“Lots of you think that ‘tampons on the NHS’ is the direction we’re going. I think it’s going to look more like ‘buy your own insulin’.”
Scottish Government
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?
“Scotland is now fighting Covid with precisely as much testing capacity as the UK will permit us… What it means is more than that Scotland isn’t taking a distinctive approach – it means it can’t.”
Analysis: Scotland is now locked into a Four Nations Covid strategy
“We’re taking one step forward, five steps back,” Devi Sridhar, professor of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh and on the Scottish Government’s covid-19 advisory group, wrote yesterday, in summing up her exasperation about the covid-19 situation in the UK. She’s not wrong. Lockdown was a big social sacrifice, one where the vulnerable suffered […]
‘One step forward, five steps back’
“Those few interesting questions which might have emerged from the controversy have been almost entirely overlooked. The first is not whether Nicola Sturgeon has used her briefings for political purposes, but rather: should we care?”
Sean Bell: Everything is political, and it is futile to pretend otherwise
“Those of us on the side of the poor souls who hold our society together when they hardly have the cash to hold their own lives together have won the moral argument. Great, but that’s not enough.”
Robin McAlpine: We’re losing the bunfight so we must win the battle of ideas
How do we stop the resurgence of covid-19 in Scotland? Everyone is agreed that it is resurgent, and that we need to stop it, so let’s try to focus on the ‘how’. Common Weal today publishes a new report by head of policy & research Craig Dalzell which looks at exactly that. It proposes a change in […]
‘Warning lights’: Does Scotland need a new covid-19 elimination strategy?
The announcement of NHS Highland buying out HC-One’s Home Farm care home in Skye has taken away the focus in much of the media from the Care Inspectorate’s official inspection report at Home Farm from 18 May, which has only just been published by the care regulator now. You can access it here. It makes absolutely […]
The Home Farm buy-out leaves a sour taste
“There is now clearly no credible plan for the economic crisis ahead, and yet there is a disconcerting national silence about it, as if a psychological accommodation has been achieved.”
Robin McAlpine: Is ‘disaster capitalism’ why no-one is taking Scotland’s economic crisis seriously?
“This year’s PfG would have proven to be far too modest even if we were not in the midst of an economic crisis and a global pandemic. In the context of them, the goals being set by the Scottish Government are not doing enough to meet these challenges”