Talking-up Scotland

Reporting Scotland has previous with unreliable evidence from interviewees. You’ll remember ‘broken ankle man’ last February:

I’m sure there have been other cases where the interviewee’s wider agenda was concealed but I can’t find them. Dear readers with better memories, please add them in.

https://indyref2.scot/bbc-refuses-to-address-broken-ankle-man-complaint-for-a-third-time

However, none surpass the rich background to the hospital pigeon poo couple interviewed at length by Reporting Scotland as part of their recent DooDoo campaign against NHS Scotland. These screen captures require no comment from me:

Note the Fyffe’s awareness, in 2018, of pigeon poo’s usefulness in political attacks.

 

The last two images puzzle. Did Mr Fyffe die in 2014? Have there been two Graeme Fyffes both with MS and both married to Mrs Fyffe? Was the second interviewed by Reporting Scotland?

https://www.ncvo.org.uk/images/documents/policy_and_research/volunteering/Volunteer-experience_Full-Report.pdf

In the NCVO report today, Scots were reported as more likely to volunteer to help with charitable activity. A 3% difference is not huge but when you put it with a range of other indicators suggesting the same tendency, it ads up to something. See:

Are Scotland’s employers also different – more willing to pay a decent wage?

Scottish Nationalism is a very different and a better thing than English/British Nationalism and, at last, BBC Scotland seems to have faced up to the fact.

SNP moves to finally put an end to foxes’agony being ripped apart by hounds as the English Tories plan a return to the unspeakable business. Different again?

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?

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

90% of Scottish business people seem to have enlightened values. Another wee difference that would justify being a different country? Don’t we have Phillip Green types north of the border?

‘Scottish tooth fairies are the most generous.’ See, even more evidence we are different.

Further evidence of better employment practices in Scotland

Organ donor registration in Scotland is 37% higher than in England. Does it mean something more?

Unemployment in Scotland below UK level and employment better paid

Another difference? Health Care in Zambia or Fracking in China?

Becoming a better kinder country? ‘Quantifying kindness public engagement and place: Experiences of people in the UK and Ireland’

Why is long-term pay growth highest in Scotland?

Or see below the merciful other reality of employment in modern Scotland?

How to feel a bit better about the Equality and Human Rights Commission report

More evidence of a difference as 73% of Scots back increase in taxes for higher public spending

As Brits think empathy on the wane is SNP government helping to preserve it?

 

As homicide in England and Wales surges by 14% to 739 last year and falls in Scotland, leading Conservatives in the North Britain Branch are worried that this could reflect badly on the UK tory government and, by proxy, on them.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/24/rise-in-homicides-in-england-and-wales-fuels-calls-for-police-funds

Reporting Scotland reporters been instructed to remember just who hands out the honours and to find a way of representing these trends in a way more conducive to Unionist sympathies.

In response to a Freedom of information request, TuS can reveal:

Between 2016-17 and 2017-18, the number of homicide cases recorded by the police in Scotland decreased by 5% from 62 to 59 This is the joint lowest number of recorded homicide cases for a single twelve-month period since 1976, the first year for which comparable data are available. Over the ten-year period from 2008-09 to 2017-18, the number of homicide cases in Scotland fell by 39% (38 cases) from 97 to 59. Glasgow City accounted for over one third (34%) of this decrease. In 2017-18, almost one fifth (11) of the 59 national recorded homicide cases occurred within Glasgow City.

 

With 11 times the population, England and Wales should have, all things being equal, 649 homicides rather than 739.

 

https://www.gov.scot/publications/homicide-scotland-2017-18/pages/2/

TuS can also reveal that BBC Scotland have launched a staff consultation with a view to find creative ways of making Scotland seem just as dangerous as England and Wales. Early responses include:

‘Dark tourism in Glasgow falls dramatically due to reduced violence’

‘Migrant murderers expected to come over here to exploit gaps in supply’

‘Scheming spouses unable to find assassins at a reasonable price.’

‘Scottish crime writers bemoan lack of real crimes they can copy’

TuS readers are invited to come up with other ideas which we can pass on to Pacific Quay

 

The first and funniest question in the huge FoI request today is this one:

Q1: A list of all complaints made to the office of the First Minister concerning the conduct of MSPs under the whip of the Scottish National Party or Scottish ministers (and if the information is available, what steps were taken to resolve the issue) – please note, issues could also include allegations of sexual harassment.

Equally entertaining is the response:

QI: Please note that any complaints regarding an MSP is a matter for the Presiding Officer to investigate under section 8 of the code of conduct. Section 8 of the Code of Conduct.

Contact details: Presiding Officer, Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, EH99 1SP or e-mail: PresidingOfficers@parliament.scot. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

This is only part of a comically humungous FoI request trying to find anything at all that could be bad news for the SNP or any part of it, made by, I’m guessing, BBC Scotland or the North Britain branches of Labour, Tories or LibDems, or any ‘Scottish’ newspaper or Scotland in Union or whatever they’re called. Either way, I feel sure they have ratty wee features. You can have a good laugh at the whole thing here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-18-03733/

So, as numerous Tory politicians are exposed for crimes as serious as child rape, someone is desperately groping for something anything on the SNP. If there’s anything on the other parties, they don’t want to know, thank you very much.We await with interest the Presiding Officer’s response. Anyone think he is sitting on complaints about SNP MSPs?

 

In another part of the very large FoI request, this question was asked:

Q2: A breakdown of the amount that Bute House has spent on receptions, including the total cost of food and drinks, from 2014-present (broken down by year and month).

The answer minus the full breakdown was:

Q2: Since 2014, there have been 83 receptions at Bute House, costing a total of £71,985.47 . This includes receptions hosted by other Scottish Government Ministers, as well as the First Minister. Engagements and events are an essential part of official Government business. These important events support charities and good causes, promote Scottish business and the economy, and pursue and support the development and discussion of key Scottish policies.

This is only part of a comically humungous FoI request trying to find anything at all that could be bad news for the SNP or any part of it, made by, I’m guessing, BBC Scotland or the North Britain branches of Labour, Tories or LibDems, or any ‘Scottish’ newspaper or Scotland in Union or whatever they’re called. Either way, I feel sure they have ratty wee features. You can have a good laugh at the whole thing here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-18-03733/

However, 83 functions over 5 years, at a total cost of almost £72 000, means that the average cost was less than £900. It’s not enough. How can we influence people if we don’t buy enough fancy goodies for them? For comparative purposes, can we do an FoI on Governor Mundell’s spending?

In a Freedom of Information response to the question:

Q3: Any complaints made to any department of the Scottish Government about the conduct of the current First Minister since she took office.

the answer was:

Q3: The Scottish Government has not received any complaints about the conduct of the First Minister since she took office.

This is only part of a comically humungous FoI request trying to find anything at all that could be bad news for the SNP or any part of it, made by, I’m guessing, BBC Scotland or the North Britain branches of Labour, Tories or LibDems, or any ‘Scottish’ newspaper or Scotland in Union or whatever they’re called. Either way, I feel sure they have ratty wee features. You can have a good laugh at the whole thing here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-18-03733/

So, it is good to hear that nobody has actually complained to the Scottish Government about the FM. I did complain about her support for Hilary Clinton, but I did it directly. Also, I tweeted complaining about here recommending Henry Kissinger’s book to me. See these for more:

Letter to First Minister Sturgeon re her support for Hillary Clinton

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/13001/linda-pearson-sturgeons-praise-henry-kissinger-and-madeleine-albright-whitewashes

 

 

Clearly recovered from previous visits to the other Pointless show, I made these two related complaints this morning. I’ll let you see the response to my, no doubt, ‘pedantry’.

Reporting Scotland – 6.30pm

Transmission date

21/01/2019

Complaint category

Factual error or inaccuracy

Contacted us before

No

Complaint title

Hospital deaths 2

Complaint description

In a report on deaths at the QEU Hospital, Jackie Bird said: ‘[T]he deaths of two patients from a rare fungal infection.’ This is inaccurate. We knew from the BBC website the same day: ‘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.

 

Reporting Scotland – 6.30pm

Transmission date

22/01/2019  

Complaint category

Factual error or inaccuracy

Contacted us before

No

Complaint title

Hospital deaths

Complaint description

With regard to deaths at the QEU Hospital in Glasgow, Lisa Summers said: ‘It became clear that two patients had died as a result of this particular infection.’ This is patently untrue. In one case, the patient absolutely did not die as ‘a result of’ the infection’ but because of ‘an unrelated cause’. In the other case it was as, Lisa put it later ‘contributory’. The infection was found in the blood stream of the second patient but clearly this death was also not ‘as a result of’ the infection. We know the actual facts from the BBC website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-46953707

 

Draw the expression on my face?

 

I’ve been a ‘stout’ proponent of the primacy of party unity in the face of our common enemies but there has to be a limit to my tolerance of immorality, and I’ve reached it.

It pains me to write this.

I’ve just finished reading:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/01/why-leslie-evans-must-resign/

It’s an impressive but deeply disturbing work in which, not only are the First Minister’s aides exposed as dishonest and frankly evil in their intentions but, I’m afraid to say, Nicola Sturgeon seems to have been more than a bystander in these disgraceful machinations against the former First Minister, Alex Salmond.

Here are some of the key arguments:

1. The FM seems to have lied in her defence of her permanent secretary and the investigator.
2. The FM was aware that Salmond was being stitched up.
3. The FM’s chief of staff is the likely source of the leak to the Daily Record.
4. The FM’s feminism is distorting her political judgement .

The last-mentioned feminism brings me to a concern I’ve held for some time, that the FM’s world view with particular regard to foreign policy and the role of the US in it, is ‘Atlanticist’, as in the views of Gordon Brown and most Blairites. Worse still, it is hawkish as in those who support Hilary Clinton.

During the last US presidential election campaign, the FM, came out in explicit support of Clinton. I was horrified. Clinton is an evil, self-serving, utterly corrupt hawk whose actions, had she won, would have resulted in even greater carnage in the Middle East as she led US intervention against her personal foe, Putin. The monstrous Trump’s isolationism, even limited by the US establishment as it has been, may well have saved the lives of thousands of women.

I wrote this, at the time, to the FM only to be fobbed of by one of her aides:

Letter to First Minister Sturgeon re her support for Hillary Clinton

I did my best to forget this as I walked the streets carrying ‘I’m with Nicola’ stuff to push through letterboxes. Then she did it again, tweeting enthusiastically that we should all have a look at the new book by Henry Kissinger! Henry Kissinger? A man of such monstrous horrors including the illegal bombing of and mass deaths in Cambodia? See this for more detail.

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/13001/linda-pearson-sturgeons-praise-henry-kissinger-and-madeleine-albright-whitewashes

Once more, I suppressed it and returned to focus on the greater cause but, for a reason now clear to me, Salmondgate, the puss-filled wound has re-opened. The FM is prepared to support any feminist position utterly regardless of even the most nauseating considerations. She could have said nothing about the US presidential elections, and she need not have reviewed the Kissinger book, but she did both because she believed it was correct to do so.

It would be wrong of me to patronise her with excuses as I seem to have been doing -ageism? She supported Clinton because feminism trumps anything or, worse still, because she agrees with the Atlanticist position uncritically supporting the US in its interventions. Did she pick this up from Glasgow University? Were they feeding the students with US exceptionalism in the 1980s, just as they previously fed my history teachers with British exceptionalism and Scottish history curricula, as late as the 1950s? Remember, they nurtured the dread Niall Ferguson.

Her enthusiasm for the Kissinger book was because he exonerates the equally psychopathic and hawkish Madeleine Albright, she of: ‘The deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was worth it for Iraq’s non-existent WMD’s!’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8

Does the FM applaud women, any women, achieving high position, regardless of the deeds they do? It seems she does.

I joined the SNP as an anti-imperialist first and foremost. I think my values are widely shared across the Yes movement and in the party. Are the First Minister’s?

 

 

 

 

In November 2018, unemployment in Scotland was at 3.6%, down 0.2% on the previous quarter and below the figure for the UK as-a-whole, of 4%. Should that 3.6% be rounded up to almost 4%, making the level the same across the UK, as BBC’s Graham Stewart insisted to me, on rail fares, is normal practice?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/regionallabourmarket/january2019

This aligns with other good news on employment reported here:

New Moray Wind Farm to create ‘hundreds of local jobs’ as Scottish wind power breaks records

Have Scottish Government’s Small Business Bonus rates enabled up to seven in ten private sector jobs?

‘The number of finance jobs in Scotland grew by nearly 7% in the past year. That’s a faster pace than any other part of the UK’ says BBC Scotland (!)

Scotland’s has two ‘unicorns’ and digital tech sector jobs are up 8%

More real evidence of economic strength: number of Scots getting permanent jobs has ‘risen sharply.’

UK wages rise at fastest rate but still slower than in Scotland

Wages growing faster in Scotland than in non-Scottish parts of the UK

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

Further evidence of better employment practices in Scotland

 

Reporter Lisa Summers says wrongly that two death were as a result of infection

It’s now four days since Reporting Scotland began telling lies about the deaths of two patients in Glasgow’s new hospital. In what seems to be another event in a long campaign to damage the reputation of the hospital and, by proxy, the Scottish Government, they have headlined the story for four days in succession.

We know from their own website that one death was due to ‘unrelated causes’ and, tonight, we heard that in the other, the fungal infection had been ‘contributory’. See this:

‘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

Despite this, in an extended report overweight with tangential information including and extended interview with two people who had seen pigeons, Lisa Summers said:

‘It became clear that two patients had died as a result of this particular infection.’

This is patently untrue. In one case, the patient absolutely did not die as ‘a result of’ the infection. In the other it was as, Lisa put it, ‘contributy’ (sic). The infection was found in the blood stream of the second patient but clearly this death was also not ‘as a result of’ the infection

Finally, how contributory was the infection? In the absence of the actual wording of the post mortem report we are left in the dark. How many direct causal factors were there? How determining of the outcome were they? How many other contributory factors were there? How much of a contribution to the outcome did the infection make?

The role of pigeon-derived infection in this story get smaller the more you think about it.