I Frustrated Disco
Nicola Sturgeon is questioned on her vaccine passport scheme for nightclubs.
There is a chance Nicola Sturgeon is right about everything and it’s just the facts that keep getting it wrong, but I have my doubts.
The First Minister was a portrait in certainty at FMQs and if she’d been any more toweringly self-sure she’d have come down with a bad case of vertigo.
Whether it was Douglas Ross’s queries about vaccine passports or Anas Sarwar’s on winter and the looming hardship crisis, every challenge was brushed aside as Sturgeon marched to her fortress redoubt of soundbites and talking points. You sometimes wonder if she would feel more comfortable asking the questions as well as not answering them.
Ross gave it his all, painting a picture of perfect chaos.
He told the First Minister: ‘Guidance is still being published and the app was to be launched today. So far we have the app to check vaccination passports but we do not have the app for vaccination passports. Everything has been left to the last minute.’
I don’t know about you but these are definitely people I want to see in charge of setting up a new state.
Sturgeon was more interested in talking about the ruling issued by the Court of Session that morning, refusing the nightclub industry an interim interdict on the policy.
‘The vaccination passport scheme is a targeted and proportionate way to try to reduce the harm that the virus will do over the winter months,’ she hit back, and said her position had been vindicated by the court.
Ross ladled on the patter about the absurdity of the scheme. He warned of a ‘ridiculous situation in which hundreds of people will be at venues where they need a vaccination passport to get in but if the music is turned off the same people suddenly do not need a vaccination passport’.
His opponent accused him of ‘opposing almost every step we’ve tried to take’ during the pandemic, before sniffing: ‘Perhaps it is Douglas Ross who needs to reflect a bit more on some of the arguments that he makes in this chamber.’
Nicola Sturgeon instructing others on the merits of self-reflection. It’s like Humza Yousaf becoming health and safety officer at Knee-Scooters ‘R’ Us.
Ross persevered, attempting to interrogate the First Minister on the little-noted (but potentially signifiant) Regulation 16A of her passports legislation. Who had been consulted on it?
‘We have consulted with a range of stakeholders,’ Sturgeon recited, before conceding: ‘I do not have the regulations in front of me.’ Yes, the First Minister had consulted all sorts of experts, like… Swon Jinney and, um… Yumza Housaf and, you know: Thingy… from accounts… always dunks half a packet of McVitie’s in his tea… Davey! That’s it, Digestive Davey.
She started to peter out like an electric fire when the meter’s almost empty, rambling about Douglas Ross and how rubbish he’d be at calling the shots.
‘Douglas Ross,’ called the Presiding Officer.
The Tory leader rose. ‘Thank you, Presiding Officer.’
Sturgeon wasn’t sitting down. In fact, she was standing staring at Alison Johnstone like someone who’d just had her chips nicked.
‘My apologies,’ the PO sputtered. ‘I assumed the First Minister had finished.’
That’s what wishful thinking will do for you.
Anas Sarwar warned that rising energy bills were going to hit the vulnerable during winter and suggested Sturgeon use an extra £41 million on its way from the Treasury to help out.
The First Minister did her usual routine of contrasting the caring, sharing Holyrood with the flint-hearted Westminster. She speaks of the Scottish Government as though it were a cross between the Vatican and Live Aid and its UK counterpart as a joint enterprise between Beelzebub and Scrooge McDuck.
‘We need to get powers out of the hands of UK Governments and into the hands of this parliament,’ she pronounced. ‘As long as Anas Sarwar prefers to leave those powers in Boris Johnson’s hands he will not have the credibility he wants before this chamber.’
She doesn’t just want to write the opposition’s questions, she wants to write their policies, too.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on October 1, 2021.
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I tried to download my covid certificate tonight and entered all the information it asked for before after a few winutes it came back saying I couldn’t be found 🤔 and to go back and check my details. Although I knew they were all correct I did go back and check my answers and then hit enter again, only to get the same response telling me I could not be found. So they digitally check your picture against your passport or driving licence, then they get my CHI Number and email address, they come back with same message.