Should Sarah Smith be taken off air

[Opendraw]

Aibu to think this kind of biased opinion has no place on the BBC

“It has been obvious that Nicola Sturgeon has enjoyed the opportunity to set her own lockdown rules and not have to follow what's happening in England and other parts of the UK”.

Sarah Smith, BBC News at 10 (18/5/20)

I don’t hate the English either I am half English and I’m in 2 minds about Independance but exactly as Laguna said it’s Westminster not the people.

But let's wait for the Scotland bashing to start in 3, 2, 1

Nicola Sturgeon (or the SNP) is not Scotland and Scotland is not Nicola Sturgeon. Being rightly critical of way NS has handled Covid - her lack of testing, inability to provide sufficient PPE, the time it took for her to lockdown, etc etc is not ‘Scotland bashing’ it is holding Scotland’s government to account as we should.

She apologised. How have you nothing else to do?

Disliking Westminster is not hating the English.

I never said it did.

If you read what i said as I was talking about the SNP having English hating flag wavers. I'm not saying all their support is but there is an element that is.

Geez the woman did not apologise she made excuses. As for have I something better to do eh no lockdown has seen my business go overnight in a puff of smoke thanks :-)

Wanting independence for Scotland does not equal "English hating, flag waving nationalism"

And if you were only talking about "an element" your comment didn't really make sense.

Sometimes the mask slips. Wanting your country to run itself rather than be run by its much more populated neighbour isn't "English hating" anything.

Because Calyx, the context of my sentence didn't require that clarification.

People can believe and support what they want. I'm still waiting on the reasons a PP had for believing that Scotland was being well run.

If you are trying to say that there aren't any English hating flag wavers then I will say that you are wrong but there seems to be little done to discourage such behaviour from what I can see.

She’s a vile woman. I hate her sniggering attitude towards ordinary people. She has only become a journalist as her late father was leader of the Labour Party. She would have got nowhere without him.

It is very worrying that people think it's unpatriotic and treasonous to criticise our government.

I'd genuinely be interested in what things you think have been well looked after. From what I can see, everything is failing but I appreciate as a non fan, maybe I focus on the negatives?

Despite being hamstrung by Tory austerity for the past decade or so NHS Scotland still outperforms the rest of the UK*. Well it does in terms of £ spend, number of doctors, nurses, midwives and beds per head of population and in number of people seen per hour.
*I realise it's very difficult to accurately compare performances of such a massive and diverse organisation.

The benefits we recieve i.e. free prescriptions, free bus passes for over 60s, free tution fees for higher education, higher education grants for people on lower income, small business rates relief etc, are still intact. On average our council tax rates are lower than the rest of the UK, as are our water charges and we don't have to pay the bedroom tax. We get double the amount of free childcare hours compared to England as well as a baby box for every new parent.

Additionally Scotland have a slightly lower percentage of people in relative poverty (19%) (Northern Ireland are 19% too) than England (22%) and Wales (23%), and a lower percentage of relative child poverty (24%) than England (31%), Wales (28%) and Northern Ireland (25%). In fact in all areas of relative poverty (working, pensioner, disabled etc) Scotland has either the lowest or second lowest rates in the UK. There's probably other stuff I've forgotten too.

Saying that there's no doubt the SNP are failing in some areas, education being one of the biggest areas of concern and one that badly needs addressed, but to say 'everything is failing' is just wrong.

I'd rather have a government in power that at least tries to do what's best for everyone than one who's main interest is in making money. The problem is people living in Scotland have had a decade of the SNP and take for granted all the benefits we enjoy, while some actively focus on only the negatives.

If I didn't live here I'd love to sit back and watch a Tory government come in and remove all of the above benefits and see just how quickly those people went from "wee nippy and th SNP are the devil" to "oh it's disgusting they make me pay for my meds/kids uni" etc.

P.S. The fact that everyone including the Tories and SNP think the BBC is bias against them kinda shows they're not.

She has only become a journalist as her late father was leader of the Labour Party. She would have got nowhere without him.

What utter nonsense.

She used the word 'outwith' on the main news last week. It is not a word used in England

No it’s not is it, but I love the word. One of my lovely Scottish colleagues (England) uses it and I love it!

I also like Ruth Davidson As someone else mentioned. Think she’d be a wonderful leader.

The only person who knows what NS's (or SS's) aim/agenda/reasons for doing or saying anything is NS (or SS) herself. Same goes for every person on the planet, politician or not.

Unless an individual states 'I said this because X' or 'this is how I feel about Y' then we simply don't know what they're thinking and are making assumptions, which will naturally be based on our own perspectives and biases. Opinions are fiction!

FWIW, my 'fiction' is that NS is doing a great job. I find her clear and articulate and believe she is putting the wellbeing of the Scottish people first. I'd rather she was feeling positive and confident in leading us through this, than being miserable and dreading going to work every day.

If you read what i said as I was talking about the SNP having English hating flag wavers. I'm not saying all their support is but there is an element that is.

As an English supporter of Independence, and a member of the SNP I can honestly say I've never met any. I don't deny there are some. But then any organisation movement will have its extremist arseholes.

I would bet the number of genuinely 'anti-English' in the Indy movement - as opposed to the faux bantering type - would be vastly outnumbered by the number of genuine racists in the Tory party, the genuine Anti-semites in the Labour party, and the genuine anti- whatever the hell the Lib Dems are vaguely not happy about this week. (Don't get me started on the NI parties.)

We're not anti-English. We want the English to have a great time. Be happy. Love you. It's always good when you get on with your neighbours.

We just want you to let us run our country our way and stop telling us what to do.

NicolaSturgeoun is not enjoying it, she was almost in tears when asked about nursing home deaths.

Is the same criticism leveled at Wales and N Ireland for having a different approach to England?

While I'm a staunch Unionist and think the SNP generally operate with a mixture of deceit and incompetence, in general I don't think Nicola Sturgeon is doing a terrible job, and she doesn't seem to be playing politics with the crisis (although other members of her party definitely are). It's an unprecedented and very difficult situation, and I don't think there'll be a leader anywhere in the world who fails to make mistakes, and (unfortunately) she's probably the best we've got. I do wonder if she's being overcautious at this point, and hope that Scotland will be allowed the same freedoms as the rest of the UK soon, but then I'm not privy to all the data.

Having said that though, NS and the Scottish government generally do seem to be getting an extremely easy ride from the media: there are many big questions over their handling, such as our extremely low level of testing in comparison to the rest of the UK (and conveniently forgotten targets) and higher mortality levels in care homes, and if it was Boris Johnson I can't help but think the media would be tearing strips off him. I am also very uncomfortable with the current trend of bullying any dissenters into silence up here, which I suspect is in part responsible for the weakness of our media - it seems that if anyone says anything remotely unfavourable about NS there are calls for them to be sacked which is patently absurd (even NS says the matter is closed). Sarah Smith, and all journalists, should equally be allowed to criticise Nicola Sturgeon, Boris Johnson, or anyone else.

She’s a vile woman. I hate her sniggering attitude towards ordinary people. She has only become a journalist as her late father was leader of the Labour Party. She would have got nowhere without him.
The vast majority of journalists come from privileged backgrounds and sneer at those below them in the pecking order these days though.

Bloody hell! What a palaver.

It's a linguistic thing. Sturgeon has enjoyed the opportunity... as in Sturgeon has been able to rather than took delight in.

This is what comes of dumbing down the language coupled with avoiding hurted feelz.

Perhaps she meant "enjoying" in the same context that some of my grandparents' generation used to "enjoy ill health"

I think Nicola Sturgeon has taken the right approach and I'm glad that she's waiting another couple of weeks before easing the lockdown. There's only one way at present of assessing how badly various counties have been affected by the virus, a method that is unaffected by size of population, methods of defining what someone died from etc etc. and that is the measure of excess deaths that have occurred during the outbreak.
On that basis the figures that have been published in the last few days show that, sadly, England has come out extremely badly in comparison with the other UK countries and in comparison with every other European country too. Link to long article below, short version in the attached graph.
On that basis I'm glad to be in Scotland with a leader who has taken a reasoned stance and been honest about her mistakes. Boris and his cabinet are a mess by comparison.

voxeu.org/article/excess-mortality-england-european-outlier-covid-19-pandemic

I feel a bit sorry for Sarah Smith, as I think she used the word "enjoying" in the sense of possessing, rather than relishing.

Posted too soon, qand should have added:

But the BBC is hideously biased these days, and Nicola Sturgeon has a duty to do what she thinks is right for Scotland. They're a bit behind England as far as Covid goes, so the "wait and see what happens in England" approach is perfectly reasonable. Many people think that England has eased lockdown too soon, and in another week or two we'll see if they're right.

@TheSandman I have no idea what SNP you've experienced but it's sure not the big picture! My dad was a member and left because there was so much anti-English sentiment within the party. A party that wants checkpoints at Carlisle doesn't exactly sound welcoming to the English does it? A party that will give free uni tuition to students from any EU country EXCEPT England?
There are way too many nationalists that have watched Braveheart once too often! 🙄

YABU. Nicola Sturgeon and her underlings are taking every opportunity to twist conversations round to independence. I'm glad that she has been called out on it. She loves disclosing what is said at COBRA, when she's barely got off the conference call. Of course she is loving it!

I'm English, living in Scotland and the situation here is so bad that I would seriously think about moving back to England. The NHS isnt as good as it should be here and I'm experiencing longer wait times since I've been here. Read up on the Edinburgh sick kids hospital saga, too.

Schools aren't the shining example they used to be, far from it. Glasgow has massive gang and drug problems.

The divisive atmosphere the nats have created is sickening; they carry IRA/Sinn Fein supporting placards on marches. It's awful, it really is. Sturgeon rules her party, and the regional assembly she calls a government, with an iron fist. In the daily briefing, journslists' microphones are switched off after they ask the question so they can't challenge her. She uses a lot of words but says nothing. She demands they call her First Minister while she refers to the PM as Boris.