Zero tolerance
Nicola Sturgeon explains her very clear, totally straightforward Level Zero rules.
The clock struck two and all of sudden there was George Adam.
Nothing against the parliamentary business minister but we were expecting his boss with her virtual statement about dropping to Level Zero. Adam tapped away on his phone, oblivious that his webcam was carrying him live to the nation, before it dawned on him and his features were abruptly gripped by ‘Zoom face’. Otherwise known as ‘Oh God, Was I Picking My Nose? face’.
The screen cut to presiding officer Alison Johnstone, who stared into the camera, stonily silent, and thereafter flicked to the First Minister, hands clasped and head solemnly bowed. She was preparing herself to address parliament but the sight of the SNP leader seemingly in prayer will have been jarring for many party members, encountering for the first time the possibility of a higher power than Nicola Sturgeon.
Back to Johnstone, who had shoved a few shillings in the meter and got the sound working. She would have been better saving her money, for Sturgeon’s update was a barely comprehensible skip-hop-jump through opening up and slowing down, indoor restrictions lifted and outdoor limits retained. Posed behind a podium bathed in darkness, Sturgeon appeared to be coming from the old Fifteen-to-One studio, but her line of reasoning owed more to the assault course from The Krypton Factor.
She said Scotland would be moving to Modified Level Zero, which sounded ominous. It also sounded like a 1990s California grunge band with one chord, two songs and shorts three sizes too big. Sturgeon explained: 'We must stick to a cautious approach. We are easing restrictions next week, but we are not abandoning them, and even when we move beyond Level Zero, we will continue to require some baseline measures such as face coverings.'
Keeping an array of restrictions in place and calling it Level Zero poses the puzzler of what to call it when those restrictions are lifted. Level Sub Zero? Level Minus One? It's bad enough Scotland's public policies have to be different for the sake of it, but now we have to have our own arithmetic too.
Douglas Ross recently welcomed his second son into the world and he was surrounded by a bounty of greetings cards congratulating him on the happy occasion. Ross was less happy about the First Minister's statement. His broadband kept monkeying up, so that when he called for the public to be thanked 'for everything they've done', it came out as ‘fo-oh-or ev-ehrh-ee-thin-guh th-eh-ve don-n-n’, and his complaint about the worst daily vaccination rates in 15 months was rendered as ‘fih-ih-ih-ift-ee-ee-nn muh-uh-unths’ as it juddered out in fitful pops and blurts. The Tory leader sounded like a malfunctioning robot whose human cover was about to be blown. (I've long had my suspicions.)
Anas Sarwar — remember him? — came in with a question and once his microphone unmuted we even got to hear some of it. He was similarly unimpressed by Sturgeon's mixed messages, which he labelled 'inconsistent decision-making and communications', as well as seeing 'cause for concern' in elevated case rates. The First Minister's Modified Level Zero was 'not a clear strategy to cope with the new phase of the pandemic'.
She hit back by slating his 'glib soundbites'. He's an opposition leader. Accusing him of being too flippant and catchy is like a five-star review on Yelp.
Willie Rennie raised the plight of frontline workers forced to self-isolate despite testing negative for Covid. Noting his decision to stand down as Lib Dem leader, Sturgeon called his ten years in charge of the party ‘a good shift’. Somewhere in St Andrew's House, Humza Yousaf circled November 2024 on his calendar.
New Tory MSP Craig Hoy challenged the SNP leader on former Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslop's reported intervention in a freedom of information battle after journalists tried to get National Records of Scotland to publish figures of Covid deaths by care home. Sturgeon insisted her ex-minister was merely 'taking care to ensure that the correct engagement was taking place'.
I'm sure she was.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on July 14, 2021.
Why has carehome death notifications not been updated to include “where/when resident transferred to carehome from?”
But not asking for this vital clue, snp are hiding true horror of the spikes in deaths from hospital transfers.
8 or more ways to be transferred from hospital to carehome , due to archaic mechanisms, each with own datasets and forms.
So snp ensuring key carehome surveys missing vital link.... so future enquiries ham-strung in first place....
Jeanie Freeman sought to undermine freedom of information requests to. Seems sturgeon picks health secretary to do you dirty laundry , in public view.
Sturgeon cannot present, this is no leadership... keep calling it out!
No graphs, no slides, no maps (Scotland is big place - wtf if Annan?) , 6 hot spots out on 10 in EU for Delta in Scotland.... ffs a Map please! But no from Trump-Sturgeon
It’s the me me me show! She talks and talks and talks....
Many 30% don’t have laptops, broadband and knowledge of where graphs hidden... nrs site?
Level 0 - no restrictions, no limitations, back to normal.....
Nope - Level 0 - masks recommended, work from home.... no crowds, no football, no holidays?
Please follow @wubands2 so we can direct message.... rich seam here