The masks slip

Nicola Sturgeon agrees to phase out the mask mandate in Scotland's schools.

This is my sketch of First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday, February 10, 2022.

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For school pupils muzzled for months by cheap Chinese mouth bandages — freedom at last.

Nicola Sturgeon confirmed to MSPs yesterday that the requirement to sport a face-covering in the classroom will be dropped at the end of the month. Thereafter, the wearing of masks will become an optional part of the educational experience, like arriving on time and doing your French homework.

The First Minister, acting on the advice of her education advisory sub-group, said de-masking ‘will reduce barriers to communication in the classroom and reduce any wellbeing impacts that arise from the use of face coverings’. In unrelated news, the view that there are wellbeing impacts when children are forced to cover their faces all day has been upgraded from ‘conspiracy theory’ to ‘government policy’.

Sturgeon was keen to stress that ‘any young person or staff member who wishes to still wear a face covering in the classroom should be fully supported in doing so’. This will help children with health vulnerabilities and allow Oor Wullie to munch through an entire poke of sherbet lemons without the teacher noticing.

Speaking of youthful rapscallions, Douglas Ross was in trouble-making mood and reminded the First Minister that he had ‘urged for weeks that young people should no longer be forced to wear face coverings in classrooms’ and that her U-turn, though welcome, came after children’s education had been ‘unnecessarily disrupted for far too long’.

Sturgeon chided that, had she scrapped masks when Ross wanted, it would have ‘put school-age children and those who work with them in schools at greater risk’. Just because she was adopting the Tories’ position, it didn’t mean their position had been right prior to her adopting it. ‘The fact that he has been urging that change for weeks is not a demonstration that he has been right; it is a demonstration of his deep irresponsibility,’ she explained.

We’re getting rid of face-coverings but face-saving remains as popular as ever.

The meat of Ross’s questions this week was on ScotRail, Scotland’s alleged rail service, and its impending nationalisation by the SNP government. Ross challenged Sturgeon to confirm that, when she took over in April, she would cancel the 250 service cuts planned by the current owners.

‘We will continue to do what ScotRail is already doing,’ she replied, ‘making sure that we have a railway that is fit for the future.’

Like some bizarre fusion of Bevan and Beeching, she was taking ScotRail into public ownership to make reductions in services. She’s the first socialist to nationalise the railways to carry out the bosses’ cuts for them.

Ross wondered what Sturgeon and her new transport minister, Jenny Gilruth, made of the SNP MSP who had previously called these cuts ‘not acceptable’? Who could that have been? If you guessed the new transport minister, Jenny Gilruth, you win a brand new Tesla — or, budget permitting, an all-day return from Glasgow to Edinburgh.

Ross’s dander was well and truly up. ’The First Minister’s government is anti-driver,’ he charged. Going by the number of chauffeured cars they have, they seem pretty pro-driver to me. Ross pressed her on the rationale behind taking over the railways only to make no improvements.

Sturgeon protested: ‘Since 2009, the communities of Alloa, Laurencekirk, Armadale, Blackridge, Caldercruix, Conon Bridge, Shawfair, Eskbank, Newtongrange, Gorebridge, Stow, Galashiels, Tweedbank and Kintore have all been reconnected to the railways.’ She added that these would soon be followed by ‘Reston, East Linton, Dalcross, Cameron Bridge and Leven’. Passengers looking for an answer to the question were advised to alight at Holyrood and walk in the opposite direction.

Ross, having a little more fun than was seemly, reminded his opponent of her nationalised shipyard's inability to build ferries.

'Are trains going to go the same way as ferries under your government?' he needled.

Public transport is the same story across Scotland. All the liveries are saltires, all the services are delayed, and all the commuters are in their cars.

Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on February 11, 2022.