Nicola Sturgeon cracks me up.

[Merename]

Just read an excerpt from her address today. I know not all of you will love her and I don’t think coronavirus has been handled perfectly, but she is an intelligent and likeable example of Scottish people, imo. I love the way she is dignified and avoids politicising everything, yet still is direct enough to comment on how ridiculous Boris can be:

Tom Gordon, from The Herald, points out that, in the prime minister's speech this morning, Boris Johnson emphasised the role of the union, calling it "an incredible partnership" that proved its worth during the pandemic. He asks what the first minister's response is considering she would like Scotland to be independent.

"Boris Johnson and I are very different kinds of people, very different personalities and I would, in a whole range of ways, choose not to emulate him and how he speaks and how he behaves and I'm sure he would choose not to emulate me in many respects," Nicola Sturgeon replies.

"I don't think you'll catch me very often leaping to the floor to do press-ups during a media interview, for example.

"In terms of the wider and future arguments about Scotland's constitutional future, people will make their own minds up on that and draw their own conclusions and part of the process they will go through is watching how the Scottish government conducts itself and how Boris Johnson conducts himself.

"My focus is on tackling this virus and any leader should have that as their central focus."

I agree! In fact I'd sooner have Janey Godley's version of Nicola than the buffoon Boris we have in England

If you've not seen them, you should watch Janey Godley's voiceovers of her daily briefings- genius.

Even Nicola has said that Janey often says what Nicola is thinking
but couldn't possibly say

I agree with pretty much all you've said. Proud to have such a strong, resilient and consistent leader.

I do worry a bit about her though - she must really need a break! It's been a long 15 (or more) weeks.

She is looking at a 50% rise in council tax.

So far she has done exactly the same as Boris just a couple of weeks later.

She presided over building a new hospital in Edinburgh only to call off opening it 3 weeks before the date, it is so fucked up it couldn't be opened even partially for the virus, instead the British Army had to convert the SECC. The closed hospital still has staff and costs £1 million a month to run. Almost as if she is using Yes Minister as a script.

Right.

She’s a very skilled communicator and comes across better than Boris, I’ll give her that. Initially I would say she was handling the crisis well too, but I think the wheels have come off a bit now. There’s a huge mismatch between what she announces and what actually happens, with the testing and aims for blended learning being two examples. The ease with which she switched from blended learning being the plan with no mention anywhere of full time learning, to ‘we always aimed to go back full time when safe, it was only ever a contingency, there has been no U turn’ is quite disconcerting as it belies a very casual relationship with the truth. I also find it laughable when people suggest she’s not politicising things at this point (perhaps it was true a few months ago). She rarely misses an opportunity to have a pop at Westminster and/or England (even if she is using flowery language) and her comments today were a case in point I think as was her tweet in response to what was clearly a joke by Kier Starmer. I can’t help noticing a mobilisation towards independence in her actions and comments on increased fiscal powers, border control, and the general need to differentiate herself from Westminster and criticise Westminster politicians, even though the general plan is largely the same.

@cdtaylornats would be interested to see your source there for the council tax increase and let’s face it if the hospital had been/are overwhelmed just think of the stushie if your family member was left in an ambulance bay as there was/ is no beds. There really was/is no other way additional Ned space could have been used.

Bed space obviously the neds can fend for themselves

I don’t think cdtaylornats was implying that additional capacity was a bad idea, but rather that there would have already been that capacity had the Edinburgh hospital been functioning rather than a (very expensive) cockup that’s been sitting empty for quite some time.

Yep, she's fucking hilarious..

She is an effective communicator and a control freak with one agenda at the same time. See, I even kept that polite.

There are already loads of threads on here for the Nicola haters. Did you all have to pile in here too?

Sorry OP, sadly this was only going to go one way. It just doesn't appear to be acceptable to support our FM on MN.

Anyone who dares to is called a cybernat..ironic really!

Oh don’t worry @Superjaggy! There are plenty of opinions expressed on MN that I don’t agree with, that’s the beauty. I think she’s great and can’t imagine how anyone could think she’s not shining head and shoulders above Boris in basic communication skills. I think she made a mistake not locking us down a week or two earlier, I think she knows that and regrets it, and will not let herself be driven by his agenda again. But really in starting this thread I wanted to express pleasure at a smart and funny woman who made me laugh today!

@giggly

@Siddalee, I love Janey Godley too, another smart, funny woman. Have you seen this one: m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2506202006357147&id=1680210945622928&sfnsn=scwspwa&extid=C6q4bPRZDjNG9rk8&d=w&vh=e

I’m not a fan of hers by any means but I think she’s done a good job for the most part. She could have politicised things way more than she’s actually done, has been confident and has kept her humanity.

The schools debacle I lay firmly at John Swinneys feet and would love to have been a fly on the wall for some of their conversations.

And I agree, @Y0uCann0tBeSer10us, as things have progressed she is clearly thinking of what this all means in the case for independence- but what else would she do? I really believe that she wants the best for Scottish people, and believes independence is the best way to achieve it. You may not agree. I also agree with you to an extent that the u-turn on education was a bit shambolic, but I can forgive that as this is a mental, unprecedented situation. I think they made the wrong decision initially and were swayed with public opinion, and tried to pretty it up a bit.

I think she seems to have a good sense of humour. I think she's far more clear in what she's saying and proposing to do than Boris is but I think she has made fundamental errors just as he has.
Not locking us down earlier, standing next to Catherine Calderwood expecting an apology would make the issue go away, only sacking her when she realised the anger of the Scottish people and now there is the school situation. I can't see how we can go from being told we wouldn't back back in school full time till August 2021 to then 10 days later being told we'll be back, with no social distancing, in August 2020.

As someone who works in education, I agree that the announcement re full time in August came out of the blue, but it was clearly what everyone within and out with education was hoping would be the case. It has been an enormous workload to come up with plans for blended learning but they're there now if we need them in August or at any future point.

@Merename I agree that no one should be surprised that NS is always thinking about the next steps in achieving independence, and frankly I’m amazed when people don’t realise this. I can also believe that she sincerely believes that independence is the best path for Scotland, although as you guessed I fundamentally disagree with that view. The problem is that she doesn’t have the permission of the Scottish people to move us further from the U.K. and towards independence; the only time this question was explicitly asked the answer was a convincing no. You could argue that circumstances have changed and the question should be asked again, that’s another debate, but at this point in time that permission hasn’t been given. So she has no right to try to position some sort of de facto independence through the back door, whether that is through border controls, fiscal powers or anything else.

Fair enough, I understand what you are saying. I hadn’t thought about how the current conversations about the border etc would be perceived by those who disagree with independence. I’m not sure the chat on that is all about future independence wishes - it’s very practical. If I were in areas in England where covid was spiking, of course I’d consider a flit to Scotland for a holiday or otherwise, and we have all done too much work to allow that to be jeopardised.

Obviously I think the independence question has to be asked again, but obviously it’s a bigger issue than just NS, we will be living with it for longer than she is in power. But today I just enjoyed the humour and feeling proud of our country being led by a woman with great comic delivery!

Her communication skills are better than Boris's. But that's not saying much.

Apart from that, she is just dreadful. All through this she has been desperate to portray Scotland as DIFFERENT and SPECIAL. Take the credit for things she has no power over like the fact the virus spread much more slowly in low density areas where there are no people. Desperately covering up fuck ups over the Nike conference and care homes. Just wait to see what comes out in the wash through the Salmond enquiry - not going to be pretty.

Now she's all "keep those nasty germy English people out of MY lovely clean (independent) Scotland".

Loathe and detest the woman.

Oh, and despite the fact that the Westminster government canned the daily briefing a week ago, she persists with her daily death count even though there's precious little to report so she can turn it into a 30 minute televised party political broadcast.

I like Nicola, she's competent and confident. People need that.

But politically it's laughable. When things go well, yip, that's cos we're Scottish.

When things go badly it's because this pandemic is unpreeeecedented and Boris should have locked us down earlier. Obviously we can't lock ourselves down.

Fly a saltire on the gains and a Union flag on the losses as usual.

She's running the country into the ground. How can anyone be happy about that?!

How can anyone be happy about that

Because they don't like Boris and see Nicola as the polar opposite.

I love big Nicki! So glad she’s our FM.

I'm not an SNP supporter but I think the continuation of the daily briefings is really important. The message is the virus hasn't gone away so why should they stop reporting on it.