A bit of escapism is sometimes needed in these grim times, so Scotland’s men’s football team making it to a major championship for the first time since 1998 is not an unhealthy tonic. In 1998 there was no Scottish Parliament, Google had just been founded, and the DVD was sold for the first time – […]
Contact tracing
“The Government know that austerity helped to inspire the student movement, the London riots, Scottish independence, Corbynism and Brexit.”
Analysis: David Cameron is wrong – austerity set Britain up for its pandemic woes
Exactly six months today since full lockdown, Scotland is back in a mini-lockdown again. This time, only other people’s homes are off-limits. As in England, pubs will shut at 10pm. There are good reasons to be sceptical that these measures will be sufficient to contain the spread of covid-19. They appear suspiciously like applying maximum […]
Six months since lockdown, is ‘Test and Protect’ ready?
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
The new “test, trace, isolate, support” strategy announced by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon yesterday was an important milestone in Scotland’s Covid-19 crisis. The paper sets out a distinctive Scottish approach to community tracing and testing, and thus is the first strategic disjuncture from the UK response to this crisis. As Common Weal head of policy […]
“Track, train, employ”?
Nicola Sturgeon announced on Thursday that they are starting planning for an end to lockdown, but think tanks and the third sector are way ahead of them.
Scotland Plans the End of Lockdown: What Comes Next?
Front-line workers are making their voices heard. The Scottish Government has been sent not one, but two, open letters from those we most rely on to battle Covid-19, expressing their unhappiness at insufficient and inadequate PPE. 100 medical professionals have signed a letter stating they have “grave concerns about the adequacy of what has been […]