How can Scotland hold a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic, when no written advice was recorded in the opening months of the crisis?
Analysis
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman is set to take questions today from MSPs on the care homes crisis, the eye of the Covid-19 storm in Scotland. Yesterday’s weekly National Records of Scotland statistics revealed that there are now more deaths in care homes than the rest of Scotland combined, a tragic outcome three months into a […]
Care Homes crisis: 4 questions for the Health Secretary
“The extent of US influence engenders the most profound questions of democratic sovereignty, war and peace, and economic and social life. These questions are posed afresh by the post-Cold War decline of US hegemony and its always questionable moral authority. Is there a viable alternative to being a province of the empire?”
After the US: Is Scottish neutrality a viable future?
Live in Edinburgh? Your city needs you. For the good of Scotland’s capital, you must “act like a tourist”. You see, the tourist industry doesn’t have any tourists to sell their stuff to, so residents need to take their place. Out of the goodness of your hearts, the people of Edinburgh need to rush back […]
‘Act like a tourist’, or build community wealth?
A panic about contact tracing in Minnesota, United States, spread after Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said that they were “contact tracing” protestors there. “As we’ve begun making arrests, we have begun analysing the data of who we have arrested and begun actually doing what we think is almost pretty similar to our Covid [strategy]. […]
Why outsourcing and secrecy is the route to contact tracing and testing failure
Take a step back and look at the United States, 2020. Over 100,000 dead from Covid-19, by far the most in the world. Responding to a global crisis by exiting the World Health Organisation, stirring conspiracy theories about how the virus originated and using its Navy to steal global supplies of ventilators in acts of international piracy. […]
A world after the US Empire?
“What would it look like if we decided that our economy was no longer to be rigged in favour of folk who have benefited from its collapse?”
After lockdown, we must ask: who is the economy for anyway?
“The Scottish independence movement emerged precisely as a response to war, economic crisis, environmental decline, national, local and global inequalities. It identifies the British state as a road block to sound governance and a serious orientation on the social, economic and geopolitical problems we face.”
Why independence won’t go away
“Questions remain about the capacity of the state to deal adequately with massive social programmes including wholescale testing and tracing and, perhaps one day, vaccination. Why has it taken this long to reach the point of a testing system?”
Test and trace: There’s still a long way to go
“People will remember the mad-dash scramble to “fudge” the UK figures to meet the target of 100,000 tests per day by the end of April. Less well advertised is that while the UK’s testing figures are still less than spectacular, they have overtaken Scotland’s and have remained consistently higher since late April and for the entire month of May.”