Nearly £250m needed to bring Police Scotland buildings up to scratch, force warns – The Scotsman
/in Scotland Under the SNP, Scottish Government, SNP, The Scotsman /by sm_admin‘The SNP has leadership pygmies to choose from post-Sturgeon’ – STV news
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Nicola Sturgeon is a “giant among pygmies” in the SNP when it comes to leadership credentials, according to a senior Conservative MP.
Oliver Dowden, the Conservative Party’s co-chairman, took aim at the First Minister as he outlined his hopes for winning seats in Scotland once Sturgeon is no longer SNP leader.
Speaking at the party’s conference in Manchester on Sunday, Dowden said: “I do think there’s a real opportunity for us in Scotland for a couple of reasons.
“First of all, Nicola Sturgeon is not going to be there forever and after Nicola Sturgeon the rest of them – I’m not saying in any way Nicola Sturgeon is a wonderful person, but compared to her comrades as it were, she’s a giant among pygmies, and so I think as she goes they will be very weakened.
“And secondly, I think we have a real opportunity to focus on the actual delivery of the nationalists in Scotland, which has been completely lamentable – whether it’s education, whether it’s health, they are falling massively behind the rest of England.
“Nicola Sturgeon constantly tries to distract from this by talking endlessly about independence.
“We need to bring that focus back on their delivery in Scotland, which is lamentable.”
At Westminster, the SNP currently has 45 MPs compared to six Tory MPs, four Liberal Democrats, two Alba Party, one Labour and one independent from the Scottish seats.
Nearly 200 Scottish care homes took in mainly untested patients – BBC news
/in BBC, Covid inquiry, Covid-19, Health Matters, Scottish Government, SNP /by sm_adminPlease click the image below to read more:
In the early days of the pandemic more than half of elderly hospital patients discharged to nearly 200 Scottish care homes had not been tested for Covid.
Data obtained by the BBC from Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides the clearest picture yet on which homes took in untested and positive patients.
A lawyer acting for bereaved families at an upcoming inquiry called the data “explosive evidence”.
Aamer Anwar claimed it was proof that people’s lives had been put at risk.
The figures, which were released 11 months after BBC Scotland had asked for them, focus on hospital discharges between March and May 2020 – which was the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The PHS data, released under freedom of information laws, appears in this interactive dashboard and shows every hospital discharge by individual care home in Scotland.
It reveals what proportion of people discharged were untested or positive and what proportion of beds might have been occupied by discharged patients.
Although the data cannot be used to link discharges to outbreaks or deaths in any given home, solicitor Mr Anwar believed it proved that lives had been put at risk.
He is acting on behalf of members of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice and told BBC Scotland: “The data supports what many bereaved families have always suspected, that elderly patients were discharged without any regard for a duty of care owed to them, or to residents and care home staff.
“Many of the grieving families I represent describe what took place in our care homes as a massacre that could have been avoided, had a simple test taken place prior to discharge.
“The data makes for explosive evidence for a pending Scottish Covid-19 Public Inquiry.”
Why is the SNP gagging charities? – The Spectator
/in Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland Under the SNP, Scottish Government, SNP, The Spectator /by sm_adminPlease click the image below to read more:
The SNP handles criticism as well as the Incredible Hulk handles irritation. It’s why the party’s own parliamentarians are banned from making critical comments. The Nationalists are an independence-first organisation and rely on two important psychological tools. The first is projecting Nicola Sturgeon as the ‘Chief Mammy’ (her own term; ‘mammy’ being Scottish slang for ‘mother’), a national figure more akin to the Queen than the Prime Minister. The second is framing any institutional or organisational dissent not as standard, democratic debate (in the way that businesses, unions and charities routinely take the UK Government to task) but as something more controversial, political — even unpatriotic.
As such, it is entirely unremarkable to Scottish eyes to read that charities funded by the SNP government in Edinburgh are being made subject to a ‘gagging clause’. Readers living in normal countries, however, might think the situation revealed in the Scottish edition of the Times not wholly ideal. The paper relays that charities, including Shelter Scotland and Victim Support Scotland, ‘are being silenced by ‘gagging orders’ that prevent them from criticising SNP policies or backing rival campaigns as part of contracts to receive state funding’. The letter received by Victim Support reportedly includes the line:
‘No part of the grant shall be used to fund any activity or material which is party political in intention, use, or presentation or appears to be designed to affect support for a political party.’
The opposition believes the non-political clause will prevent or discourage charities from supporting draft legislation put forward by the Tories, Labour, or any backbencher who doesn’t belong to the SNP or the Greens, the two parties who rule Scotland in a nationalist coalition. Scottish Tory chief whip Stephen Kerr said it appeared the administration was ‘handcuffing charities and third-sector groups on the sly by preventing them from backing bills or campaigns by anyone other than the government’.
For transport news, click here: https://www.scotlandmatters.co.uk/transport-matters/
Extreme waiting times for A&E are becoming ‘the new normal’ – Aberdeen Evening Express
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“Extreme waiting” times in Scotland’s NHS have been branded the “new normal” after accident and emergency departments posted the third worst results on record.
“Extreme waiting” times in Scotland’s NHS have been branded the “new normal” after accident and emergency departments posted the third worst results on record.
The most recent data showed that in the week ending September 19, fewer than three quarters (74.4%) of patients were dealt with in this time – an increase from the record low of 71.5 that was recorded the previous week.
But this was still the third worst performance since weekly monitoring began, and well below the Scottish Government’s target of having 95% of patients in A&E dealt with within four hours.
Public Health Scotland data showed that of the 26,872 people who attended A&E in the week ending September 19, 1,413 were there for more than eight hours.
This included 341 patients who spent more than 12 hours there.
Tory health spokesman, Dr Sandesh Gulhane, responded: “Our A&E departments are still overwhelmed, and Scotland’s NHS would be much better served if (Health Secretary) Humza Yousaf focused on fixing the problems on the front line, instead of making sure he gets a photo op.”
With coronavirus continuing to put pressure on the NHS, the Scottish Government has already called in the help of both the army and firefighters to drive ambulances.
But with patients reported to have died while waiting for help to arrive, Mr Cole-Hamilton demanded an independent inquiry into “all unnecessary deaths connected to ambulance waiting times”.
The Scottish Liberal Democrat leader said: “Extreme waiting times in A&E seem to be the new normal in the eyes of the SNP Government.
Scotland has ‘lowest number of hospital beds in a decade’ – STV News
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Scotland has fewer hospital beds than at any time in the last decade, new figures show.
There were 12,869 staffed beds available on average each day last year, a 9.5% decrease from the 14,227 per day in 2011-12 when the current records began.
Bed numbers free and staffed for acute patients have also fallen by 2.5% in the last year, although the numbers that were actually occupied dropped from 85.8% in 2019-20 to 74.7% in 2020-21.
The figures for available beds in acute settings include emergency treatment; routine, complex and life-saving surgery as well as specialist diagnostic procedures.
Beds used for giving birth, psychiatric services and long-stay care are not included in the Public Health Scotland figures.
The latest NHS Scotland figures for admissions and discharges also show there were almost 900,000 patients admitted to hospital in 2020-21 — 30% fewer than the previous year.
This was in addition to approximately 673,000 Scottish residents who visited an outpatient department in the last financial year, taking the total number of attendances to approximately three million, 28% fewer than 2019-20.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman suggested the decrease in acute beds was lower than the 6.5% recorded in England and explained that health boards “regularly adjust the number of staffed beds to reflect actual and projected demand”.
Deluded, Divisive and Morally Bankrupt, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon uses HGV Driver and Fuel shortages to attack UK Government -The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow Uni
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I suppose it was only a matter of time before Nicola Sturgeon jumped on the grievance wagon again, and unsurprisingly, her ‘any issue to complain’ is about the HGV driver and fuel shortage. There are two things which should be established about both issues which the ‘pro Brexit’ camp has skated over which are very important.
1/ The HGV driver shortage was caused by poor pay and conditions.
2/ The mainstream media created the fuel panic buying.
Driving for a living is highly different than driving to work or indeed driving for pleasure, for one thing, most people get to go home at night to their own bed. HGV driving because of its nature sees some drivers having to sleep in their cabs, and not have proper access to shower or toilet facilities. So, when you hear stories of drivers sleeping in lay-bys and pissing into milk bottles, you get to see a snippet of the real life of a trucker. Another which is important to everyone regardless of what job they do is pay. You will hear tales of magical amounts of money being paid to drivers such as fuel drivers, but the reality is far from the truth of most drivers. The average hourly pay for a Fuel Tanker Driver in United Kingdom is £12.66. When you consider the the average salary for a CSCS Labourer is £11.13 per hour in Scotland, you can see how this highly skilled HGV job is underpaid massively. My brother is a joiner, if he does a date time shift in an agency, he can make between £20 and £22 an hour, and if he does a ‘shop fitting’ job, he can pull in a 70 hr week. So, his top line before tax and deductions is £1540. An HGV driver gets hit with not just with low pay, but also with strict legal laws regarding the amount of time they can work. A HGV driver must not exceed 60 hours working time, which includes driving and other work, in any single week. In addition they must not exceed an average of 48 hours working time over a specific reference period. It is important to stress the reason for the restricted working is health and safety.
Given there are many lesser skilled jobs which pay higher hourly rates, allow you to do a 9 to 5 job, instead of shifts, why would you sign up? The main reason for such low pay was EU membership, specifically ‘freedom of movement’. Freedom of movement only benefits a few people in real terms, but what it does do, is suppress wages by flooding a country with cheap labour. The people like Nicola Sturgeon aren’t affected by freedom of movement in her job, nor does it affect the rate of her £157,861 a year plus expenses salary. When Nicola Sturgeon travels abroad she doesn’t sleep in a drivers cab, she doesn’t wash with baby wipes, and she doesn’t piss in a bottle, her experience is 5 star hotel, luxury shower and toilet. Of course I have written before how Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t care about working class people many times, she would rather sacrifice them, so that she can move on from First Minister and join the EU elite. In every stunt she has been involved in, to save Scottish jobs via the taskforce farce, she has never saved one! She uses working class people with the sole intention of pushing her independence agenda forward and shining a spotlight on herself as some kind of saviour.
Nicola Sturgeon is quite the despicable human being.
If we come back to the fuel shortage, this has been entirely whipped up by the mainstream media, they have used the lack of fuel drivers affecting a few garages to create a nationwide demand, that has resulted in panic buying. This isn’t the first time that this tactic has been used, it was done during Covid, people flocked to supermarkets to panic buying of food and household essentials. Who would have thought at the supposed end of the world, the British people would be so concerned about access to bog roll. In this current manufactured crisis by the mainstream media, their efforts have caused emergency planning to be brought forward so that if needed, the British Army could ensure fuel supplies got through. Driving a fuel tanker isn’t just a matter of having an HGV licence, there are other qualifications required, and it is also an anti social job with some fuel deliveries done at night. The average pay for a tanker driver using “indeed” as a source, puts their rate of pay at £14.50 an hour. Recently at the Labour Party Conference, activists called for a McDonald’s worker to get £15 hr. If they believe that is fair, what price do they or should they put on the men and women who supply everything they use to live? Driving an HGV isn’t the same as driving a car, and driving an articulated lorry isn’t the same driving a lorry dubbed a ‘rigid vehicle’. I know this from experience because I have passed my car licence, my rigid vehicle licence, my bus licence and also my articulated lorry licence. However, I would need a refresher course to feel comfortable with the bigger vehicles.
For political news, click here: https://www.scotlandmatters.co.uk/politics-matters/
Glasgow is suffering because SNP council leader won’t stand up to Nicola Sturgeon – The Scotsman
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Home to around one-fifth of the nation’s population and sustaining hundreds of thousands of jobs, the city will shape Scotland’s economic performance in the years ahead.
This week, the 23rd annual State of the City Economy Conference will be held in Glasgow and hear about the opportunities for growth. The city has a chance to transform into a green powerhouse and take advantage of new industries such as digital tech.
We have the people and we have the talent. But this transformation will also require ambition for Glasgow. And that is sadly lacking in the current SNP administration in the City Chambers. With Susan Aitken in charge, we do not have a champion for our city.
Instead we have someone who refuses to take responsibility and blames the residents of Glasgow for its current challenges – wrapped up in rhetoric that would make Margaret Thatcher blush.
It’s just a “spruce up” that the city needs, she told STV in a car-crash interview. It’s “wee neds” to blame for the state of the city, she told the BBC in another attempt at deflection.
Rubbish piling up on the streets? People need to take more responsibility for cleanliness in their communities, according to Councillor Aitken. Every single time, whatever the problem, there is always someone else to blame for the SNP.
For education news, click here: https://www.scotlandmatters.co.uk/education-matters/
Social care sector ‘on its knees’ amid recruitment crisis – STV news
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The social care sector in Scotland is “on its knees”, it has been claimed, amid a warning that a lack of new recruits could force services to grind to a halt.
Lynn Bell, CEO of LOVE Group, a care provider based in Hamilton, highlighted the recruitment crisis in the sector in an interview with STV News.
And she explained that her organisation has had to consider prioritising certain care packages as a contingency measure in place of not delivering care.
“I think the social care sector is actually on its knees in terms of recruitment,” Bell said.
“What we are trying to do is attract people into a sector that’s broken.
“We could quite literally hire 500 people tomorrow and we can’t attract people into the jobs.
“So, it’s been quite disastrous and without exaggeration, the care sector itself is going to grind to a halt and people’s care might stop.”
She added: “Care is going to stop. People are going to stop receiving their care at home, it is an absolute fact.
“And as a care company, we have already started to look at prioritising certain care packages as a contingency to not delivering care.”
Bell indicated that the sector is experiencing challenges with recruitment across the board.
“It will quite literally stop and that doesn’t just apply to our organisation, that applies to every organisation,” she said.
“We go into provider meetings with local authorities, local authorities are providing care to families and everybody has the same message.
“Everybody is struggling, nobody can recruit and we just can’t get the bodies through the door.
“So, it will quite literally stop and we’re not far away.”
Donald Macaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care, urged national and local government to invest in care.