Nicola’s hokey cokey lockdown
The Scottish First Minister unveiled new restrictions for Christmas but didn’t give them the force of law.
Last year, Nicola Sturgeon said ‘bah humbug’ to Yuletide gatherings and imposed restrictions so stringent that even if Ebenezer Scrooge did have a change of heart, turning up at the Cratchits’ door with a goose would have got his collar felt by Police Scotland.
Yesterday, the First Minister wasn’t proscribing family festivities but she wasn’t endorsing them either. Leave it to Nicola Sturgeon to triangulate Christmas.
‘I am not asking anyone to cancel Christmas,’ she said, ‘but in the run-up to and in the immediate aftermath of Christmas, I am asking everyone to reduce as far as possible, and to a minimum, the contacts we have with people in other households.’
She presented her hokey cokey lockdown, in which we would be neither fully in nor out, as a virtue. She was ‘not banning or restricting household mixing in law as before’ but was asking everyone to ‘help break transmission chains’ and ‘make Christmas safer’ by having smaller gatherings and making sure everyone there is vaccinated.
Some Christmas parties these will be. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, lateral flow tests nipping at your nose.
A grinch might observe that, by making these changes encouragements rather than legal requirements, the First Minister was placing the onus on us to control the virus. If enough people ignore the warnings and hospitals are overwhelmed, it’ll be our fault, not hers, and we’ll be responsible for any further restrictions.
‘If just one person in a gathering is infectious,’ Sturgeon warned, ‘that person is likely to infect many more people in the group than is the case with the Delta variant.’ This is the emotional blackmail approach to pandemic management. Nice little New Year you’ve got there, Sturgeon was saying. Be a shame if something happened to it.
After piling on the dire warnings, Sturgeon added: ‘However, if you do plan on socialising — either at home or in indoor public places — we are asking that you limit the number of households represented in your group to a maximum of three.’
It was the 'if you do plan on socialising' that made it. Most people do, First Minister, what with Christmas being a time of joy and celebration. Most people don’t spend December 25 wired up to the mainframe in Bute House downloading the file interacting_with_humans_UPDATE.exe.
Some changes were, however, being given the force of law. These included obligating businesses to minimise transmission risks and to permit employees to work from home. It was arguable, the First Minister said, that she should be going further but there had been no financial support from the UK Government to allow her to do that.
Whereupon Douglas Ross informed her that Rishi Sunak had just indicated more money was on the way. Not very festive behaviour from Number 11. A big shiny grievance was all the First Minister had on her list to Santa this year and the Chancellor wouldn't let her have it.
Alex Cole-Hamilton was agitated about plans to dismantle the vaccine operation at the Royal Highland Centre and told the First Minister it was to make way for a rave. It’s bad enough being a Lib Dem without being a narc as well. Sturgeon confirmed the techno gig would be cancelled.
She also revealed she had asked ministers to volunteer as vaccinators over Christmas and extended that proposal to all MSPs. Great, Nicola. Give Humza another excuse to don the medical scrubs and pretend to be the latest addition to the Holby City cast. Getting MSPs to help out sounds like a good idea until Willie Rennie starts parachuting onto the roofs of leisure centres brandishing a giant syringe.
Christine Grahame, sporting a dazzling, sparkle-studded cocktail glass brooch (£48 from Etsy), suggested the First Minister resume her televised daily Covid briefings. Sturgeon did not seem averse to the notion. The actual Queen makes do with one address to the nation a year. This pretender to the throne is going to need her own channel soon enough.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on December 15, 2021.
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The stupidity of this government is shameful. How does a road-mender "work from home"? How does a postman "work from home"? How does a steel fabricator or an off-shore oilman "work from home"? How does a taxi-driver, or an ambulance driver, or a disc-jockey, or merchant seaman, or an army officer, or a diplomat "work from home"?
I could go on. The only people who, it seems to me, can "work from home" easily are the unemployed, politicians, civil servants of furlough and prostitutes. The contempt for ordinary Scots in Sturgeon's statement is breath-taking. SHE SHOULD RESIGN.
The essence of the issue is that this government does not understand the public good as general concept. They do not, even worse, understand the rule of law on which that concept is based.
I have written a book about this, citing Scotland as a specific case, but with a view to a wider application internationally. It is called "THE JUSTICE FACTORY: Can the Rule of Law Survive in 21st Century Scotland?" (Ian Mitchell, 2020)
It is not a party-political screed. It has been endorsed by both ends of the political spectrum here: Ian ("Stone of Destiny") Hamilton QC, the renegade nationalist, and Adam Tomkins, who is both an MSP (Tory) and Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of Glasgow. The Foreword is written by Lord Hope of Craighead, ex-Deputy President of the UK Supreme Court and Alan Page, Professor of Public Law at Dundee, who is the author “Constitutional Law of Scotland”, the main reference work, has written an Introduction to Part II. Details of the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1981993401?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
And if you want an immediate fix on the stupidity, ignorance and malice of the SNP government, you will enjoy this film about Humza Yusoff and the Hate Crime Bill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kFam_JUqOA&t=658s