While the media’s attention was focused on the answers of Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans in the first day of the Holyrood-Salmond inquiry yesterday, Health Secretary Jeanne Freeman came up with some pretty curious answers of her own in response to questioning about the care homes crisis in parliament on Tuesday. Asked about the Sunday Post’s […]
The Scottish Government
One thing I’ve learnt from this crisis is that you have to be careful to avoid being seduced by what appears to be a consensus of the need for systemic change. In the most dramatic moments of the pandemic, you couldn’t pay for someone to criticise key workers. They were lauded by every bad boss, […]
So when is change coming for social care workers?
There was a fantastic piece of journalism on Channel 4 News last night, as Alex Thomson visited the town of Langholm in Dumfries & Galloway to see the land which the community is trying to get back from the Duke of Buccleuch. I say “get back” because part of the area the community is trying to […]
Langholm, stolen common land, and the Duke
Let’s start with the good news. One in every 200 tests are now coming back positive for Covid-19 in Scotland. From 32,021 tests in Scotland last week, 155 were positive, just 0.5 per cent. The WHO says tests should be delivering sub-5 per cent results for two weeks before lockdown easing measures are considered, so […]
Swinney’s gamble
Scotland’s new Chief Medical Officer, Dr Gregor Smith, can’t say when the lockdown measures will be lifted here. We “are not quite at the stage yet where we have got the data which would allow us to be able to pinpoint when these measures are likely to be lifted,” he told the BBC. Correct, but […]
A viable route out of lockdown
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 […]
Why testing is the problem that won’t go away
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in intensive care with Covid-19 should be a wake-up call to anyone who still needed one about just how dangerous this virus really is. Johnson is not of pensioner age – he’s just 55 years old. We must do everything we can to suppress this virus; no life is worth […]
Take care of the carers
It’s there in black and white on the Scottish Government website: ‘People should avoid travelling unless it is essential…This guidance is for people planning to visit second homes…”. That the Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood broke that rule not once but twice is very bad. But the government mishandling thereafter raises more questions than the […]
A tortuous Sunday
Let’s develop a little scorecard on where we are with the economic measures in the UK and Scotland to cope with our new pandemic-world. For corporations, we have 80 per cent of the wages they owe workers affected by Covid-19 covered by government. That’s a significant drop in their costs, overnight. For banks, we have […]
The bailout scorecard
There are worrying signs about the UK’s Covid-19 trajectory. The UK’s death toll is now higher than Italy’s was at this stage, and is following the US in accelerating when other countries were by now seeing the rate of increase slowing. ITV Political Editor Robert Peston responded to that fact by stating plainly: “This is […]