Dear All
In a recent poll, some people thought that
the SNP should have more powers to control who comes into Scotland via our
ports and airports. The question put to people was:
"Do you think people in Scotland would
be more safe or less safe if the UK Government’s decision-making powers
relating to the lockdown were transferred to the Scottish Government?”
I see this as a loaded question because
people instinctively will think that local people on the ground would have a
better understanding of what is needed. That theory might have appeal but the
reality in Scotland is that the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon and Jeane Freeman,
the health Secretary are not having a good pandemic. What they did was allowed
untested people to be placed into care homes, they were in effect ticking time bombs
of disease, or if you prefer, booby traps lying in wait for people (staff) to
pick up the disease then spread it to other residents and staff.
It was well beyond the mental capacity of
the Health Sec Jeane Freeman to understand that a virus can spread, and putting
untested people into care homes is a danger, apparently it is said that she is ‘learning’.
The latest poll by panelbase is dogwhistle
politics; it has been commissioned by an independence supporter, James Kelly.
I would say that the real agenda of the
Nationalists is to use the pandemic as a cover, to promote the idea and allow
the narrative to germinate that the SNP should control the borders, then move
on to control of inward immigration to Scotland. Once the SNP have control of
immigration, they will gerrymander an independence vote in their favour by
flooding the country with low skilled and poorly educated immigrants. The way
the SNP work is to try and engineer voter caches, such as they have done with
the Muslim vote. The UK Government is wise to this tactic and they aren’t going
to give the SNP control of the borders, and they are not going to give them
control of immigration either. I would say the panelbase question is worded to
create a positive response in favour of the SNP Government.
If people think that Nicola Sturgeon and
Jeane Freeman are doing a good job, they are so wrong and out of touch;
Sturgeon’s daily TV show is all about presenting certain figures which paint
her in a good light. What her TV show is about now is campaigning for the
Holyrood 2021 election, which the opposition should be speaking out against, in
parliament and in the press.
The true figure of deaths in Scotland is
circa 4,000, given the UK death toll of 40,000 plus, there is no evidence of a
good job being done by the Nationalists, quite the opposite in fact. What we
have here is SNP media manipulation where they are the only ones doing the
talking, while at the same time limiting the ability of the press to question
them. Pretty much the press questioning of Nicola Sturgeon has been uniformly
weak at the daily briefings.
Here is how they have done it using the figures;
around 1800 people could have been infected with coronavirus during
the hospital outbreaks which killed 218 patients in Scotland. But the SNP
manipulated the truth by saying that there had been 125
"incidents" of Covid on non-Covid wards. They did not say how
many people were involved; people thought that meant 125 patients and the SNP
let people continue to think that. What the SNP done was put their spin on it in
order to look good and give the impression that our hospitals were safe.
The SNP position is that they told the
truth, they told ‘their version’ of the truth and then by omission left out
information which the Scottish public would reasonably expect to be told. As
the news emerges that 1800 people and not 125 were infected in hospitals, this
has led to the Scottish Tories to stepping up calls for Health Sec Jeane
Freeman’s dismissal. Freeman however won’t be fired and she won’t resign, her ‘job’
in the pandemic now is as a political bullet magnet so that Nicola Sturgeon remains
untarnished. Health Sec Jeane Freeman is having a seriously bad pandemic, the
fact it took the press putting pressure on the SNP Government who then cracked
and said the 125 incidents had involved 908 patients shows you a stark picture
of a government in decline and willing to practice what some might term as
deceit.
Scottish Conservative Miles Briggs had a
run in Freeman over why the full details had not disclosed at the outset.
Her excuse was to say that the data has been un-validated. Each day at Sturgeon’s
press conference, you hear a multitude of facts and figures, but suddenly these
figures cannot now be validated, does she really think we, the people of Scotland
are mugs? I suspect she does hold us all in contempt because after getting
caught, she said, she had published the data (forced) in an effort to be
helpful, but said she would not be doing so again.
Miles Briggs was apparently jeered by SNP
MSPs when he said Ms Freeman should apologise to families for the “misleading
picture” that had developed around the spread of Covid in hospital wards.
Jeering people is a trademark of the SNP politicians, they sit behind Sturgeon,
say and do nothing for the people of Scotland, but when their leader is
attacked, they suddenly find their voice. Holyrood controlled by the SNP is a
farce as a parliament; it is a body which now serves the SNP.
He added:
“Why did ministers decide to define almost
1,000 people as incidents? Will she now commit to publishing more accurate
figures so that Parliament can have the true picture of what is happening in
hospitals?”
Freeman replied:
“In publishing un-validated data, I was
attempting to be helpful. It is a lesson that I have now learned.These are
suspected transmissions, suspected cases and suspected deaths linked to them,
and the validated data will be published by the end of the month, I hope.
Mr Briggs has chosen to take un-validated
data and pretend that it is validated. That is inexcusable. If anyone
needs to apologise to the people of Scotland for sending them off
with un-validated nonsense, it is Mr Briggs. It is certainly not me.”
When held to account, the modus operandi of
the SNP is to attack the messenger and attempt to push the message into the
background. In a series of bad-tempered exchanges, Freeman also accused Miles Briggs
for "mumbling at me; he should be listening". This exchange is why Holyrood opposition MSPs
need to stand up like Miles Briggs has done and ram the truth down the SNP’s
throats and do it publicly.
The people of Scotland need to know the
truth, to go get the truth, you have to force it out of the SNP.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie
Rennie said the drip-drip way the information had been disclosed had “shaken my
confidence in what the Government is telling us”.
Do you think from reading this latest sorry
episode of SNP failure that this is a government you can trust with your
health, your family’s health, with the health of the wider community?
Finally, the opposition has lost faith in
the Health Sec Jeane Freeman, the calls to resign will not be heeded, but in a
post pandemic Scotland, once the dust has settled, there will be a lot of
families who lost mothers, fathers and grandparents in Scottish care homes.
These people could have been saved, but the health sec wasn’t bright enough,
didn’t act fast enough and although the body count is circa 4000, do we really
want Freeman in post if and when a second wave of the coronavirus hits us? Does
anyone know or has asked her what prep has been done for a possible second wave,
after all planning saves lives.
Something that health sec Jeane Freeman found
out coming rather late to the coronavirus party.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow
University
4 comments:
There was a worrying Ipsos mori poll that was taken slightly earlier that said most people now want independence and that Sturgeon's doing a good job when all she's doing is copying the UK framework out of lockdown, rewording it with a 3 week delay in the middle and implementing it. Why can't people see right through her, George? This lot destroy anything they touch, there's also the case of them withholding some money from Scottish businesses granted from Westminster. Where has that money went?
Hi Mike
Plenty of people are asking the same question, where did the money from the UK Government go, maybe set aside for SNP projects so they can claim that Nicola Sturgeon has kicked started the economy.
George
The SNP have a big problem. They can't get rid of Freeman because she's the best they've got. So many SNP MSPs and none of substance. Secretary of Justice Humza Yousaf came straight from a political course to office boy and Alex Salmond's puppy. They had Derek McKay the pseudo Chancellor who was a dropout from Uni. Now we have Kate Forbes with a history degree and 2 years as a trainee accountant as his replacement. Fiona Hyslop and John Swinney, both dismal failures.
Nicola is copying mo one she is doing her job doing what is best for Scotland and and the people
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