Level without a cause
SKETCH: Nicola Sturgeon tells Holyrood why Glasgow is going down while other places are staying put.
When Nicola Sturgeon said 'the decisions we have arrived at today are difficult and complex', the entire city of Glasgow collectively sucked in its breath.
The First Minister compounded the dread by adding that 'we are currently at a delicate and fragile point'. That was it, then. Up to level 4, or possibly some new Weegie tier that doesn’t let you leave the house to stick a traffic cone on a statue or other essential purposes.
It was all about dramatic build-up, though. Not only was Dear Green Place not going up a level, it was dropping to level 2 from Saturday. Residents could now meet in homes in groups of up to six from a maximum of three households and pubs and restaurants would be able to serve alcohol indoors. It also meant Glaswegians could travel again and attend 'outdoor adult contact sports', though I recall some Glaswegians travelling to George Square for that purpose a few weeks ago.
'The past eight months and perhaps the past couple of weeks in particular have been really tough for Glasgow,' Sturgeon said.
For sure. Stuck in lockdown and James Dornan increased his majority.
While some places would be kept in level 2, the Western Isles and a smattering of other islands would be moving from level 1 to level 0. This meant reverting to ‘local licensing laws’ and more freedom of assembly, allowing half of Hebrideans to go down the pub and the other half to gather outside the pub to denounce them.
Nomenclature fans will be excited to learn the First Minister now has three names for the current form of Covid sweeping Scotland. This is the strain that originated in India and was likely brought to the UK by people who had been to India and is therefore known as the ‘April 02 variant’.
This is a much better name than ‘the Indian variant’ because if you need people who have travelled to the site of an outbreak to self-isolate, the smart thing to do is name the variant after the date on which the Department of Health designated it a ‘variant under investigation’. That’s how everyone remembers their recent travel history. ‘Darling, it says in the paper that anyone who’s been on holiday near VUI-21APR-02 should quarantine.’ ‘Thank goodness we went to New Delhi instead.’
Somewhere along the way someone whose job probably shouldn’t exist decided that the styling ‘Indian variant’ could be construed as racist. Of course, terming it ‘the April 02 variant’ is month-ist and no doubt why the World Health Organisation has reclassified it as ‘the Delta variant’, in a wanton display of insensitivity towards fans of the 1986 Chuck Norris action classic Delta Force. (Covid-19 had to vaccinate itself against Chuck Norris.)
Sturgeon referred to the variant by all three names at different points in her statement, covering all bases but also making herself liable for multiple prosecutions under the Hate Crime Bill.
‘That variant is spreading faster than previous variants of the virus, and we now believe that it accounts for well over half of our new daily cases,’ she informed the chamber. ‘Scotland’s R number is now almost certainly above 1 because of that situation.’
I don’t know if anyone has ever told the First Minister this, but she’s a bit of a buzzkill. She must have been fun at parties back when we were allowed to have parties.
Douglas Ross lamented the ‘setback’ for areas left ‘stuck in limbo’. I don’t think he knows what ‘setback’ means. We also need to talk about the Tory leader’s tie choices. Honeydew green is fine if you’re a painfully shy reference librarian but you want bolder colours in politics.
Anas Sarwar: now there’s a politician who knows how to wear a tie. He was sporting a nifty burgundy number yesterday, the perfect shade for a leader who is redder than New Labour but not quite as Soviet crimson as Old Labour.
Sarwar called for 'the mass rollout of Polymerase Chain Reaction Tests'. I think they opened for Bronski Beat at the Barrowlands in 1989.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on June 2, 2021.
What does sturgeon know about Glasgow? She was brought up in a field with other sheep in Dreghorn in Ayrshire. Sheep 🐑 country.
'She must have been fun at parties...' No, she wasn't. Her uni nickname was 'Seaweed'...