Herald platforms Tory plan to spread coronavirus infection more widely

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

johnrobertson834's avatarTalking-up Scotland 'Albatraz'

Rishi: ‘Miles! Miles! Shut up! Shut the f……….’

Leaving aside the astonishing brass neck required for Miles Briggs to call himself the Shadow Health Secretary, the Herald letting him talk unchallenged about a crisis in social care in Scotland, beggars belief. Don’t they read about the all-too-real crisis in social care in Tory England? See this from the Guardian last June:

The government’s failure to get to grips with the escalating financial crisis in social care has put tens of thousands of older and disabled people at risk of being denied basic support such as help with washing and dressing, care chiefs have warned.

Without urgent guarantees over funding levels there was a serious risk that local authorities would be forced to start decommissioning care services in the autumn, they said. “This situation has a very real and damaging effect on the day-to-day lives of people who need and provide…

View original post 297 more words

The things that need to change

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

weegingerdug's avatarWee Ginger Dug

This emergency doesn't just mean that our own behaviour has to change. The wealthy and privileged and their enablers need to change too.
Pubs, clubs, restaurants, cinemas, and gyms have been closed. We’re getting close to a lock down situation similar to those already in force in Italy or Spain. Of course no one is happy about this. No one wants to have their freedom to move around and associate with friends and family be restricted in this way. Despite that, the great majority of people understand that it’s not only for their own good, even more it’s for the good of those who are at high risk, and most of all it’s for the good of our health services so that we can all help to ensure that the NHS can cope with those affected. Social distancing measures mean that it’s more likely that if we get infected ourselves then the NHS will be able to treat us appropriately because it won’t be overwhelmed.

As might have been expected, some people are…

View original post 1,580 more words

BBC Scotland fakes news about Glasgow’s super hospital again as it saves lives way beyond what others in the UK have achieved

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

 BBC is a danger to the public… This is no time for its continued misinformation on Scottish affairs…

johnrobertson834's avatarTalking-up Scotland 'Albatraz'

With only 2 of 91 cases resulting in fatality, Greater Glasgow and Clyde has a mortality rate of only 11 per 1 000, below the Scottish average of 18 and way below the UK average of 54 deaths per 1 000, yet one Glasgow doctor became a headline to malign the reputation of its super hospital.

That hugely impressive performance in saving lives deserves praise and not this foul-smelling attack fuelled by a single doctor who is either media-naive or has some agenda.

How did this story get to BBC Scotland? Did Dr Henderson approach them rather than the hospital management. Does someone at BBC Scotland know her? Was an opposition politician part of this?

View original post

BREAKING – UK BROKEN #UKbroken

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

Breaking

  • UK Government has had to promise to pay the wages of private businesses that are in trouble as a result of the Coronavirus
    • Any employer will be eligible to ask HMRC to pay most of the wages for those not working but stood down by companies
    • This amounts up to 80% of the salaries up to £2,500 a month.
    • This is backdated to wages paid as far back as March 1st
  • Self-employed people can now claim Universal Credit at the same rate as statutory sick pay £98.00 per week (SSP should have been increased)
    • Self-employed/sole trader self-assessment payments will be delayed by a year. Note – this is not enough, see below.
  • All pubs and nightclubs are ordered to close (although restaurants can still do takeaway)
  • The business interruption loan scheme will be available from Monday onwards and they will be interest-free for 12 months.
  • Next VAT bills will be deferred for almost a year – we hope they are going to process VAT rebate claims though as companies who have just invested in new plant and equipment may be claiming VAT back not paying it.
  • Universal credit is increasing by £1,000
  • Housing Benefit will also rise significantly for renters

Read more: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bbclondoncalling_breaking-uk-economy-hascollapsed-completely-activity-6646849542555869184-YbUM

Scotland’s hospitals’ impressive and heroic efforts in holding back coronavirus mortality

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

Scotland’s Hospital’s making a massive effort in saving lives…

johnrobertson834's avatarTalking-up Scotland 'Albatraz'

As of today, NHS Scotland has 6 fatalities in 322 cases hospitalised. This rate of 18.6 per 1 000 compares with the tragic Italian rate of 83 per 1000. The overall UK figure is now 144 fatalities in 3 269 hospitalised cases or 44 per 1 000.

I know some readers are uncomfortable with this reporting but it remains important to tell the truth in the interests of the morale in NHS Scotland which has so often been unfairly damaged by media distortions and scare stories based on far smaller sets of data, often individual patients, than we see here.

In no way, does this blame the staff in NHS England. I’d have thought it was obvious where that lies and acceptable that I cast it.

View original post

Craig Murray: “They have just chucked me out without explanation” …

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

Image result for high court salmond case

As many of you will already know, I was excluded from the public gallery of the Alex Salmond trial yesterday. Inside the High Court, in the queue to enter the courtroom, I was suddenly taken aside by the police and told I was barred. The prosecution had made an application to the judge for an order for my removal which the judge had agreed, over a “possible contempt of court.”

I asked the police – who were very pleasant – if they could tell me where the possible contempt lay, but they had no information. Later I phoned the court and was eventually phoned back by the clerk of the court, who was also very pleasant, but he could not tell me where the possible contempt lay either. He could however tell me I was excluded for the duration of the case, not just for the day.

Read on: The Long Dark Night of the Soul …https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/03/the-long-dark-night-of-the-soul/

Westminster bailing out the banks and big corporates but not the real economy…

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

Small businesses and sole traders left high and dry by UK coronavirus package

https://www.businessforscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Screenshot-2020-03-18-at-13.07.23-1024x585.png
The UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has announced a £330bn loan package to allow companies to access loans, a business rates holiday, support for airlines in trouble and help for small firms without loss of income insurance.  There will also be a £20 billion package of other support which remains undefined right now. There will also be a three-month mortgage holiday available to homeowners who have trouble meeting their payments due to the impact of coronavirus. On the face of it, this looks like a good start. However, the UK Government has a track record of targeting its bailout strategy at the wrong recipients. The banking crises bailout went solely to the banks and asset holders. As a result, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and then we all had to pay for that bailout with a decade of austerity. The government neglected ordinary people during the banking crises and simply helped the banks. This time around it looks like they will repeat that mistake but also fail to adequately support small businesses and sole traders who will be amongst the worse hit.

Firstly, let’s recognise the fact that the UK Government doesn’t have easy access to £350 billion of funding. Therefore, as in 2009, the government will have to use Quantitative Easing (QE), the creation of new money, to pay for this support package. Secondly, the package provides cover for the government to bring in more austerity, a philosophy which matches the Conservative fiscal approach verbally (and somewhat falsely), abandoned in the run-up to the 2020 General Election. Finally, £330bn may seem like a huge sum. However, it is not going to be enough because they will also have to bail out the people, not just the banks and big corporations this time. You can read my thoughts on this in my article: “This time the people will need a bail-out”.

How coronavirus will damage the economy:  Read more: https://www.businessforscotland.com/small-businesses-and-sole-traders-left-high-and-dry-by-uk-coronavirus-package/

Written by Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

The health of civil liberties

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

Martial LawImage result for Martial Law

weegingerdug's avatarWee Ginger Dug

civilliberties
Remember when the only social isolation we needed to worry about was having a crappy blue passport that doesn’t allow you to live or work in other European countries? Ah those were the days. But Brexit hasn’t gone away. In news you may have missed – what with the toilet paper apocalypse and the supermarket running out of lettuce because eejits are panic buying vegetables with a shelf life of a couple of days – the British government has announced that it’s not going to delay Brexit despite the talks on the trade deal between the UK and the EU being cancelled due to the health crisis. Because sunlit uplands, 50p coins, and Big Ben bongs. By the way, I’ve never found any of those 50p Brexit coins in my change. It seems that they’re exactly like the benefits of Brexit. We were told that there was going to be…

View original post 1,439 more words

Fact check: Debunking myths about coronavirus…

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

The coronavirus outbreak, COVID-19, is having a significant impact on people’s lives across the globe.

It has also led to an outbreak of false information being shared across social media, as people search for reliable and up-to-date information about the spread of the disease.

The NHS has advice for those who think they have coronavirus, how the disease spreads, and how to avoid it.

Ferret Fact Service has gone through a few of the more widely-shared claims made about the virus. This article will be updated with new claims as we see them.

Coronavirus myths hide
1 Was the outbreak caused by 5g?
2 Can these home remedies work?

2.1 Vitamin C
2.2 Garlic
3 Is regularly drinking water effective?
4 Is Dettol proven to kill COVID-19?
5 Good journalism changes things

Read more: Ferret Journalists

Sowing the seeds

~ New Scotland ~ Leave a comment

weegingerdug's avatarWee Ginger Dug

bailout
If you turned on your telly this Tuesday morning to watch ITV’s breakfast show, you’d have been given a reminder of why you’d be much better off staying in your kip and not watching breakfast television. Today on This Morning we were regaled by the sight of Vanessa Feltz and Boris Johnson’s dad Stanley giving us advice on the coronavirus. The British government thinks that it has been clear in its advice but judging from his appearance on the TV, the Prime Minister’s own father doesn’t seem to understand what his son’s government has been telling us. If this is what the British media thinks is a sensible and informative response to the epidemic, then we’re all doomed. This is quite literally a matter of life and death here, and the British media still can’t stop indulging itself in its addiction to click bait, controversy, and ‘colourful characters’. We’re all…

View original post 1,465 more words