Talking-up Scotland

On BBC Radio 2, at 7:00 am and repeated throughout the day:

‘The Scottish Government provides MORE financial support to victims than other parts of the UK.’

On BBC Radio Good Morning Scotland at 7am – child abuse, Ruth Davidson and whisky. Surely the worst treatment scandal in NHS history affecting many Scots too, is newsworthy. Reporting Scotland this morning is ignoring it too. I suppose they’ll say it would be duplicating the main news. Was their coverage of the return of Ruth Davidson not duplication too? No? Enlighten me.

What about the website? There’s more space there:

Nope. Dog of the year, first female Sikh DJ and something about Kezia Dugdale further down. Ridiculous! Kezia’s latest victory in getting a new (any) job should be the big one. Let’s see if STV know what’s big today:

That’s more like it and there’s no mention of that upsetting blood scandal below.

The Herald and the Scotsman, despite space for dozens of stories, have nothing on the ‘worst treatment scandal in NHS history’ or of any Scottish dimension to the story, that might interest their readers. The Record had plenty blood but not that kind.

Imagine if they had this to report:

‘The Scottish Government provides LESS financial support to victims than other parts of the UK.’

Eh?

 

 

Ruth Davidson’s return to politics today saw her on both Reporting Scotland and the main news where they’d all really prefer to be.

We heard again that she doesn’t want to be prime minister. Is there any evidence that anyone outside of their media bubble seriously think she could or should be? She has never won a first-past-the-post election, her branch of the party has never proposed a policy that has been adopted in at least ten years and she looks like presiding over terminal decline as the SNP swallows Labour and Brexit/UKIP bite her party in half. By all objective measures she has nothing beyond some alleged cheeky charm, and the pretend confidence of a third-team scrum-half.

I know why they like her, though. She seems to prefer the status quo with none of the unsettling changes offered by Corbyn/Leonard, by Farage/Johnson or, of course, by the SNP. The senior staff at the BBC long for a pre-Iraq Blairite Britain where you can pretend to care about the poor, even a do a wee bit for them, as long as you and your offspring can continue to benefit from the pretend meritocracy, where you can keep your pay differentials, where you can enjoy being part of sophisticated European culture and where you can hope for promotion to places where you might report on Britain as it projects itself globally. You might go to New York, Moscow, Paris or Beijing. You might even interview, and be seen doing so, the premiers of the leading powers. When you read politics at Glasgow, Edinburgh or Saint Andrews, you didn’t dream of reporting on farming subsidies in the Western Isles.

So, on BBC 1 News, we had a full two-minute interview with Scottish Labour-appointee, Sarah Smith, where Ruth was able to say with regard to a second independence referendum:

‘I’m saying that I’ll say no.’

Surely any half-baked interviewer might ask why she feels she is in a position to ‘say no’, as a leader of an unpopular minority party and why he has changed her mind (above).

Then Sarah tells us:

‘Ruth Davidson is often talked about as a future UK conservative party leader even prime minister’

This line keeps being repeated but only by journalists repeating what other journalists are saying based on the kind of sentiments discussed above. It’s just rubbish. When Ruth modestly declines, you’re left to wonder why on earth is that news and even news that has jumped out of the place where we live into the Big World of Westminster?

Perhaps most obviously absent was the returning leader of the Scottish Conservatives not being asked how she might react to the current existential threats being posed to them, in evidence from several polls, suggesting an SNP surge and clear inroads being made into their support even in Scotland by Brexit/UKIP.

On Reporting Scotland, Ruth was, surprise, surprise, the headline act, denying us a referendum again but best of all, we heard:

‘She intends to replace Ms Surgeon as First Minister at the elections in 2021.’

Good grief! The most recent YouGov full poll puts the SNP 23 points ahead with more than double the support of the Conservatives! Will anyone mention this? If it was reversed and they were interviewing Sturgeon, would they take off the gloves? Will they ask her about membership or the likely attendance at the forthcoming conference? No of course not. Don’t be daft.

Then when Brian does ask if Brexit has changed everything, with regard to second independence referendum, she ignores the question. He just lets it go.

Finally, Brian returns to the story that some Tories still hanker for Ruth to choose Westminster over Holyrood. Who are these people? I’ve never heard anyone, of any significance, say that.

 

In Energy Voice today:

‘The Scottish Government has recently set out the opportunities for hydrogen in its Energy Networks Vision and is now mapping locations in Scotland where hydrogen projects are best suited.  With Germany already operating the world’s first hydrogen-fuelled train, it would be great if Scotland could be next in line! Hydrogen buses are operating in Aberdeen and will be soon be in Dundee. A passenger ferry powered by fuel cell technology is under construction at Ferguson Marine in Glasgow, and on the Orkney island of Eday, the SurfnTurf project brings together two power sources – tidal and wind – with equipment (ITM Power electrolysers) to convert and store energy as hydrogen and ultimately used to power ferries.’

In what Unionists might think is an SNP campaign extract, Simon Williams, Legal Director, Energy and Infrastructure, Gillespie MacAndrew LLP, writes:

The Scottish Parliament certainly sees potential for jobs, the economy, the environment and the well-being of all of us by acting now to meet climate targets. The Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Bill has just completed stage 1 and there is an acknowledgement that investment in and support for innovation, knowledge exchange, technology transfer and support to key sectors such as agriculture and transport will be vital to meeting the targets.

The Scottish Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (SHFCA) estimates current projects with significant hydrogen and fuel cell (H&FC) content in Scotland are worth more than £100m, with £70m of this based in Orkney. The latest project for these islands is the ReFLEX project which will use a new Virtual Energy System (VES) to link and monitor electricity, transport and heat systems powered by local renewable energy, to enable the charging of flexible storage and battery technologies.

https://www.energyvoice.com/opinion/197931/unleashing-the-power-of-hydrogen/

Earlier pieces here on the gas:

Aberdeen leads way in Hydrogen-based transport

Aberdeen’s second hydrogen refuelling station opened on Tuesday. The city now has a station in the north and in the south of the city which can now refuel buses, vans and cars despite the differing pressure required for…

World’s first renewables-powered hydrogen ferry to be built in Port Glasgow

From World Maritime News yesterday: ‘Ferguson Marine and its European partners won a bid for EU funding support that would enable the building and launch of the world’s first sea-going car and passenger ferry fuelled by hydrogen. The supported development…

‘More on hydrogen buses’ by reader Alasdair Macdonald and further comment by Broadbield

The average age of buses in Glasgow is 10 years (cf Lothian buses, municipally owned, at arms’ length, is 4 years). So, not many hydrogen powered buses there, or even mildly green ones. Glasgow is to become a Low…

Aberdeen 20: Dundee 12? The competition for Europe’s largest fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses

The Dundee Courier, today, claimed: ‘Hydrogen-powered buses to put Dundee at forefront of green travel. Dundee is to get 12 hydrogen fuel cell buses in a bid to reduce emissions in the city as part of ambitious plans to promote…

Scotland’s cities ally to exploit hydrogen-based technologies. Scotland’s Unionist media ally to ignore it

An alliance between Scotland’s seven cities – Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Perth and Stirling – set up to develop a wider economic and environmental strategy will focus on hydrogen-based technologies. Aberdeen already has Europe’s largest fleet of hydrogen-fuelled buses,…

Europe’s biggest hydrogen-powered bus fleet and now the UK’s biggest hydrogen cell installation are both in Scotland

With a little irony, ‘Oil City’, Aberdeen, already has the UK’s largest hydrogen-powered bus fleet. The buses hold only 40Kg of hydrogen and have a range of 260 miles. The project cost £19 million and will make…

Europe’s largest fleet of hydrogen-fuelled buses is in Aberdeen

This CNBC report doesn’t say how many buses but says that the Oil City is ‘home to what is claimed to be Europe’s largest fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses.’ The buses hold only 40Kg of hydrogen and…

Scottish Government-funded, pioneering hydrogen fuel cell opened in Orkney

I reported earlier on the use of surplus wind energy to produce hydrogen from seawater MAJOR NEWS: World’s first tidal-powered hydrogen generated in Scotland after £3 million funding from SNP Government Now the final element of the system, the…

MAJOR NEWS: World’s first tidal-powered hydrogen generated in Scotland after £3 million funding from SNP Government

 

Tory Councillor McLellan pops up unannounced all over the place. Seeing him given space to write an extended piece, advertising his new book on the Scottish Tories (he’ll sell dozens), in the ‘leftist’ Independent, reminds me of the time the New Statesman published an article by post-Iraq Tony Blair then let Alistair Campbell edit an issue! The team there didn’t seem to understand why some readers were a bit upset. Do English liberals think Scots are lucky to have such nice Tories, like Ruth (!) and then fall for McLellan by association?

To be fair, as the Independent must imagine it is being, we do get to see who he is, at the very bottom, but long after you’ve given up reading what one commentator described as:

McLellan, as you know, often pops up in Scottish ‘organs’ untainted. See this only two weeks ago:

Tory Councillor pretends to be Scotsman journalist to deliver sneak propaganda attack on Independence

No doubt the book does dwell on the Tories, but its message is clear if utterly wrong in the final paragraph (I leaped there) of the Independent piece:

‘In a country where most economic indicators continue to lag behind the rest of the UK and the burden of taxation is only upwards – higher income tax, higher property transaction tax, and more taxes on tourists and cars on the way – the idea that more of this and breaking up Britain at the same time will somehow make us all better off is what really keeps Scottish Conservatives awake in the middle of the night.’

McLellan is a real establishment figure:

‘John McLellan has been a City of Edinburgh Conservative councillor since 2017 and was director of communications for the Scottish Conservatives in 2012-13. He has edited The Scotsman, the Edinburgh Evening News and Scotland on Sunday and is currently director of the Scottish Newspaper Society’

Perhaps too scary to mention to the Independent, he has also served as a member of the Government’s Defence, Press and Broadcasting Committee (https://www.scotns.org.uk/about/).

Clearly a champion of press freedom? What’ the UK has a free press? See this:

‘The UK has one of the worst environments for press freedom in western Europe, according to a global ranking that places Britain below the likes of Uruguay, Samoa, and Chile for restrictions on reporters as they seek to hold power to account. Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for journalistic freedoms, said the UK ranked 40th out of 180 countries on its annual World Press Freedom Index, leaving it ranked between Trinidad & Tobago and Burkina Faso.’

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/25/uk-among-the-worst-in-western-europe-for-press-freedom

Readers have a right to be made aware of this before reading on, or not.

 

This new large-scale research study based on a sample of more than 40 000 young people across the English-speaking world, has found Scots to be the least bull-shitterish, much less than the English (we knew that) and much, much, less than the Canadians (we didn’t?). The researchers found:

‘substantial differences in young people’s tendencies to bullshit.’

This table and explanation make our proud, yet at the same time modest, position clear:

‘Three broad clusters of countries seem to have emerged. At the top of the rankings are the two North American countries of the United States and Canada. With average scale scores of 0.25 and 0.3, these two countries have significantly higher bullshit scores than any other country. The next three countries (Australia, New Zealand and England) are in the middle of the rankings. Teenagers in these countries exaggerate less about their prowess, on average, than young people in Canada and the United States – by a magnitude equivalent to an effect size of around 0.1. However, they are also significantly bigger bullshitters than young people from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland who form the final group. The average bullshit scale score in these countries ranges between approximately -0.26 (Ireland and Northern Ireland) and -0.43 (Scotland) which is significantly lower than every other country. Moreover, the difference between these countries and North American is sizeable; equivalent to an effect size greater than 0.5. Consequently, despite speaking the same language, and with a closely shared culture and history, we find important variation across Anglophone countries in teenagers’ propensity to bullshit.’ (P13)

http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf

Other differences? See:

Another difference as UK small and medium-sized business people prefer Boris while Scots prefer…

Abuse of women and the disabled far higher in England than in Scotland

Less homicide, less knife crime, less domestic violence, safer cities and now much lower alcohol problems: should Scotland’s old stereotypes be sent south?

Racial hate crimes increase by 33% in England & Wales while falling by 10% in Scotland: Who says we’re not different?

Scottish Muslim students far less likely to report abuse or crime?

Terror de-radicalisation referral rate in Scotland less than one third per capita of that in England

Only in Scotland! ‘A review of small country’s approaches to public policy reform in response to economic, demographic and other pressures found that only in Scotland could this ‘golden thread’ be so clearly discerned’

Scientific evidence that Scots tend to be different from the other groups in rUK?

Who said Scots were not more left-wing than those in the rest of the UK?

With 1 in 4 living wage employers already in Scotland, the Scottish Government aims to make this a ‘Living Wage Nation’

8% of the UK population and 28% of living wage employers. More evidence that we are different enough to want to run the whole show?

80 000 lowest paid workers in NHS England still on poverty wages as NHS Scotland follows Scottish Government policy to pay a living wage to all public-sector employees

Scottish care workers to receive Living Wage for ‘sleepover’ hours while English care workers receive only the National Minimum Wage.

No, not Thomson. Yes, I know, he was drunk and he….it should be the often sneistie-couponed, one-time left-wing republican and ‘Ruth Davidson’s brain’, part-time prof, Adam Tomkins. He has been working those massive cells to find a flaw in the SNP’s apparently successful minimum pricing policy. Let’s see, could minimum pricing be:

• Making Police Scotland’s senior staff corrupt?
• Making nurses less caring?
• Oh, I know, making the homeless use other cheaper drugs like Valium?

That’s it, I’ll make the SNP find out for me and then expose their policy! Here it is:

Now, look, ‘includes considering substitution with other substances?’ That’ll do. Using the Dugdale method, I win! ‘SNP policy increases drug abuse!’

What, the results won’t be in for another year? I don’t think we need to wait for that do we?

 

 

 

 

 

Another parliamentary question we don’t need to wait for the official answer to:

FFS Adam, you were a leftie! You know the answer – reduce inequality! I know you were hoping to blame the feckless poor for stuffing their weans with Mars bars and cocaine in front of the TV but here’s evidence that core Tory policies to maximise corporate profits, reduce taxation, allow exploitative advertising, minimise public services and increase our opportunities to earn poverty wages and live in slums, creating and worsening inequality, are significantly to blame. You can read scatter-graphs and correlations, I hope?

https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/

As for what the Scottish Government is doing to compensate for their policies, see these:

Scottish Government fighting Tory austerity helps thousands hit by benefits cuts

Brutal evidence of austerity in England & Wales as abortion rate soars 40% higher than in Scotland

New pregnancy and baby payments to offset Tory austerity in Scotland

Against the odds: Evidence of how SNP policies have defended Scotland against a least some of Tory austerity

Author AL Kennedy defends Scotland as more caring than ‘austerity England’

Scottish Government continues to fight brutal Westminster austerity politics

Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths

Scottish Government fights to protect against the effects of Tory austerity cuts.

Once more the SNP’s progressive housing policies are helping Scotland weather the storm of Tory austerity

The SNP’s response to Theresa May is to continue the fight against her heartless austerity cuts and to stand up for us

Another brass-neck award goes to the Scottish Tories!

Head of Complaints, BBC Scotland

The report on breast cancer deaths in NHS Tayside, two weeks ago, contained no inaccuracies but through the sequencing of the information presented, created a causal connection not made by the Review Group report which they had supposedly based their presentation on. They said in an uninterrupted sequence:

1. There’s further criticism tonight of a decision to give breast cancer patients in Tayside lower doses of drugs during chemotherapy than they would have received elsewhere in Scotland.
2. A panel of experts has described the practice as close to being unacceptable.
3. Fourteen of the patients involved have since died.

The very strong implication here is that these fourteen patients died because of the lower doses. The Review Group report absolutely does not say that or imply it in any way. Indeed, it says quite explicitly that of the 300 plus patients involved:

The only part of their reply responding directly to my complaint said, astonishingly:

‘I cannot agree with your argument that there was a “very strong implication that these fourteen patients died because of the lower doses” and I believe that few if any in our audience would have inferred that.’

I do not believe for a minute that they fully intended to make the connection which they now deny. This was deliberate. Also, they do not explain why the official assessment that only around 1 patient per year might have been affected, was not part of their report. See:

‘The overall assessment of the increased risk of recurrence within the treated cohort is extremely difficult to quantify but probably of the order of 1-2%. A risk of harm of 1-2%, allows an estimate that around 1 patient per year in NHS Tayside may have suffered an adverse outcome.’

https://www.gov.scot/publications/clinical-risk-assessment-healthcare-improvement-scotland-report-clinical-management-breast-cancer-nhs-tayside-april-2019/

 

From YouGov today, based on more than 1 000 respondents, the first full poll for some time shows support for independence climbing toward a majority:

‘With the SNP spring conference taking place this weekend party members will no doubt be pleased to hear that a new YouGov/Times poll finds support for Scottish independence at its highest point since February 2015, with the two sides virtually neck and neck on 49% for Yes and 51% for No. YouGov’s last indy poll, conducted in June 2018, had Yes on 45% and No on 55%. The change seems to be largely driven by Remain voters, with attitudes having flipped from 53%/47% against independence in 2018 to 54%/46% in favour now. By contrast, Leave voters still oppose independence by 68% to 32% – only one point different to the previous poll.’

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/04/27/scottish-independence-yes-vote-climbs-49?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=scottish_VI_26_April_2019

 

 

The most recent Westminster voting intentions sub-poll of 154 Scots on 23^rd to 24^th April, from YouGov has

• Con 19%
• Lab 10%
• LD 6%
• SNP 44%
• UKIP 8%
• Green 5%
• Brexit 7%
• Change 1% 

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/9ypyeidbr5/TheTimes_190425_VI_Tracker_w_bpc.pdf

The previous sub-poll for Orb from a Scottish sample of 143, on 16^th and 17^th April, on Westminster voting intentions, gave:

• Labour 17%
• Con 15%
• Brexit 7%
• LibDem 5%
• TIG 2%
• UKIP 2%
• Green 8%
• SNP 42%

 These sub-polls are saying essentially the same thing with minor variation in that the SNP is very solid at opposition wipe-out level, above 40%, regardless of the stalled Brexit/UKIP vote, that the Tories and Labour are collectively capable of little more than 30% because of the Brexit/UKIP share at 10 to 15% and that the combined Indy vote is close to 50%.