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Never his freedom 81

Posted on July 28, 2018 by

Not down with the sickness 264

Posted on July 26, 2018 by

An alert reader sent us a piece of interesting follow-up info to yesterday’s piece on NHS Scotland costs. Because comparable figures for NHS England are available too, and they make for surprising reading.

These are the Scottish figures for medicine costs at list price, ie before any negotiated discounts that the health service is able to obtain:

The population of England, at 55 million, is just over 10 times that of Scotland (5.4m). So one would imagine that its like-for-like costs would come in at around £12 billion.

But they don’t.

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There Will Be Adequate Food 137

Posted on July 25, 2018 by

We’ve just been leaked this short clip of a secret UK government exercise preparing for the week after Brexit.

We’re sure everything will be fine and no drastic measures will be required.

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But what does journalism matter? 167

Posted on July 25, 2018 by

The BBC front page headline for this is actually just the alarming-sounding “Scottish prescription costs rise by 25%”, without even the qualifier about the timespan.

It’s worse than that, though.

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A collective breath 29

Posted on July 25, 2018 by

This is where you stand 192

Posted on July 24, 2018 by

If you vote Scottish Labour:

And if you vote Scottish Conservative:

Always good to know.

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When circumstances change 190

Posted on July 23, 2018 by

It’s probably overdue that we start collecting these together. So here’s Sir John Major on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, explaining why a “once in a lifetime” referendum should in fact be held again because its outcome was determined by something that turned out to be untrue.

Which is, of course, totally different to Scotland being told to vote No in 2014 in order to stay in the European Union, because [REASONS TO FOLLOW AT SOME POINT]

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To save you some time 119

Posted on July 23, 2018 by

The entire Scottish media has today leapt like starving dogs at a tin of Chappie on a new “study” by right-wing flag-crazed imperialist nutjobs T***e I*****s, which claims to prove that an independent Scotland would have a BLACK HOLE!!! of infinity squillion pounds and all the crops would wither in the fields and stamps would be £5000 each and we’d be invaded by space monsters and all the usual stuff you’d expect.

(In all seriousness for a moment, it genuinely tries to flog the “fiscal transfer” myth and the “Scotland would have to join the Euro” myth and a bunch of other Better Together Greatest Hits that were utterly debunked old hat half a decade ago, and in order to make its economic case work it basically pretends that Brexit isn’t happening.)

But at the bottom of its article the New Statesman offers to link its readers to the full extent of the author’s professional economic expertise and well-argued case, and in fairness if you click the link they do exactly that.

Credit where due, it’s an uncanny likeness of the gloomy wee fella.

Stella Wants Her Groove Back 195

Posted on July 22, 2018 by

Labour MP Stella Creasy, explaining to Sarah Smith on today’s Sunday Politics why she backs a so-called “People’s Vote” on Brexit because voters should have the right to change their mind about a referendum if circumstances change.

Except, as always, for viewers in Scotland.

Our best offer 181

Posted on July 21, 2018 by

News of a world 303

Posted on July 19, 2018 by

The People’s Mess 305

Posted on July 18, 2018 by

Oh God. Would you look at the absolute state of this, readers?

Let’s make like everybody’s mental health and break that down.

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