This is Conservative MSP John Scott openly lying to an audience in Ayr yesterday on BBC Radio Scotland’s “Big Debate”, on the subject of whether Scottish people would continue to have access to English hospitals (and specifically Great Ormond Street children’s hospital) in the event of independence.
The female voice correcting him is Jeane Freeman. The truth is below.
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Tags: flat-out lies
Category
debunks, scottish politics
So everyone will believe THAT’s definitely going to happen, then.
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Category
analysis, comment, scottish politics, wtf
There’s a remarkable story on the BBC website today. Torn between the referendum campaign and the 2015 UK election campaign, Labour’s health spokesman Andy Burnham has finally admitted in public that yes, NHS England IS being privatised.
But it’s what he wants done about it that made us double-take.
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Category
disturbing, uk politics
We suspect this isn’t one of the ones Mr Darling gets paid £10,000 for.
Still, only putting out 12 seats is one way to guarantee a “standing room only” crowd.
Tags: and finally
Category
pictures, scottish politics
The Wee Blue Book is extremely close to finished now, readers. We’re just buffing the corners. But we thought you might like to get a head start on one bit of it.
As well as trying to answer all the reasonable and sensible questions that undecided or No voters might have of the Yes side, the book will encourage them to ask a few tricky ones of their No representatives too, because we’ve been waiting two-and-a-half years for the media to do it with no luck.
But as you’ve been so awesome at writing to your MPs and MSPs before, enabling us to (for example) shed some cruelly harsh light on the full shambolic incoherence of Labour’s devolution plans, it seemed only fair that you got to have a go first.
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Category
investigation, scottish politics
Yesterday a number of news outlets including the Scotsman, the Courier and STV all carried a scare story from Gordon Brown about independence ending cross-border organ transplants. Curiously, none of them had thought to check the allegation with NHS Blood & Transplant, so we did it for them, and got the unequivocal and unambiguous answer back that “Scottish independence will not affect organ donation and the system will continue as it does currently.”
You’d imagine that the publications concerned would have wanted to put their readers’ minds at rest by publishing that categorical reasssurance today, wouldn’t you?
You know how the rest goes by now, readers.
Tags: misinformation
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
We got our reply (emphasis added):
“Good afternoon,
Thank you for your recent telephone call to the NHSBT Donor Line.
I can confirm that Scottish independence will not affect organ donation and the system will continue as it does currently.
I hope this answers your query, please let me know if you require any further information and I will be happy to help.
Kind regards,
Tom Kempster
ODR Assistant
NHS Blood and Transplant
Organ Donation and Transplantation Directorate
Fox Den Road
Stoke Gifford
Bristol
BS34 8RR”
Tom didn’t actually say the words “Gordon Brown is lying through his teeth to terrify Scottish people into voting No”, but we think it’s pretty much implied.
Category
debunks, investigation, scottish politics
We telephoned Organ Donation Scotland on Friday for their reaction to the despicable scare stories being put around by a teenage Labour activist from Liverpool bussed up to Scotland last week by the No campaign.
We’re still waiting for them to get back to us with a quote. But in the meantime, it’s been predictable – but no less disgraceful – to see senior Labour figures repeating the lie. It all seems to be part of a major Unionist offensive on health, doubtless sparked by fears that privatisation of the English NHS will lead to a significant reduction in the Scottish block grant and corresponding damage to the Scottish health service.
The No camp, unsurprisingly, has chosen to fight fear with fear.
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Tags: flat-out liesmisinformationproject fear
Category
comment, investigation, scottish politics
Alert readers might be thinking that headline sounds vaguely familiar and they’d be right, because we published a post two months ago with a similar title, highlighting the curiously inverse relationship between media scare stories about alleged abuse in the referendum campaign for which there’s no evidence whatsoever and actual abuse that really happened.
We were put in mind of it this week, after the Daily Record ran a particularly barrel-scraping “vile cybernats” piece about how a Labour activist from England got a little bit of extremely mild stick on Twitter after announcing he was on his way to Scotland to stick his nose in the independence debate, and how he WORRIED that he might meet a hostile reception at the railway station (although of course, and happily, he didn’t).
“Better Together” campaign leaders Blair McDougall and Alistair Darling constantly demand that the Yes campaign, and Alex Salmond in particular, takes responsibility for and action against random online nutters behaving in abusive or threatening ways, even when those people have no discernible connection to Yes Scotland or the SNP.
But they’re less keen on putting their own house in order.
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Tags: hypocrisysmears
Category
comment, scottish politics
A post appeared on the news-and-discussion site Reddit Scotland last night. We’ve reproduced it in full below, because it seems like something people should know.
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Tags: misinformation
Category
comment, scottish politics