RANDOM THOUGHTS

We have heard from the Tories and their wee Torylite lapdog on the right, that the Scottish government should have been doing far more testing in Care Homes, although oddly, the Tories in England didn’t.

Interestingly, I read tonight that ol’ Carlaw got £35,000 for his leadership campaign and Union Jacket on the right here managed to snag £40,000 for his 2019 election campaign… from Care Home owners.

Bless… you scratch our backs and we’ll run down the Scottish government for you.

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I’ve also been reading that Tea Boy Johnson, Mr Cummings’ PA, has decided to go on a charm offensive (I’d have thought “offensive” alone would have done) around Europe, to try to persuade Europeans to come back to England. Seriously, he has.

Given that Britain is now the “plague nation” of Europe, I’m not entirely sure that they will let him in, but if they do, there are apparently over 20 official languages in the EU. So I guess he’s going to learn a stack of new ways of saying “foutre le camp”, “Разкарай се”, “orlähteä tiehensä”. I wonder if it’s the same in modern Greek as in ancient…

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Facemasks are now compulsory in France.

The advice of the Scottish government is if you are travelling on public transport or using a supermarket or shop you should wear a mask.

They are also saying that if people don’t pick this up voluntarily, they will look at bringing in legislation to make it compulsory.

Although it started off being Tory unionists that were whinging about it here (who does Nicola Sturgeon think she is? etc), it seems that the English government is bringing in legislation now and from June 15 it will be illegal in England to used public transport without a mask.

Red face again, eh Jackson?

We need to respect people who work in supermarkets. If you are a shopper, your chance of catching the virus is tiny, particularly if you are only in the shop for as short a time as possible…in the region of 0.02% on average. However, working there on an 8-hour shift, face to face with customers, your chance is far higher. Maybe as high as 8 or 9%.

On public transport, it’s impossible to socially distance. But wearing a mask, though far from foolproof at least reduces the likelihood of infection.

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Rigsby Jones has decided that what we need to cheer us all up is a new royal yacht.

You can always depend on a member of the house of lords to have his finger on the pulse of what people want.

Why, as I lay in bed this morning, I said to myself: “Self”, I said, “what would make you feel better about all this Covid, Brexit, lockdown, no-deal, stuck here inside crap? Hmmmm?”

And what do you think was my answer to myself?

Yep. You’re absolutely right. I said, “we need a new royal yacht to lift the Scottish people’s spirits.”

And then, lo and behold, as if from out of nowhere, the Noble Baron put it into the kind of words that I could never have found, just being a humble commoner.

So there you go. You don’t need any more jokes pages or soppiness on Sundays… You have the prospect of spending £100 million on a yacht so that Air Miles can skip the country when Liz Truss sells him out to the FBI for a photo opportunity with the orange fascist.

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English Statistics by Dummies, erm I mean FOR Dummies.

POOR OLD MUDDLED JACKASS

A couple of days ago, Nicola Sturgeon suggested that, when out, in crowded places, where it was difficult to socially distance (on the bus, in a supermarket for example) the people might like to consider wearing a face mask. Not a medical quality face mask, you understand, but one which would stop you spitting tiny droplets of saliva as you speak, especially when pronouncing “p” “t” and “b”. Not particularly for your protection but for the protection of others around you.

Well, you’d have thought that the end of the world was nigh. People on Twitter going wild saying that “Sturgeon”  wasn’t telling THEM what to do. They were British. So there! Others suggested that they would only wear a facemask if it had a union flag on it. (Well, that would keep people away, let’s be fair.)

       

We need to remember that at no point did Nicola mandate this.

Jackson Carlaw asked what evidence she was using to suggest such a thing would be advantageous, and tweeted that there was no border and we were all one country (yeah I know, but maybe he doesn’t).

Wee Fluffy got himself in a terrible state. Matt Hancock, presumably Fluffy’s idol, has said that he doubted that they do any good and Fluffs was all of a dither about people being confused if England didn’t advise face masks and Scotland did. I’m confused,  he apparently tweeted. Not that that came as any surprise to any of us.

“Get my bags, Muddy”

I mean how would people know what do do when they got to the border. Good question.

OK, apart from the fact that most people shouldn’t actually be crossing the border right now, Fluffy may, or may not, be aware that there are many things which are different on one side than on the other. And somehow people do know.

For example, to the north of the border, there are no prescription charges, to the south each item costs £9.15, although there are exceptions to this involving age, medical conditions, pregnancy, and certain kinds of, but not all kinds of, benefits. Now that is confusing.

Primary education ends after 7 years in Scotland and after 6 in England, university courses are of different duration, drink driving laws are different, and so on and so forth.

In fact, this has gone on for a great deal longer than the period in which there has been a Scottish parliament. Indeed Gretna, just over the border in Scotland, has become world-famous and made much money, based on the fact that for many years in Scotland you could marry at 16 without parental permission, whist in England, you had to be 18 to do that. 16-year-olds had to have mummy and daddy’s OK.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of things that are different here, given that Scots Law is entirely different from English Law. You’d have thought that an ex-Secretary of State for Scotland, who happens to be a lawyer, might have grasped that. But then, as I’ve said elsewhere, they didn’t call him “Fluffy Muddle” for nothing.

Anyway, you’re letting me haver on without getting to the point and Munguin is looking cross.

And the point is this. Boris Johnson has just said that it would be sensible for people to wear masks when coming out of lockdown, contradicting what Old HandThingy said the other day… and the good thing is that Mundell won’t be muddled about it any more… or will he?

[You could have said that considerably more succinctly. Get yourself on a writing course. Kind regards, Munguin.]

This just seen:

How embarrassing!

GOOD NEWS FOR TORIES AND SNP

*Opinium Westminster Voting Intention: 21-23/04/2020

CON: 50% (+5)

LAB: 33% (-)

LDem: 7% (-5)

SNP: 5% (+1)

Grn: 3% (-)

PC: 0% (-)

Flavible Projection

CON: 384 (+19)

LAB: 185 (-18)

SNP: 55 (+7)

PC: 4 (-)

LDem: 3 (-8)

GRN: 1 (-)

So, it would seem that Sir Keir Starmer hasn’t made any impact on the Tory lead in England.

Tories in Scotland are down to 3 seats.

Labour holds its usual one in a Tory heartland.

Liberals appear to have lost all their seats, even the Northern Isles, which I find incredible.  Bring back Jo Swinson, I say!!!

And the SNP has gained 7 seats, bringing them back to 55.

Also asked in the poll:

“Which, if any, of the following people do you think would be the best prime minister?”

The answers were…

Boris Johnson (Con): 44%

Keir Starmer (Lab): 23%

None of these: 17%

Don’t know: 16%

So it seems that election of centre-right Sir Keir Starmer hasn’t done Labour a power of good, although to be fair it is early days. But the calm and measured Starmer at around half the support of the de Pfeffel buffoon, in a crisis? What is wrong with these people?

On whether people are doing a good job the results were: 

Boris Johnson: + 19

Sir Keir Starmer: + 13

Nicola Sturgeon: + 3 ( Possibly because it was a UK poll.)

Ed Davey: – 8 (Possibly because no one has heard of him or knows what he is doing.)

Johnson has done a good job? Is that the sympathy vote? Because as the “Just for a Laugh” cartoon say yesterday…

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In the meantime, Jackson Carlaw has told us there is no border between Scotland and England. He tweets:

“It is ridiculous to suggest Nicola Sturgeon could close the border. There is no border – we are one United Kingdom.”

OK, this probably isn’t the time to get into how being “one united kingdom” isn’t working out too well for us. That’s not the point. But it is possible to close “internal borders”, which, like it or not, Mr Carlaw, DO exist. Australia and Malaysia are, each of them “one united country” but Quokka was saying recently that the borders between states in Australia are monitored and Abu told me the same thing about Malaysia. (They may now be completely closed by now as both countries are taking stronger action against the virus.)

In the UK, however, people can freely move between the countries because there is no border security because some people, like Carlaw, are desperate to not give the impression that we are anything other than one united kingdom.

The map above (albeit based only on an opinion poll) suggests that the “united” part of united kingdom is risible.

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*Access to full tables through that site.

WELL, JACKSON, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Jackson Carlaw is on Twitter today complaining that Jeane Freeman, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport is an unpleasant person who can be sharp with people, at least, according to an article in the Times Of London.

I’ve never met Jeane Freeman and I have no idea whether she is sharp or rude, so I can’t comment.

But Mr Carlaw thinks that: “This leaves serious question marks over Freeman’s ability and conduct; and calls into question the SNP’s legitimacy in managing Scotland’s precious NHS. The SNP are politically and morally bankrupt, time’s up for this failing government.”

As I say, I know nothing about Ms Freeman so I can’t comment on the accuracy of the article (which, because I don’t pay the Times of London any money, I cannot even read) but, just supposing there is some truth to it, it’s a bit of a leap of logic to say that this would mean that the SNP is politically and morally bankrupt.

The SNP runs the Scottish Health Service because it is the elected government of Scotland… rather like the Conservatives and Matt Handcock run the English Heath Service, because that is how the English voted. No one doubt the Tory Party’s legitimacy to run the service. They were elected to do so, never mind how rude Priti Patel allegedly is.

The legitimacy to govern comes from elections, not from some alleged shortness from a minister.

Matt Hancock being totally normal with a woman. pic.twitter.com/REmT3d4we5

— Sooz Kempner (@SoozUK) December 11, 2019

And given that the aforementioned Mr Handcock seems to be completely out of his shallow depth in his role, and resorts to making stuff up, particularly about Coronavirus, (not to mention standing creepily near to a colleague while broadcasting so that she moves away and puts her handbag between them), I think Mr Carlaw would do well to give that particular subject a wide swerve.

Additionally, England’s Department of Health doesn’t really have a great record now, does it?.

I’d have a great deal more time for Mr Carlaw and his Twitterings if he actually had a policy, any policy, to offer up.

But he doesn’t.

SORRY, NO ONE IS AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW

WE ARE ALL DEFUSING MINES IN AFGHANISTAN WITH THE ARISTOCRATIC BARONESS LADYSHIP COLONEL

🙈 When the Scot Gov proposed a Scottish Visa, Tories wouldn’t even consider it.

🙊 When the Tories revealed their damaging immigration plans, Tories wouldn’t even go on TV to defend it.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 It's the SNP that stands up for Scotland, the Tories only stand up for Boris Johnson. pic.twitter.com/J19zeDaVOm

— The SNP (@theSNP) February 20, 2020

To be fair to the Tories, Jackson Carlaw said that the SNP proposals for a separate system did have merit, and they were looking at them closely.

So why not take part in an interview?

Maybe because they have been told by Mr Cummings’ underlings to keep quiet?

Y’SEE, IT’S LIKE THIS, Mr CARLAW, CBE, TWITTER DOESN’T GO AWAY…EVER!

THING IS, YOU CHAIRED THE COMMITTEE THAT APPROVED THE DESIGN THAT YOU’RE NOW WHINING ABOUT…AND YOU BRAGGED ABOUT IT!

DUH!!!

Thanks to @rosscolquhoun on Twitter from bringing these tweets to his followers’ attention.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I understand that “The Sun” is reporting that Boris Johnson called Nicola Sturgeon “that bloody Wee Jimmie Crackie woman”. (No link to the article because I won’t be a party to their clickbait.) Of course, you can’t entirely believe anything you read in the Sun, but it sounds like his unprofessional style. The kind of thing you’d expect from a 12-year-old.

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This you can believe.

Derek Mackay has resigned as Cabinet Secretary for Finance.

It appears he had been texting a 16-year-old lad and offering him dinner over a six-month period.

As the lad was 16, Derek was doing nothing illegal. In Scotland, you can leave school, get married, have children and vote at 16.

But for heaven’s sake, what a bloody stupid thing to do.

We all know that the Press is against us and that they put a huge effort into finding anything unpleasant they can headline on their front pages.

The Sun has it splashed over 9 pages on this, so presumably, they have been working on it for a while. It will take a bit of living down!

What on earth possessed such an intelligent and otherwise competent man to indulge himself like this?

As Ruth Wishart put it: “Another self-immolation by a politician with no shortage of talent but an all too slender grasp of judgement”.

He’s let us down badly.

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It is said that Ruth Davidson is to be offered a seat in the House of Lords.

So just a day after wee Carlot Jackson was hobnobbing with the Duke of Rothsay at Buck House, to collect his CBE, his predecessor is preparing to join Baroness Moan of Mayflower in teh Isle of Man on the red benches, collecting £300 a day and stack of “get out of jail free” cards.

Democracy, huh?

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I read that Wee Sniffy Gove may be appointed to lead the arrangements for the Climate Change summit in Glasgow.  The vacancy came about when Johnson sacked the previous incumbent, former environment minister, Claire O’Neill, without notice, for complaining that he had failed to carry out any of his promises in regard to the conference.

We all know that in most things Johnson does, promises are piecrusts and details are doughnuts. He says stuff. He walks away. He forgets everything.

Ms O’Neill has, subsequently, spent days speaking to the Press about how incompetent Johnson is,  how little he understands the subject and bemoaning the lack of progress that has been made in organising this massive international event.

David Cameron has apparently refused to take on the job, as has William Hague, both citing other commitments, possibly money-making ones (or more likely a desperate desire not to be stuck in Scotland for most of the year).

Grouse Beater on Twitter wrote, “Michael Gove is tipped to be appointed the new president of the UN climate summit to be held in Glasgow because, being a Scot, he is *well-liked* north of Gretna Green.”

Ye, I thought you’d like that!.

If possible, an even less likeable candidate, Michael “Something of the Night” Howard has also been proposed. Why not go the whole hog and invite Ann Widdicombe, his bête noire?  If it all goes horribly wrong she can always give us a tango or quick step! After that, even a catastrophic conference would fade into the mists of insignificance.

With eight months to go, it seems like a huge task for whoever will take it on, particularly as they will be organising it in Scotland and, whether they like it or not, they need to liaise with Edinburgh about arrangements.

Given the current state of relations between London and Edinburgh, and in particular, between Johnson and Nicola, this is proving to be difficult.

You’ll remember that Johnson said that he didn’t mind if there were one of two Saltires at the conference but he wanted the place to be a sea of union flags and that he didn’t want to see Nicola Sturgeon there.

Bless him. How little he understands…  anything!

Nicola responded that she had been at the last three climate summits by invitation of the UN and that she WOULD be at this one. Of course, she can’t control the flags… but we can, and I have no doubt that Glasgow will be a sea of blue and white and that Back-Door Johnson will get the welcome he has come to expect when he appears in public in Scotland, which may cause him a little embarrassment with the world’s press in attendance.

 

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STRUTH RUTH…

This aged well… pic.twitter.com/MaE7PkIW6d

— Sarah Mackie (@lumi_1984) December 22, 2019

True, true, Ruth.

You got out in the nick of time with some lame excuse about being too busy looking after your bairn to be doing all these surgeries and constituency work (although you do have time for making radio programmes and you wouldn’t have had time to be a PR consultant, if only you hadn’t been such bad news for the consultancy that was going to employ you).

So, no. You didn’t lose a third of your seats. or, indeed, any seats. You are but a humble constituency MSP.

But Jack the Car (you know, the one you said, only the other day, was doing such a cracking job), managed to lose a bit over half your seats…53.8% actually. So he did better at losing than Nicola, by some way.

Nicola, on the other hand, increased her seats from 35 to 46 (an increase of 31%) or 47 if you include the suspended-SNP MP who was on the ballot paper as SNP (an increase of 34%).

Nicola is now the one with 47 (or 48) out of 59 seats… and your lot are the ones with, erm… 6.

A TALE OF TWO LEADERS

The Daily Borisgraph called this “ungracious and nasty”.

And they weren’t the only ones. Twitter was raging about the First Minister celebrating a victory for her party. I read comments about how disgusting it was that she, a woman, would rejoice in the humiliation of a young woman ( well youngish, and Amy Callaghan, who beat her, is a good ten years younger!)

Incidentally, I’d have thought that it wasn’t particularly “humiliating” to lose your seat in an election. It’s normal. More people lose in elections than win. Surely everyone goes into an election anticipating that it can happen.

It’s even less humiliating and more to be expected if you didn’t bother to live in the constituency… or to spend much time there during the campaign (or ever).

It seems, however, that when Boris Johnson celebrated in a not dissimilar way, far less was made of it. I think it is utterly natural to celebrate a win, and I’m sure that Swinson and Corbyn did it when they took or held a seat. A win for someone means a loss for someone else, but that’s competition for you. That’s politics.

In any case, rumour has it that having been rejected by the electorate, Swinson will not be humiliated by anyone in her next job.

She may be appointed to the House of Lords where she will be able to snooze away at £300 a day for the rest of her life, so I’d save my pity if I were you.

NO matter what you think of the SNP, at least their politicians are elected (in what passes for a democratic style in Britain).

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In other news, the bloke that managed to lose more than half the Tory seats in Scotland has apparently said that he won’t accept Coburn (ex-UKIP) into the Tory Party.

Not that I have a problem with that. Coburn isn’t an asset to anyone, anywhere. And it’s noticeable that Farage also refused to have him in the Brexit Party. (And when you think of some of the loonies that he took on, that’s saying something.)

But I wasn’t aware that a branch office temporary leader could refuse membership to anyone. And doesn’t Coburn live in London?

Enjoy your wee bit of power while you can, you wally!

ANYONE HEARD WHEN THE TORIES ARE GOING TO GET THEMSELVES A PROPER SCOTTISH BRANCH OFFICE MANAGER?

Mr Carlaw’s constituents voted to remain in the EU.

And he rose in the chamber to praise them for doing that just days after the vote, in which most Tory MSPs and their one MP in Scotland voted to remain. (You’ll remember the Colonel and Fluffy telling us how utterly vital it was for Scotland’s economy, to Remain.)

However, yesterday Jackson decided that, were there to be another referendum, he would vote to leave and sod his constituents.

This is, he says, because the EU has changed since 2016 (and clearly nothing to do with the fact that Boris has told him to change his mind).

Brussels is, he insists, going to have its own army by 2025.

And there are other changes too, he told the BBC, but he appears not to have bothered to elaborate.

So dealing with the one point he did specify, the army… as far as I can discover, there is no reason to believe that there is actually going to be an EU army, although, it is hoped to establish closer military ties between countries in Europe.

This makes sense. Indeed, the majority of Europeans want this to happen, including 56% of Britons! Perhaps the less-than-reliable cross between a Carrot and a Mango, which currently resides in the White House, has finally persuaded European leaders that it is time this continent stood on its own two feet militarily, instead of relying on the USA.

And quite right too. There is no reason why Europe cannot continue to work co-operatively with the USA, without being dependent upon them.

Alone, of course, all European countries are too small to support defence forces of any real power. Even Britain with its massive military spend (punching above its weight) is a minnow by comparison with real world powers like Russia or China.

In my opinion, it makes sense to have a military alliance within the continent.

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Britain, were it to vote to remain in the EU, however, could not be forced to join this military alliance.

So Mr Carlaw’s thinking doesn’t seem to stand up. Unless there is some reason in his “unspecified changes”, that has made the EU a less desirable ally, I’m suspecting that the possibility of a knighthood or maybe elevation to the aristocracy may have more to do with his change of heart than any military alliance his beloved union couldn’t be forced to join, and indeed, over which it would almost certainly have a veto.

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Unassociated with this matter, I noticed that the BBC article points out that the Tories, along with Labour, SNP and Brexit party have been forced to suspend candidates who have made unfortunate tweets or comments some time in their past.

When asked about comments made about Muslim women looking like letter boxes, bum boys, and the working classes, by another Tory candidate, Jackson said that he preferred to judge Mr Johnson (for it was none other than he) on his actions as prime minister rather than on things said in the past… which seems a little unfair to the other candidates who can’t offer any baubles.

Maybe one of these days a Tory will tell the truth about something.

OK, OK, I was joking. They won’t.