Ruth Davidson tweeted the other day about the education situation in Scotland. She wondered what the SNP would do to distract people’s attention from the subject.
Of course, as far as I can see, they have done no such thing, but I ventured to suggest a variety of embarrassments for the English Tories, including Boris being hauled over the coals by Tessy; Tessy herself on bended knee to the Saudis; the strikes on Southern trains causing unrest among crowds of commuters in London, and a raft of statistics about the appalling health service run by the still unsacked heath minister Jeremy Hunt, who is just itching to get these foreign doctors sent home.
I’m sure Ruth is a regular reader of Munguin’s New Republic. So instead of tweeting her yet again about it, and because I’m sure she never reads the Guardian, I’ll just leave this here for her so she can contemplate how awful the Scottish government is, although we are happy to help her government out. Certainly for the benefit of the poor kids who have been so badly let down by Hunt.
Not quite sure i like the tone of “exiles” though, Guardian. It’s hardly Siberia.
tris and other nastys
Apparently its a reciprocal agreement they send anorexic people to Scotland
and we feed them up and in return Scotland CAN? send fat/obese people to
England whereby they starve them…..The Torys are brill at that.
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LOL. That figures.
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Did they also mention that England’s NHS will have to pay Scotland’s NHS for this service since they are completely separate organisations in separate countries?
Perhaps there might be Barnett consequentials so Westminster will then designate it UK spend which means,as usual,we Scots end up paying twice.
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I hope they are paying. Not that they have any money.
I’m not gloating about this. A really close friend of mine lives in London. He has health problems that he’s not getting the right treatment for.
Really, it’s about Ruth and her injudicious tweeting.
We all say silly things on Twitter… It’s just that as a party leader and someone who presumably wants to be first minister, or even prime minister one day, she’d so better to think before she types.
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Malnourished English children in Scottish hospital scandal — Sturgeon must resign!
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Ditto
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Goodness… get me a glass of water. Niko agreed with Conan.
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Oh undoubtedly. Why she hasn’t already gone is beyond me.
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No no no, this can’t be right! The Ruthsfuhrer can never be wrong!
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Nah… she’s not wrong, just a bit finger happy.
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Think a wee thank you letter to the Guardian might be a good idea there Tris. I mean isn’t it nice of them to give Nicola Sturgeon four days advanced warning of what wee Ruthie the leetle tankette commander’s questions will be about on Thursday?
I can just see the scene now.
Wee Ruthie stands up and asks the First Minister what she is going to do about the disgraceful situation of the N.H.S. having to send children to another country for treatment. The S.N.P. really should be getting a better grip on this abominable situation. It is quite clear to everyone that the Scottish N.H.S. is a disaster! LOL
Of course the First Minister’s reply would be yet another of her brilliant “one liners” … sit down you stupid wee lassie. The children in question are coming FROM England TO Scotland. WE are helping out the English N.H.S. that has been decimated by YOUR government! LOL
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I’d not put it past her. Remember when Baillie criticised the SNP for something that happened when SHE was the heath secretary.
Seriously, if you looked at the opposition only you would be tempted to think that Scotland WAS indeed too stupid to be independent.
That said if you looked at the House of Commoners in general you would come to the conclusion that the UK shouldn’t go out, or even stay in, without adult supervision.
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Tris
Davidson, like the yoon media in Scotland, just won’t care. The Tories are off the leash and heaven help all of us the next few years. She never replies to tweets, I also noticed that I can’t comment on Scotland in Union anymore. I posted a few wee links on their site a while back lol, it appears that like Ruth and the Tories they don’t do truth.
On a more serious note though the NHS is underfunded, the UK comes behind Norway, Greece, Portugal, New Zealand, Austria, Canada, Belgium, Japan, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands and America according to 2016 figures. I wonder if we disguised hospitals as palaces, they are all owned by the Queen really as they are mostly named after her since she paid for them, they might do better with funding. It will get worse before it gets better, hopefully better in an independent Scotland.
Bruce
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Brilliant idea, Bruce. Rename hospitals something like Birmingham Palace for Sick Children and immediately money will be thrown at it.
Let’s suggest it. 🙂
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I believe the hospitals being used are private. Question is “Why are they not in England?”
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So they are paying private hospitals to get their kids treated?
When will that fool Hunt get his game together?
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Exiled to Scotland! Sounds like a sentence from Tsarist Russia, like Stalin’s forced exile to Siberia. Who comes up with these headlines?
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Pretty insulting, huh? Maybe they won’t want to go back! I doubt that happened a lot from Siberia!
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“Ruth Davidson tweeted the other day about the education situation in Scotland.”
SNP control education policy, without any limitations. They have more tax powers than ANY Scottish executive/Government since devolution began. They spend approximately £1623 MORE per head on education than England.
Yet PISA figures show maths, reading, science outcomes have never been lower. Yet evidence mounts than standards and outcomes are collapsing.
Meanwhile neigh on 10 years of an NAT gov’t you have the gall to blame London? or Labour? Or maybe the shining sun? SNP record, their responsibility.
£1623 more per head. It has NOTHING to do with a lack of funds. It has everything to do with incompetence by the Nat gov’t, everything to do with the curriculum for excellence.
But hey, “constitutional crises are good for Scotland” aye?
Tell that to the generation of Scottish kids your side has let down. It’s abundantly clear the SNP have let down a generation, failed in a key duty.
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I think that I didn’t blame anyone, Dean.
What I said was that Ruth tweeted wondering what the SNP could do to distract attention from the situation.
I was just pointing out a few things that were possible. Because it’s been a week of amusing news from London and Tory government. From Boris and Tessy, to trousers and trains…
As far as the educational standards are concerned, we’d have to note that none of the British countries’ education is very good compared with contemporaries. It has been like that for a very long time. As long as I can remember actually.
Why is that?
Not sure. I suspect that rather like productivity in the workplace which is abysmally low, it may have to do with a lack of enthusiasm. Do you think the Unionists are right? We’re just too stupid. But then why would we have such good figures for university entrance?
I don;t know if this is the answer. I don’t know if Brits in general put less into education than Germans or Chinese or Canadians as we do with health.
I’m not sure what the supposed tax powers has to do with it when, by your own calculations we spend more on it than England. It’s not lack of funding. So even if we had a range of tax powers it would make any difference.
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@DeanTheTory
You’d think you would have the decency to reply to my comment on your blog about education. This is an identical comment from you in response to me.
You dean are being taken in by propaganda
*******
You are seeking petty party political advantage out of a non crisis.
http://indyref2.scot/crisis-or-confidence
PISA is flawed
********
Perhaps you could make a reply on your blog and get the conversation going with some honest comment instead of tory lies and bullshit
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PISA is fake, statistics are fake, it’s all someone else fault?
You’re delusional. Voters aren’t fooled. How’s life in the bunker?
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You should read this Mr Tory
https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2016/12/08/scotlands-schools-pisa-results-lean-toward-nothing-meaningful-finlands-success-is-not-real-south-korea-and-chinas-educational-programmes-amount/
Nowadays we don’t believe the propaganda any more. You should read more widely yourself. Eventually the scales will come off and you will be a free thinker too.
Oh, and I probably share your general opinion that low taxes and free markets are good. But just not the notion that we should blindly cut everything to afford the tax cuts to people who are rich enough already. Nobody really needs a Porche Cayanne to take their weans to school.
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Interesting piece. I think you have to be a bit of an expert in education and testing systems.
There were things that I learned by rote at school, for exams, which I forgot the day after the test.
And of course education is a very good deal more that Maths, Latin, and Geography.
Learning how to study effectively is important.
I think far too much emphasis is put on tests, although clearly there has to be some “Contrôle des connaissances” as the french call it.
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You mean the voters who have elected in an SNP government since 2007? Those voters?
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Well, we’ll see what the voters say, shall we?
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You need to watch londoncalling. There are various sites that have copies.
If you dont believe the state uses propaganda via MSM then try this
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/10/08/non-official-cover-respected-german-journalist-blows-whistle-on-how-the-cia-controls-the-media/
No delusion here mate.
Its a lovely bunker Tris had some photos on soppy sunday a couple of weeks ago.
I endorse davidbsb comments.
Abandon the “Union” and join the fight against the fascist UK state.
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I’ve got it bookmarked ready to watch, if I could just find the time.
Looking forward to it.
🙂
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Great article, Peter. Thanks for the link.
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Poor Ruth Davidson. Her future didn’t last long.
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Well, she keeps saying stuff on Twitter without thinking it through.
What will the SNP say to distract attention? Well, they didn;t say anything really, but you can;t help but notice that the Tories are making one hell of a mess and only getting away with it because the opposition is too busy opposing itself.
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When we reclaim our N.E and Tayside seats from you lot, gloat then. The blue flags are fluttering in rural Scotland again.
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Blue flags are fine, so long as they have a white cross of Saint Andrew on them.
There will be a need for a centre right party in independent Scotland. If you people on the right cling to the discredited union it will take much longer to ever make its presence felt. Ditch the union. Your country is Scotland. The ruling class in England no more regard you as anything other than a compliant, duped porridge jock, than any of the rest of us.
Abandon the union and argue for centre right politics in the free country of Scotland. The British union served its purpose. It is past its sell by date. Come with us.
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Good post David.
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She’s OK, Iain, but she came to the job too early. A wiser head, with a good deal more experience, like Annabel Goldie, would know better than tweet something that could easily be turned on her. There are politicians form all parties that do it. Kezia is guilty, and there have been examples from other parties too.
If I tweet some rubbish, no one much reads it, and even if they do it doesn’t matter a stuff. If Ruth, Kez or Nicola do it it is read by thousands and assumed to be official policy.
If you are in a position of responsibility, you should think…what can people make of this? Will I regret it in the morning?
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I think Annabel Goldie and her type were in politics to make a difference – that old snooty Tory thing about the social superiors looking after the best interests of the great unwashed. Poor Ruth Davidson is more like a Michael Gove type (remember the Titmuss Tendency) – desperate to be accepted by their social superiors and possessing few principles that can’t be discarded at the drop of a hat. Like Gove and that type of Tory aspirer, there’s a streak of unhappy bitterness that always seeps through to the surface. They also don’t seem to be very good at their chosen job.
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Well nobody wants to be like Govey, Agatha. He was doomed to failure. remember when they got into power and Cameron asked them to go to their departments and find savings.
He was the first to announce the savings in the Commons, and it turned out that they were a pile of pants.
He immediately blamed his civil servants, which of course, in many ways, may not hae been unreasonable, but it was impolitic of him. He was like a little boy trying to impress the teacher and speaking out before anything had been checked.
Once you have made enemies at the top though, you can never count on these people to help you out of a mess.
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Dean: As I said over on your blog, as the SNP has moved leftwards over the years from the centre right under Wilson, to the centre under Salmond, to the centre left under Sturgeon, they I expect that the SNP will lose some voters to the Tories, just as Labour in the leafy suburbs in Glasgow and Edinburgh may be tempted to move towards the Tories… Morningside, surely an embarrassment to you that it is a Labour seat, should be Tory. Houses worth Many millions, and a Labour MP?
Mind you, a recent opinion poll showed that if the Scottish elections were run tomorrow that the SNP would take more seats and the Greens would make inroads too. So it’s not all rosy.
Possibly because of Brexit and Ruth’s about turn on all that she passionately fought for before the referendum. Possibly because of the utter hash that they are making in Westminster.
DWP. It costs more to implement the cruel benefit changes than it saves them. Health care in crisis. Social care in crisis. Trains in a mess, and Graying proposing that it be illegal for railway staff to strike…like they were police. Brexit being run by brainless boobies. Foreign Secretary’s close friends saying that one day May will open her mouth too far and Boris will tear her off a strip (Sunday Times). …and that’s off the top of my head.
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Just leave this one here for you Dean the tory
http://www.thecanary.co/2016/12/14/maybe-ive-got-new-parent-syndrome-i-just-witnessed-state-school-shocked-opinion/
I respectfully suggest that your attacks on the Scottish Education system are political and lies based on misleading data.
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Hell’s teeth. That is absolutely shocking.
There were many things in that article I found shocking, but just off the top of my hat, how about this…with queues going around the block, and 700 people waiting, what if it had been raining heavens hard?
And they have the nerve to say that our education system is in tatters.
.https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzqxENWW8AEs0Q1.jpg
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And Dean, although I appreciate that you don;t run teh Tory education policies, I’d appreciate a comment from you on this
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