So, this is the new cabinet, with junior ministers to be announced tomorrow.
Personally, I’m sorry to see Shona Robison, my own MSP and a friend, go, but having read her letter of resignation, I can understand why she made the choice to resign. Shona has had a hard year with the death of both her parents and a personal health scare to cope with. She is in a new relationship now and I wish her every happiness. I hope she’ll continue to be our MSP because she’s a damned good one.
Britain spends less than most of Europe on its health services, below the EU average, and way below countries like France and Germany, but for all that, Shona has managed to make NHSS the best of the four UK services. Jeane Freeman has big boots to fill, but her first-rate setting up of Social Security Scotland makes me sure we will be in safe hands.
Jackson Carlaw put out a generous and courteous tweet:
I shadowed @ShonaRobison for many years & appreciated her genuine concern for the NHS. A hugely challenging brief & while @ScotTories did not call for her to go, now is the time for fresh leadership & thinking. On a personal level, I wish her well & thank her for her courtesy.
Anas Sarwar, on the other hand, not only made a bit of a mess of the grammar but was left looking rather petty and silly by comparison:
A personal congratulations to Humza, too. I remember Munguin, he and I met on the Edinburgh March in 2012. He was busy, but he took time to meet with Munguin and have a photograph taken with him (which I have subsequently managed to mislay). He may have uttered a few words to me as well!
He’s done a great job with transport… again, Scottish trains, poor by EU standards, are the best in the UK. It is gratifying to see his promotion to Justice Secretary.
********
Post Script:
Some comments on Sarwar’s tweet…
Anas, my husband is a hospital consultant and has been for decades. He is clear that under @SNP @ShonaRobison the NHS has never been better. He swears that under @scottishlabour it was an utter shambles. So suggest you get help for your verbal diarrhoea (LMR)
Just spoke to a Senior Specialist Nurse in the NHS and I quote: “.@AnasSarwar needs to stop playing political football with the NHS. He’s just shown why Labour aren’t fit to govern” (Colin Alexander Storrier)
I work in the NHS in Glasgow. I have friends and relatives in Wales and England and I can tell you that the service we have up here in Scotland is miles ahead of what they have elsewhere. (Purple Monkey)
Factually incorrect and seriously lacking class. I give you Anas Sarwar, who luckily is destined never to be in charge of anything. (ميور 🏴 @muirtsmith )
Delete this, you poor excuse for a human being and public servant. Once you’ve deleted this, delete your account you quilt. The legacy of Ms Robison is the best NHS in UK and that really sticks in your craw! Now, sling your hook! (Davidlikesguys)
Well if failure is the best performing Health service in the U.K What the hell would you call what’s going on in #Wales And as far as funding goes It’s Central government to blame in #Wales but the SNP’s fault in Scotland? How would you square that? (Lez)
And there are many many more…
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
I see Neil Finlay is the latest to tweet something disparaging about the Scottish Health Service, seeming unaware that the Welsh Health Service is the worst in the UK and run by… oh yes, Labour.
This from a man who lost a leadership election to Jim Bloody Murphy, the singularly most spectacularly unsuccessful of Labour leaders ever in its 100 year plus history (only 6 months in the job and lost all but 1 seat to the SNP … that’s 40/41 of the seats). And Neil LOST to him.
Talk about failures!
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Sorry to see Shona step down but wish her well and hope she stands again the next election. She never stopped being nice even when others were being nasty.
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Hear hear.
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I was sorry to hear that Shone had stepped down … NOT sacked or anything else as the Dundeheid party would have people think.
It never easy having to deal with the death of a family member to have to deal with two AND a health scare as well then it is perfectly understandable why she would want to take a step back. Hopefully, in time, she will find the strength to step back up into another ministerial role.
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Hear hear.
Jack McConnell has it right.
@LordMcConnell
#reshuffle I have had my political differences with @ShonaRobison over many years but if I approached her with a health issue in recent years she was caring and decisive. I wish her well. Also @HumzaYousaf – his promotion long overdue.
It kinda shows that the tweets from the lower orders in the Labour Party were based on spite and pettiness. Second raters is a compliment to them.
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“spite and pettiness”
There’ll be none of that in
a Independent Scotland
Love 💕 and fellowship will abound all round!
niko shakes head and puts away phone and goes back into garden (With Taz )
come on boy !
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(a) Wrong, unfortunately.
(b) I wish!
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Oh come on, Niko. The people who were full of spite there were Scottish. Of course there will be spite and pettiness.
And I am sure that there’s plenty of that to go around on all sides.
It’s just, you kinda wonder, that if Jack McConnell and Jackson Carlaw find Shona helpful and dedicated, why did Gray and Findlay find her the opposite?
Give Taz my love.
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Munguins lot say (always)
snp right on every and all occasions regardless .
Labour wrong on every and all occasions regardless.
Sad 😔
Spoke to 200% brexiteer yesterday and mentioned
After Brexit we wil have Custom controls back.
He say quite indignantly
No we won’t yeah we will
I says be customs controls
All over the UK
He shakes head no they won’t
Yeah if your out of the eu and are an independent uk how are you have a border without someone policing it.
Still I says you being retired are
Out of the game and don’t care.
He replied that’s right I am out of the game and I don’t care 🤷♂️.
Tosser the mind set of a brexiteer writ large.
Full of delusion and imagined
Dreams of empire.
I hate em more than the snp
And that’s saying something
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“Munguins lot say (always)
snp right on every and all occasions regardless .
Labour wrong on every and all occasions regardless.
Sad 😔 ”
Aye, isn’t it? I blame the low quality muppets that are left after everyone decent joined the SNP… Ever hear of the Bain Principle Niko? Ask Taz, and mind he has plenty of water in this heat – you wouldn’t his brain overheating like yours.
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Tazzy gets lot of water and treats
and love even if he is a snp supporter.
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The bright one of the family.
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Is THAT what’s wrong with Niko, Conan?
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Nobody can be right all the time, even me, but Labour in Scotland are quite reliably wrong. Unfortunately. It’s a shame, because a democracy needs a credible opposition whose arguments are pretty much all based on self-contradictory lies, unsupported assumptions. They so seldom rise above SNPBAD that it’s beyond tedious.
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Aargh – proofreading fails – a countersense: “… whose arguments are NOT pretty much all based on self-contradictory lies and unsupported assumptions.”
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Yes. Once they stand down, you usually get sense out of them, so there are some that are bright enough.
Kezia has made a lot more sense recently, and Jack McConnell (although I always quite liked him).
But Jings, the current leadership…
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It’s nice to l know that there is someone you hate more than me. 🙂
As of whatever date the UK properly leaves (after what Davis described as the easiest job ever) presumably, holding all the cards (Gove) and being able to have our cake and eat it (Johnson), we will be a outside party.
It would break EU laws and WTO rules, not to have checks, no matter how important Britain is, or whether we won the war.
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Off topic
A French company, netim.com are offering .scot domains for £12.50 +VAT until August. Only condition is you must have a Scottish locale. Generally seem to be advertised at £40 plus
Their hosting charges aren’t too shabby either.
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That’s really good – I have no idea why .scot domain names should be so expensive. Cheapest I’ve seen them before now is £34.
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Superb.
https://www.netim.com/
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Tris
Labour in Scotland are a joke, when I started to see the tweets it didn’t really surprise me anymore. The party of grievance and personal attacks which you wouldn’t expect to see on an occasion like this. They thought they were scoring points when what they were actually doing was make them look stupid and petty. I think Shona R has done a good job overall to be honest, certainly when you look elsewhere we are very luck in Scotland to have a health service that still functions. I would like to have seen parking charges at Ninewells be removed as they remain a disgrace and an affront, people attending Hospital should not be scrambling around looking for change to park their car but I believe she tried but the contract agreed by, you name it Labour, like PFI locks the hospital in for years and years and punishes patients, but Labour don’t care about that. They are a disgusting party with no shame and I would not miss them if they desolved tomorrow never to return, and neither would Scotland. When Alex Massie shows more humility and class than all of the Scottish Labour politicians that should tell them that they have lot the plot.
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Yes, Bruce. One of the first things the SNP did in 2007 was abolish car parking charges at hospitals.
There were two that had watertight contracts. ERI and Ninewells (although I heard there was a third.
I woas once in a situation where I took someone to hospital in my car. He had broken his arm and was in agony. I couldn’t park because I had no change. I had to drop him and go in search of a shop where I could buy stuff and change the tenner I had.
The guy was in agony (the break was so bad that he was admitted and operated on and was in for 3 days). He was left to go into the hospital himself. What a scandal.
A doctor who was called out to a patient in the middle of the night ended up overstaying as she sat with her dying patient, and was handed a fine.
It is immoral.
Yes, I think you’re right about Alex Massie. It’s fair enough to criticise the government. That’s what opposition parties do. But they just pick petty nonsense, as do the Tories. Presumably becasue there is nothing really much that they have to complain about.
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I don’t have any time for Jack McConnell and even less for Jackson Carlaw but they have both demonstrated that it is possible to oppose but still show some class in your comments. Pity more can’t develop the same trait. I feel Shona has been hard done to. Health is a difficult brief and she’s had a tough time personally. However Jeanne Freeman is superb and if they try bullying her they’ll get their head in their hands to play with!
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Good. I don’t know Jeanne Freeman at all, although I believe she has done a really good job on Social Security (despite apparently being messed about by the utterly awful McVey woman in England.
I wish her luck with what, as you say, is a very hard job.
Of course Germany and France spend 12%+ of GDP in Health. Britain spends around 9.5%. Scotland does better than the rest of the UK, but it is still not enough.
Still, I don’t think anyone spends 2 days in a corridor in A&E in Scotland.
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You can’t “win” as Health Secretary – if you could someone in the Tories would want the poisoned chalice which is NHS England. Jeremy Cunt is a joke, he knows he can behave how he likes simply because nobody else wants the job.
Its the current equivalent of being sent to NI back in the 70s/80s when there was a very real danger of being blown into mince.
Robison has done OK which these days is unusual. Hopefully she’ll be back when/if she feels ready.
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Hunt is the worst health secretary England has ever had.
Complete joke giving him the job, given that he wrote a book about privatising the service.
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Is there any member of May’s Cabinet who can be trusted to run a bath, Tris? They’re all barking, or fools, or barking fools as far as I can tell. You’d rather not have to scrape most of them off the sole of your shoe, really.
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