Save anything you really want me to respond to until then. Thanks John

An independent study by Professor Keith Topping, Professor of Educational and Social Research,University of Dundee reveals positive results for Scottish pupils compared to those of the same age in the other parts of the UK: Book difficulty was highest in Scotland, followed by England, the Republic of Ireland, Wales and NorthernIreland. Northern Ireland is characterised by low levels of difficulty...

I’m grateful to reader and contributor, stewartb, for drawing my attention to this. From Sally Magnusson last night Scotland’s players will now ‘take the knee’ ahead of their second Euros match against England at Wembley next Friday. They had planned to ‘take a stand’, as they put it, against racism in all three of their appearances in the group stages. Then...

When President Biden arrived in Ireland on his way to the G7 Summit, he quoted the poem ‘Easter 1916’, by W B Yeats, remembering the brutality of the UK in Ireland, in an emotional address. By the time he got to England things had become colder, much colder. This from Alain Tolhurst in politics Home sums it up well: If hopes were not already dashed that Biden would side with London,...

At the EIS AGM last week, the motion on ‘the right of Scotland to determine the form of government that best suit its needs‘ was carried by a whopping 141 to 41 with 16 abstentions. So around 75% of EIS reps, by implication agree that a second independence referendum should be held. This a big slap for Labour’s Anas Sarwar with his opposition to self-determination for Scots and...

So, to add to the delights of Tom Gordon, the Herald has topped up its columnists with Baron Dunlop, architect of the poll tax and Adam Tomkins former republican leftie, now Tory. Not satisfied, they interview the dread Neil Oliver. I know they need the readers but that headline is trashy tabloid at best. Not his first of course: Oliver, who once described the possibility of another referendum as...

John Nicolson, SNP MP and former BBC Scotland staffer has tweeted that BBC Scotland staff have contacted him about ‘worrying sounding proposals for Pacific Quay‘. He has written the above to the head of BBC Scotland. Perhaps he remembers ‘good people‘ there and doubts that there is systemic anti-independence bias operating. My view is different, based on the evidence....

The BBC Scotland Business website, with some readers I feel sure, did headline the dramatic letter from Scotland’s food and drink sector, criticising the UK/Australia trade deal but Reporting Scotland last night, on the very day the letter is published, as often before, ignores a story that does not fit their hardcore loyalism and the nurturing of their uniquely elderly and conservative...

That is a winning line. Speaking on BBC Scotland’s Debate Night, last Wednesday, Andrew Wilson, not everyone’s favourite economy adviser to Nicola, did punch home a really clear response to doubters: “If Scotland becomes independent in the next year – it won’t but let’s say it did – it would be the richest country ever to become an independent country. “Scotland’s...

Twenty paragraphs on Russia and this frankly ludicrous, fawning, attempt to paint Johnson as his hero, Churchill: President Biden arrived in the UK on Wednesday. He will meet PM Boris Johnson to agree a new “Atlantic Charter”. The pact will be a modern version of the one agreed between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, with a focus on challenges including climate change...

A ‘Unionist fightback?’ What, have we finished correcting all the mythological accounts of how good a thing the British Empire was? Do they want a fightback against accuracy? Do they want the weans and bairns to hear more on the positives in mass slavery, genocidal military campaigns, organised famines in India and Ireland, the theft of resources, my ancestors role in terrorising the...

Despite much dwelt-upon shortages of infrastructure and of PPE, the infection rate, currently 8.2 per 100K, in both countries, looks like falling below that of the UK in the next few days. Though fascinated with the deaths, the apparent hospital chaos and the massed funeral pyres, only a few weeks ago, UK media have turned their gaze away from India now that she is clearly on top on the pandemic....

 (Image: Daily Mirror) From SNP Westminster Press Office: The SNP has condemned the cronyism at the core of Boris Johnson’s government, following a damning High Court ruling that the Tory government acted unlawfully when handing out lucrative Covid contracts to those with close links to senior Tory figures. Mrs Justice O’Farrell, who issued the ruling on the Cabinet Office contract with...

The on page 6 of this report by the British Foreign Policy Group: The Britons who fall into the Isolationists tribe are most concentrated in the North of Englandand least concentrated in London. But they are also over-represented in Scotland – emphasisingthe degree of mythology underpinning the concept of a homogeneously progressive,internationalist vision for an independent Scotland. The report...

By stewartb Here on TuS, on 7June, 2021 there was an article entitled ‘Indyref2 not a discouragement to foreign investors as Scotland surges 18% ahead of UK’.  It was prompted by the release of the latest annual report – its 2021 Attractiveness Survey Scotland report – on foreign direct investment (FDI) in Scotland by EY (formerly Ernst & Young). Source:...

Raaar!!! From SNP Media: A poll commissioned by Gordon Brown in the two days after the Scottish Parliament elections buried information showing that 55% of Scots verged to favouring independence on a scale of 0 to 10.  The poll – conducted by James Kanagasooriam’s Stack Data, a trading brand of Hanbury Strategy which has conducted unpublished polling for the UK government and who...

Health Secretary Humza Yousef In February 2021, NHS Scotland’s A&E departments saw and treated 86.2% within 4 hours while NHS England could only manage 77.4%, an 8.8% gap, and even then they were cheating, see below. By April 2021, NHS England could still only manage 77.1%. england.nhs.uk/...-activity/ In April 2021, in...

Image: paindata.org/ From NHS Scotland today: In the quarter ending 31 March 2021, 2,344 patients were seen at a chronic pain clinic. This compares to 2,108 patients in the quarter ending 31 December 2020, an increase of 11.2%. Of the 2,340 patients waiting at 31 March 2021, 1,661 (71.0%), had been waiting 12 weeks or less to be seen, 272 (11.7%) more than 12 but less than 24 weeks,...

The rUK average is 731 doses per day while Scotland is doing 895 without the ‘British Army’, 23% ahead. Scotland has been ahead now for a whole week but our media is predictably unmoved. They liked it better when we could be described as ‘lagging behind.’ As Leonard Cohen once ‘sang’: Ah, you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that I just might...

Image: Drewa1983 From SNP Media: SNP MSP Jim Fairlie will lead a Members’ Business Debate today (Tuesday) on the threat a tariff-free trade deal with countries like Australia will pose to Scotland’s farmers and agriculture sector. The Perthshire South and Kinross-shire MSP will tell the Scottish Parliament that a trade deal that allows tariff-free access for lamb, beef and pork into the UK...