Talking-up Scotland and Thought Control Scotland (Chomsky-style):

I’ve been getting into that Twitter! Some of you are twits (?) but some are not. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m at: https://twitter.com/ProfJWR?lang=en-gb

The reason is penetration! I can just post a picture of a Yoon headline and write a single sentence criticising it but earn more than 20 000 ‘impressions’ in minutes. When I write a more extended piece for TuS, taking an hour, I sometimes get only 500! When I share the same thing on Facebook, I’m lucky to get a handful of shares.

I will continue to write longer pieces for the blog and try to remember to put them on Facebook but, inevitably, I’m drawn to spend time on the apparently catchy shorter comments which get lots of interest. So, if I don’t notice your comments under a blog piece, apologies but I’m twittering for freedom! The answer is before you:

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me 
If you want to be a hero well just follow me…

 

So almost 100% take-up of the scheme by Scottish parents (below) suggests, once more, the SCAUP remains the party most likely to lie (more below).

file:///D:/Users/John/Downloads/equality-impact-assessment-expansion-early-learning-childcare.pdf

Take-up in England was 94% in 2018.

https://www.aboutearlyyears.co.uk/media/1257/about-early-years-annual-report-2017-2018_main-report-issue-1_opt.pdf

This Tory fib is of course not unusual:

https://theferret.scot/ferret-fact-service-fact-checking-numbers/

 From Energy Voice yesterday:

‘Scottish renewable energy hits ‘record generation’ in 2019. Electricity from renewable energy generation in Scotland has reached record levels in the first quarter of 2019, new figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has shown. According to BEIS, in the first quarter of 2019 renewable generation in Scotland was 8,877 gigawatts (GW) – enough to power around 88% of Scottish households for a year. The figure is an increase in generation of 17% on the same quarter in 2018.’

https://www.energyvoice.com/otherenergy/202451/scottish-renewable-energy-hits-record-generation-in-2019/

Though reducing the support for this, Westminster has of course been pleased to use it to falsely claim success in achieving their renewable power targets:

8% of the population but 20% of the electricity production: How Scotland subsidises Britain’s green power ‘achievement’

There’s no mention of electricity transfers from Scotland to rUK in this Guardian report on a ‘landmark’ achievement by Britain, yesterday, but the scale of those is massive and increasing as Scotland generates more and more electricity from renewables. We…

83% Increase in Electricity Transfers FROM Scotland TO England & Wales missed by our NoMedia

These UK Government figures, released two days ago, reveal the massive and increasing level of transfer of electricity from Scotland to England. In 2018 only, the transfer rate increased from 13 512 GWh to nearly 25 000 GWh. 1 GWh…

8% of the population but 28.5% of the wind-powered electricity

The UK as a whole generates up to 20 000 MW with wind power, on a good day, on and offshore. Scotland generates up 5 700 MW. I suspect Scotland does it more reliably due to more windy days but…

 

Liam McArthur Lib Dem Prison Scandal Spokesperson

file:///D:/Users/John/Downloads/FOI%20HQ%20190336489_3086.pdf

A Freedom of Information request to the Scottish Prison Service has found that SPS staff are not using their computers for personal interest surfing. You’ll remember Theresa-mate and Deputy PM in the infamous coalition with the Lib Dems, the Right DB Damian Greene, was famously sacked for allegedly watching porn on his. I don’t know for certain who made the FOI request, but McArthur is the biggest fan of writing to the SPS in the hope of exposing the SNP’s ‘failure’ to run the prison service. Here are some of his recent fibs based on FOI:

McArthur’s party is not typically that interested in trying to stop any kind of online abuse:

 

Based on a sub-poll of 133 adults, on 21^st to 25^th June 2019, with 5% not intending to vote:

• Con 28%
• Lab 9%
• Lib 14%
• SNP 46%
• Green 2%
• Brexit 1%
• Not 5%

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2019-06/pm_-_tables_-_270619.pdf

In contrast with the YouGov poll (below) putting the Cons at only 14% this seems to understate the likely Brexit threat to them. Taking out the not-voting, the SNP share goes up to over 48%.

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2019/06/27/indy-parties-at-52-in-latest-westminster-poll/

 

Ludo Thierry writes:

Some stats on Homelessnes/Homlessness applications in Scotland were published today. I’ve no quibble with the beeb Scotland article – which seems broadly accurate – but, I would suggest, has missed a few of the more encouraging fine-grain numbers in the reports. Worth checking the fuller details at the news.gov.scot site. Link and snippets below:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-48771698
Homelessness applications on the rise in Scotland

https://news.gov.scot/news/homelessness-and-housing-options-statistics-published-5

Homelessness in Scotland: 2018/19 publication presents information on local authority homelessness applications, assessments and outcomes in the period from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019: Scottish local authorities received 36,465 applications for homelessness assistance between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019, 3% higher than the same period during 2017/18.

The annual increase in homelessness applications follows a slight increase last year and eight consecutive annual decreases seen in the preceding years (from a peak of 60,298 in 2005/06 to 34,726 in 2016/17).

1,744 of those assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness were assessed as repeated homeless. This was 5.8% of those assessed, a proportion that has fallen from 7.0% in 2014/15.

Outcomes
• 71% of those assessed as unintentionally homeless or threatened with homelessness secured settled accommodation. This proportion has risen consistently from 48% in 2002/03.

Housing Options (PREVENT1) Statistics in Scotland: 2018/19: Housing Options has been described as: “a process which starts with housing advice when someone approaches a local authority with a housing problem. This means looking at an individual’s options and choices in the widest sense. This approach features early intervention and explores all possible tenure options, including council housing, housing associations and the private rented sector.

The advice can also cover personal circumstances which may not necessarily be housing related, such as debt advice, mediation and mental health issues”.

In the last year (1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019), there were 42,850 approaches recorded. Compared with the same period one year ago, there has been a reduction of 2,995 approaches across Scotland (-7%).

Despite the overall reduction in Housing Options approaches when comparing 2018/19 with 2017/18, the proportion of approaches made for homelessness type reasons (59%) versus prevention type reasons (41%) has fallen across these two years. In 2017/18 61% of approaches were for homelessness type reasons.

I don’t need to repeat the earlier lies about patients dying ‘after’ infections which turned out, always, to have been only contributory factors. You can read about them all in earlier posts here. Just search for ‘infections.’

They lied again this morning and at 1.30 today, they said this:

‘A major inquiry into Scotland’s biggest hospital tries to establish why staff are struggling to control infection outbreaks.’

Remember there were outbreaks of a fungal infection in two wards of a 1 677-bed, 1 109 patient room hospital in February 2019. There have been none reported since.

Are staff struggling? That there have been infections in only two of more than 1 000 places since the opening of the hospital in 2016, suggests otherwise. Further it looks like the choice of the word ‘struggling’ is unique to Reporting Scotland. It does not appear in the BBC Scotland website report nor does it appear in any press reports. We’re reminded of their labelling of NHS Tayside’s oncology department ‘dysfunctional’, when no one else did and, as we now know, stupidly.

 

 

 

Can things get any worse for the Scottish Conservatives? Only months after accusations of being a sex pest, Ross Thomson has been appointed to run the Boris campaign in Scotland. It’s hard to imagine anything going less well.

Now we hear that four of the Scottish MPs will support Boris in opposition to their ‘party leader’ in Scotland, Ruth Davidson, a long-time opponent of the Johnson. A recent Panelbase poll found that a Johnson leadership would push support for independence up to 53%.

BBC Scotland has ‘bravely’ described the split in the party in this headline:

Two weeks ago, a YouGov poll revealed, astonishingly, that around two thirds of Tory party members would rather see Scotland leave than see Brexit fail. On top of this, yesterday’s YouGov poll puts the Conservatives in Scotland down at 14% well below the UK average of around 24% and in danger of extinction in the next election.

So, there you have them – sex pests, a split in support for the leader, plummeting support in the polls, dumped by their English members and with a probable leader who calls us ‘jocks’, yet there is no mention anywhere in our NoMedia of split, schism or civil war.

 

From YouGov with a sub-poll of 177 adults, on 24^th to 25^th June 2019:

• Con 14%
• Lab 7%
• LibD 13%
• SNP 43%
• Brexit 7%
• Green 9%

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/qqv5xpbu20/TheTimes_190625_VI_Trackers_w.pdf

So, another sub-poll revealing SNP support solid at greater than 40% to take almost all the Scottish seats, pro-Indy parties together at 52%, Brexit way down on their UK dominant figure of around 24%, Tories wiped out and Labour disappearing from the scene.

 

Scotland early this morning: Child abuse, hospital infections, children with special needs and prisoners claiming benefits but no time for Scottish Conservatives split or civil war?

They only had two or three minutes. but they managed to get these depressing and of course untrue images in in:

Child Abuse

‘Two families have spoken out after being wrongly suspected by the same doctor of fabricating or inducing illness in their children. Families [2] are calling for a review of the child protection system and say a growing number of parents are being accused and then cleared.’

So, ‘families’ really means just two. We then saw one parent complain and there is only one more in the full report on the website, but of course no actual evidence of a wider problem that might have turned this case into news in the public interest.

Hospital Infections

‘An investigation was announced following a series of infection outbreaks including the deaths of two people.’  

The supposed ‘series’ was in fact two or at worst three incidents. In the Southern General case, neither died from the infections. BBC website at the time said:

‘The health board said one of the patients was elderly and had died from ‘an unrelated cause’. The factors contributing to the death of the other patient are being investigated.’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-46953707 So in neither case did the patient die ‘from’ a rare fungal infection. One clearly died from ‘an unrelated cause’ and the other’s death was still being investigated.’

We later heard from Lisa Summers that the infection had only been a ‘contributory factor’ in the second case.

Pupils with special needs

‘Parents of pupils with additional support needs are demonstrating outside council offices across the Highlands alter. They’re campaigning against plans to cut the number of classroom assistant and specially-trained teachers.’

There was of course no sign of just how many patients and so no suggestion of a wider problem worth reporting in public interest

Prisoners

And finally, prisoners being trained to claim benefits. SNP soft on criminals again? Ask Ruth?

What happened to the Tory leadership campaign? What does Ruth think?

Anyhow, now that you’ve had that dose of misery, how do you feel about constitutional change? Fancy a referendum on independence? No? just want to lie down?