Gethin Chamberlain
@newsandpics
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Investigative journalist and photographer. Labour rights specialist. Also community nature through Based in Scotland 🏴
Scotland
Joined December 2009
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Last Seen Profiles
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Looking for an experienced journalist and photographer to work with on human rights or environment stories?
I work with UK national media and international outlets: words and pictures.
Happy to work with non-profits /charities.
#journalism
#freelance
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Women have a right to gather peacefully in a public place to talk to each other about the challenges they face. They should not have to do so
surrounded by a hostile mob of men facilitated by Police Scotland. No other situation would be policed this way. 🧵
#LetWomenSpeak
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But what was most striking was the way in which police facilitated the disruption of the event. It’s hard to think of another scenario in which police would put up with the level of abuse being directed towards a peaceful public speaking event.
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It is not progressive for men to shout down female speakers and to drown them out with amplified music and rhetoric.
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I went along to observe as a journalist and to try to understand a bit more about what is going on in these confrontations. I could have done without some of the stereotypical male aggression on display from the demonstrators and the interference with my work.
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This was poor policing. It came across as partisan.
People have a right to demonstrate. They can do so offensively.
But on a subject as divisive as the conflict between the rights of women and trans rights, police need to be seen to be impartial. Police Scotland failed today.
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I’d like to have been able to give this lady the last word, but I couldn’t hear a word she was saying because she was drowned out by a man showing off and speaking over her.
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@DalgetySusan
@PoliceScotland
It was extraordinary. Struggling to think of any other situation which would be policed this way. Watching police stand by and allow men to surround and scream abuse at a peaceful gathering of women, even facilitating their actions, felt deeply uncomfortable.
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In Edinburgh today police allowed groups of demonstrators right up to the edge of the pen in which the women were allowed to congregate, even affording them a protective cordon. Those allowed to disrupt the event did so noisily and with signs many of the women found offensive.
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Had this been a pro-Palestinian event, would police have allowed hardcore Zionist protesters to set up a sound system to drown it out and allow protesters to set up within a couple of feet of the crowd? They would not and a reasonable person would not expect them to.
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This matters. In a week in which the Hate Crime Act came into force in Scotland, ministers - including the first minister - have repeatedly stressed that the decision on what’s legal and illegal rests with the police. People from both sides have to trust them.
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But they also need to trust their politicians. Policing generally reflects the will of the government: you see this around the world. If police are facilitating those on one side of a debate it’s usually because senior officers have been told that’s what the politicians want.
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@AttitudeMag
@VirginAtlantic
Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize judges had a different opinion on the woman of the year: “Narges Mohammadi, an imprisoned Iranian human rights activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her unwavering commitment to women’s rights in the country.”
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On 16 November 2021 Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament that face coverings remained a legal requirement. Three days later, national clinical director Jason Leitch advised current First Minister Humza Yousaf how to get around the rules by holding a drink.
#CovidInquiry
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If you tell people with an axe to grind that a grindstone exists, that it is free to use and that, moreover, they should use it, it should not come as a surprise when that’s exactly what they do.
How Scotland’s Hate Crime Act has backfired spectacularly. 🧵
#HateCrime
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@joannaccherry
Oddly their pledge to record everything as a hate incident, regardless of evidence, is still up on their website
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Could we get the name of the speaker here and what was said? Anyone know?
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@JeremyWickins
I’m easy to find online - Guardian website or my own:
Which needs image updated.
I wanted to see why this is so fractious. Anyone who claims to be impartial as a journalist is lying.
I thought the women I met nice and the men aggressive. Unsurprisingly.
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@jane__bradley
@C4Dispatches
@thetimes
It’s an excellent investigation and Brand is a particularly difficult subject, with form for trying to close down investigations. He has the money to pay for top reputation management lawyers. But they can be defeated when the story is true, as we demonstrated eight years ago.
Interesting to see the level of denial around the Brand story. There was a similar conspiracy-led backlash
in 2015 when I revealed he was selling £60 sweatshirts made by workers on just 25p an hour. Now it’s the right: then it was the left.
#RussellBrand
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I’ve taken back control and ended free movement into my driveway. How’s it working out? Not as well as I was expecting, to be honest...
#brexit
#takebackcontrol
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Hate Incidents: how thousands of people are ending up on Scottish police databases for non-crimes.
A week away from the introduction of the Hate Crime Act, this is chilling. 🧵
#HateCrime
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No, the Cass Review did not reject 98% of evidence.
Nor did it require studies to be the gold standard of double blind randomised control trials.
What allowed this false information to become widespread? A British Medical Journal press release.
🧵
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Looks like hundreds of thousands of families who enjoy traditional Scottish holidays are in for a shock as they discover that their favourite B&Bs and holiday cottages have shut up shop forever.
#travel
🧵
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@ndlkhr
@AllisonPearson
@AAnthonyMcAleer
It’s not that simple. People die as a result of lockdown. My mother did, in howling distress. It wasn’t pretty. I wrote about it.
My son’s education has been destroyed by the closures.
Life is a balance of risks.
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@KennyFarq
@thetimes
This really doesn’t come across as an example of a “Scotland marked by generosity of spirit”. Curious why she is acceptable as a cabinet minister, representing the country in a defined role, but not as First Minister?
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Interesting to see the level of denial around the Brand story. There was a similar conspiracy-led backlash
in 2015 when I revealed he was selling £60 sweatshirts made by workers on just 25p an hour. Now it’s the right: then it was the left.
#RussellBrand
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@BenGoldsmith
It could be done better, of course. But it’s still home to a thriving red squirrel population and pine martens are expanding their territory there. There’s ospreys and golden eagles coming over the border from the release programme here in the Scottish Borders. It’s not all bad.
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If the last 10 years have taught us anything, it’s maybe that
@_KateForbes
is far more representative of grass roots Scotland than many commentators think.
Also, it’s possible to accept that politicians who are religious can make policy decisions not based on scripture.
#SNP
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@michaelpforan
It seems counterintuitive for a Green Party minister to try to undermine confidence in high quality academic research when a key part of his role in government relies on getting people to believe in science.
No, the Cass Review did not reject 98% of evidence.
Nor did it require studies to be the gold standard of double blind randomised control trials.
What allowed this false information to become widespread? A British Medical Journal press release.
🧵
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If new laws are necessary, they need to be framed in a way that can be defended coherently and policed with consent.
The politicians who backed this deeply flawed legislation failed to do that.
They created a monster and it is consuming them.
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@ChrisMusson
It’s “burn the witch” time again.
If the last 10 years have taught us anything, it’s maybe that
@_KateForbes
is far more representative of grass roots Scotland than many commentators think.
Also, it’s possible to accept that politicians who are religious can make policy decisions not based on scripture.
#SNP
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In the life of every doomed government comes a moment when they finally lose touch with the majority of the electorate and begin the inexorable slide towards electoral defeat. Though it’s unusual for that point to be marked by a row over wood burning stoves. 🧵
#stove
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Are there people who dislike Brand for his promotion of conspiracy theories? Yes. Would they like him removed as a voice? Yes. Does that invalidate the investigation? No. If the story is true, then Brand again has questions to answer. Will it change his fans’ minds. Probably not.
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What was needed was strong leadership. Instead a minister who couldn’t explain the details of the law suggested misgendering might be a crime and the First Minister (who introduced the law) insisted it was up to police to decide what was illegal. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t.
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When you next type MSM dismissively, just remember professional journalists risk their lives every day to report the facts you have an opinion about.
We go to the difficult places so you don’t have to.
The UN recorded 55 journalist deaths last year.
#journalism
#sky
#ukraine
Sky News team's harrowing account of their violent ambush in Ukraine this week
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So pissed off about being duped about free range eggs I spent my story fee from the Mirror buying my own chickens.
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It’s true that less has changed than many think. But that’s due to a Scottish Government and Police Scotland communications strategy so hopeless that the Hate Monster campaign to promote the law gifted its opponents a new, instantly recognisable Scottish cultural icon.
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@paul_pwilson
I’m less worried about the bar for criminal conviction, which is set quite high: it’s the potential for low level harassment that is most disturbing. The automatic recording of a hate incident with no way of contesting it is astonishing.
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Policing must never be partisan: how women were failed by
@PoliceScotland
today.
#LetWomenSpeakEdinburgh
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Was it intended to shut him up? Not on my part. I’m freelance: I specialise in labour rights investigations and it’s easier to get them into the papers if you’re exposing celebrity hypocrisy. There were clearly issues in the supply chain & questions to answer on where money went.
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Most people had no idea the police were promising to record every report as a hate incident even if it didn’t involve criminal behaviour, based solely on the perception of the person filing the report, which shouldn’t be challenged. But they do now.
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Brand has money and money buys access to expensive legal representation. He puts up quite a fight, which means it takes time to get to publication and you have to be right. But in our case he eventually had to put up his hands and admit defeat.
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@AllisonPearson
@JamesMelville
Nicola Sturgeon’s sister shared pictures of them together at a family party last month. No wonder she looks awkward - she banned standing up indoors in venues like this without a mask.
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And that’s how, a week after the Hate Crime Act came into force, we’ve reached the point where a Scottish Government minister is having to condemn his father for posting on social media an image of a swastika within a Star of David after police initially refused to investigate.
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Did the Mail have an agenda? They - and their readers - certainly didn’t like him or his politics. So they had an axe to grind. But the story itself was valid and chimed with the Mail’s editorial line. That’s not the same as The Establishment conspiring to shut Brand up.
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Women have a right to gather peacefully in a public place to talk to each other about the challenges they face. They should not have to do so
surrounded by a hostile mob of men facilitated by Police Scotland. No other situation would be policed this way. 🧵
#LetWomenSpeak
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That a lot of the controversial things already existed isn’t the issue.
Most people had no idea that there was a network of third party reporting centres (including the sex shop) where they could file an anonymous report against anyone, alleging a hate crime. Now they do.
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“Anti-transgender rights activists and transgender rights counter protestors at the Let Women Speak rally...”
Er … surely the word you’re looking for there
@edinburghpaper
is “women”. There was a clue in the name of the event.
#LetWomenSpeak
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The excellent investigation that’s now the subject of so much online bile faces similar questions. Why Brand? Why now? The simple answer is that he’s high-profile, those reporting it are happy with their evidence and celebrities taking advantage of fans is a valid story.
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@staylorish
Maybe not a scandal, but if you’re a minister in a government that introduces a complex law with complex rules designed to reduce the number of legitimate Scottish businesses like the one your own family runs, best not to get caught breaking that complex law’s complex rules.
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If you want to know whether you are on a Police Scotland list, they have a form. And an email address where you can send it.
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@kimwillsher1
@PoliceScotland
No, you know what it’s like now so I just went to take a look for myself and recorded what I saw. As you know all too well we come across this sort of politicised policing from time to time in our jobs, but it shouldn’t be happening in Scotland and it isn’t healthy.
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How Edinburgh council decided to enter the hotel business and then set about closing down the competition 🧵
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Seems many people have no idea that Scottish holiday cottages and bed & breakfasts must have a licence from October 1. And that many are being refused or have just given up, unable or unwilling to deal with the complicated regulations.
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It’s extraordinary that this story is not generating more interest after the furore over other controversial Scottish Government legislation, including the failed
#DRS
recycling scheme and the ferries debacle.
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Now that everything is unequivocally nuts, here’s a red squirrel filmed in the Scottish Borders this morning showing how to deal with this situation.
#NaturePhotography
#redsquirrel
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On the same day in 2021 that Edinburgh council announced a crack down on holiday letting in the Scottish capital, plans were announced to turn its old Royal Mile headquarters into … luxury holiday lets. The council still owns the building. 🧵
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@joannaccherry
@WingsScotland
Hard to think of any other public order scenario in which Police Scotland would have enabled this level of disruption, by aggressive men, against peaceful women.
Women have a right to gather peacefully in a public place to talk to each other about the challenges they face. They should not have to do so
surrounded by a hostile mob of men facilitated by Police Scotland. No other situation would be policed this way. 🧵
#LetWomenSpeak
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It’s a big test for the minister in charge
@PaulMcLennan7
It’s a brave minister who persists with a policy that deprives voters of their summer holidays in what could be a general election year.
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@idruprofen
Minimum wage is £10.42. So £15.53 is just short of 50% more than that. Minimum wage workers put in the same hours, the same effort. They have to support families. Their services are almost always necessary. The lower the pay, the more essential the job. What makes you special?
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Fewer than half of applications in the Highlands have been approved - but 8 out of 10 businesses haven’t even bothered to apply. That’s at least 8,000 holiday homes and B&Bs.
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@joannaccherry
The Lord Advocate spoke at length about why Scotland should tackle this issue with regard to our own legal system. The thread doesn’t seem to address why the Scottish Government now wants the UK Government to override Holyrood or how it would legislate for a devolved matter.
"It is important to recognise that in Scotland, there is an established route of appeal...That route involves the SCCRC considering cases in the first instance prior to referring appropriate cases to the Court of Appeal" - Dorothy Bain
#postoffice
#yousaf
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@CrimeGirI
Alfie Moore is arguably the best thing on Radio 4. You’ll recognise plenty of the scenarios he describes. I think we’re into the eighth series of “It’s a Fair Cop” now - as with all of these things, best to start at the beginning.
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@SpeechUnion
@GrahamGGrant
@murdo_fraser
How police in Scotland are taught never to challenge perceptions of hate - and how that may leave you on a list.
Hate Incidents: how thousands of people are ending up on Scottish police databases for non-crimes.
A week away from the introduction of the Hate Crime Act, this is chilling. 🧵
#HateCrime
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@murdo_fraser
@PoliceScotland
It’s certainly at odds with their own procedure, which clearly instructs them to record a perpetrator in relation to the perceived hate element.
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With just over two months to go until a deadline for small Scottish tourism businesses to apply for licenses to continue to operate, thousands appear to be giving up.
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I’ll be writing about Scotland’s short term let crisis for
@Independent
this weekend. We’ve got some disturbing figures revealing how the future of tens of thousands of small Scottish tourism businesses is in peril. Can the Scottish Government save the day?
#travel
#STL
#tourism
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And that’s how you end up on a list. There appears to be no published way of contesting it. No defence. No way to remove the mark against your name. And that’s before the new law extends the scope for complaints to anything published on the internet that can be viewed in Scotland
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“It’s cruel,” Mam would say, over and over again.
Lockdown has had a devastating effect on those trapped in care homes.
My mother gave up, stopped eating and drinking, and died.
I wrote about it for
@spectator
#lockdown
#carehomes
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In Edinburgh, only a handful of licences have been granted. It’s the same for Glasgow. Across the country, councils are refusing licences and small tourism businesses are just giving up.
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The smart move would be to announce an extension of the deadline to allow time to deal with the unintended consequences of a well-meaning policy.
Something needs to give. Otherwise Scots will be left with no choice but to head south to England for their holidays.
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@JasonManford
This was predicted: now it is happening.
"Now something is changing in Scotland that will delight the head-shakers and leave the millions hoping to visit next year wondering why it suddenly got harder and more expensive to find somewhere to stay."
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But at some point reality is going to bite. When people go to book their holidays next year and discover that their favourite holiday destinations have been shut down, they’re going to be very angry. And it’s going to be too late.
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Genuine question for friends of the Scottish Government airily dismissing concerns about Hate Crime Act. Aside from police promising to record “hate” incidents without evidence, under what circumstances would anyone call 999 to report a “non-criminal hate incident”?
#HateCrime
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The Scottish Government says the licences are necessary to tackle housing shortages - though it delayed the deadline for six months to avoid scuppering the Edinburgh festivals.
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It was interesting to see the comments though. Even when Brand accepted the facts, his supporters didn’t. They retained their blind faith. Some professed undying love.
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The problem politicians face when they decide to brazen it out is that there’s always more.
Matheson is a cabinet minister who signed this bad law off. Then he ignored it because it was obviously nonsense. But the little people, the voters, they’re expected to comply.
#matheson
⚡️Michael Matheson is embroiled in a second scandal after failing to comply with his own government’s controversial lettings laws.
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@DalgetySusan
@PoliceScotland
Policing must never be seen to be partisan.
If it is, it usually suggests that senior officers have been told this is what their government wants.
Women have a right to gather peacefully in a public place to talk to each other about the challenges they face. They should not have to do so
surrounded by a hostile mob of men facilitated by Police Scotland. No other situation would be policed this way. 🧵
#LetWomenSpeak
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A quarter of visitors to Scotland stay in self catering accommodation. Those holidays are under threat from a complicated and expensive licensing scheme that threatens to strangle an industry that contributes more than £800 to our economy. I wrote about it for the Sunday Post 🧵
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There’s a lot to unpick. Let’s leave the actual crimes to one side and deal with what happens if police conclude there’s no crime. It will still be recorded as a hate incident if the person reporting it perceives it as one. Police are told not to challenge this.
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There’s no requirement to have intended to offend. The complainant doesn’t even need to have experienced the perceived offence themself.
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The timeline for Covid-19 booster vaccinations in Scotland appears to have been quietly changed. Last month over-50s were told they could book appointments from October. But now saying bookings won't open until mid-November.
@magnusllewellin
@ChrisMusson
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@CaolanRob
@johnsweeneyroar
@ZarinaZabrisky
@reflextv
The point of the helmet is to cover the head as best as possible. You appear to have it on backwards.
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In October the Scottish Government’s own advisors recommended that children should no longer be required to wear masks in class and that in-person parents evenings resume. Their advice was rejected.
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How big business made a mockery of the Scottish Government’s short term let crackdown: Edinburgh council has been approving a swathe of posh new aparthotels while small businesses face ruin 🧵
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The “perpetrator” is recorded. On top of the statement here, we know this too from the Murdo Fraser case today and the fact that hate incidents recorded against an individual can be mentioned in an enhanced disclosure. Here’s the full flow:
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Never seen a red squirrel swimming? You have now.
My pic from the Scottish Borders.
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“Accommodation fiasco hits Edinburgh.”
Who’d have thought that shutting down all the established self catering operators to leave the field clear for big hotel chains and unlicensed apart-hotels would send prices through the roof?
#EdinburghFringe
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@AllisonPearson
Lost my pal to cancer that went undiagnosed until too late - he died alone. Lost my mother as lockdown restrictions in the care home accelerated her dementia. She was separated from dad by Covid restrictions and starved herself to death. The “be kind” mantra was wrong and cruel.
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But the BBC’s More or Less is clear:
“All in all it’s not true that the Cass review overlooked 98% of relevant research but the systematic reviews which informed Cass found around 40% of the research was low quality and as a result was not used to form the conclusions.”
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@staylorish
Also worth noting that one reason given for the STL crackdown was to increase housing stock for local people. Matheson's declared £15k annual turnover shows it is only rented out for 20 weeks a year. It sits empty for the rest - precisely what the law he backed aimed to stop.
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Wear a mask, they said.
It's the law, they said.
It's science, they said.
Here's Scotland's clinical director Jason Leitch telling FM Humza Yousaf - then health secretary - to get round the rules by holding a drink in his hand.
These people deserve the jail.
#CovidInquiry
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Fundamentally flawed and hard to enforce, Scotland’s new short-term lets law threatens small family businesses and will leave those looking for short breaks at the mercy of international hotel chains and expensive aparthotels.
My piece for
@DailyMailUK
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The Cass review, by the BMJ editor in chief: “Her stated ambition is to ensure that those experiencing gender dysphoria receive a high standard of care. This will be disputed, of course, by people and lobbying groups angered by her recommendations”
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@gracebrod1e
This is not good policing.
Women have a right to gather peacefully in a public place to talk to each other about the challenges they face. They should not have to do so
surrounded by a hostile mob of men facilitated by Police Scotland. No other situation would be policed this way. 🧵
#LetWomenSpeak
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The new law extends the ways people can end up on a list, but Police Scotland have been recording accusations for several years.
This is their handbook:
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