A thread for people who admire and like Nicola Sturgeon

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Just what it says really. I think she's done a great job. She has made mistakes and owned them. She has taken advice and is willing to change policy where necessary. I think she's done pretty well and our virus figures are improving daily. So a thread for some positive things!

On the cutting ties, scotland still wants to have a trade agreement with the other four nations. As things stand just now the United Kingdom is not a partner of equals, it doesn't matter which way scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland vote, English voters outnumber them, that is not democracy, in Brussels each member state has a veto and their voice is heard, the U.K. does not afford the same courtesy to the four nations here, the other three countries are treated like counties and an extension of England.

Well said @chergar

I note the rapid about turn over exam results but Swinney still in post.

Nothing about SNP MP Alyn Smith who wants black and disabled members removed from the SNP ruling body.

@chergar 👏🏼

Swinney must have some serious dirt on Sturgeon for him still to be in post. Two serious u-turns in just a few months....

Just think if NS was fully in charge with the ability to impose quarantine/ checks at the start, we'd likely have had 10/ 20 deaths, no cases for months and the country back to normal instead of going back to school with major anxiety.
We can only hope, but the Tory Gov won't grant a referendum whilst polls show the 'yes' side might win.
Also have to laugh at the daily mail interviews of Ruth Davidson - proudly telling us that she'll make Scotland a better place (no, no she won't as she'll be raking in £300 a day in the biggest unelected chamber in the world). Absolutely disgusting.

An independent Scotland might want a trading agreement with the other UK nations but that doesn't mean to say they will get one or that any agreement might instead be replaced by an EU agreement in the unlikely event that Scotland is allowed to join.

SG released untested elderly patients from hospital into care facilities and the Nike conference scenario, so saying 10 to 20 fatalities is just stupid.

We have a strong economy which makes borrowing with the low interest rates feasible. The great engine that drives a large part of that economy is financial and mostly based in London. Even with Brexit the majority of foreign financial institution’s preferred to stay in London .

I was a remainer but feel we must embrace the situation as it is and move forward . One friend who has a company who exports largely to US said to comply with EU rules he had 30 back office staff to cope and it took a month of paperwork . Post Brexit it’s 10 staff and all done in a week and they have increased their exports on back of this -

Nicola had ability to shut down Scotland earlier - and as I mentioned she was advised by Prof Hugh Petherington on 6 March re threat to old people moving from hospital to homes but he was ignored by SG .

What do all the independence supporters feel about our health and education- .

My worry is that too much is heart over head .

Hugh pennington got sidelined for not being SNP and making a negative remark about them that someone took umbrage to.

"My worry is that too much is heart over head."

The UK is suffering the worst recession of any G7 country. Independence is wholeheartedly head over heart.

We also lost many lives due to not being able to put controls on those coming into the country (the action a country can take with the biggest impact of reducing Covid deaths).

We are being pulled down with the good ship, Titanic Westminster.

First minister questions was interesting today. Ruth Davidson came off very badly

As did Douglas Ross on GMB. He actually tried to pretend he was having technical issues when asked why he voted against same sex marriage. 🙄

scotslassie1
I'll need to see if I can get that on catch up

I don't always agree with everything NS does but I have to say I'm glad she is the Scottish leader. When I listen to the opposition it's painfully obvious why they are the opposition.

So, do we really think that the people who ignored the Nike outbreak and chucked care homes under the bus could have saved everyone had they had the power to shut borders?

The only ambition here was to be a bit less shit than England, which according to some stats they've achieved.

Agreed @WaxOnFeckOff. Surely the biggest COVID19-related cause of deaths in both Scotland and the UK as a whole was seeding care homes full of the most vulnerable groups with infected patients from hospital, advising care-home workers that they didn't need PPE (see the disclosure documentary), and the lack of an adequate testing system to monitor everything. Both governments were guilty of this spectacularly bad judgement, although the Scottish government were slower to increase testing capacity. This was absolutely something NS could have done differently and had control of, but chose not to.

It's almost as if some people are so desperate for it to be Westminster's fault that they scrabble around for the only thing that WASN'T under the Scottish government's control, i.e. borders, and try to pin all our woes on that despite evidence to the contrary. This argument doesn't even make sense by its own logic, as we have seen in recent weeks that Scotland is perfectly able to enact different quarantine rules to the rUK anyway.

My view is that if you felt something was a matter of life and death, you wouldn't necessarily care whether something was allowed or legal or within protocol or popular, you'd do what you needed to do and worry about the rest later.

I think it was a really difficult job with tough decisions but to suggest that if bad Westminster had given control of one thing we would have had deaths in the tens rather than thousands is just ridiculous.

I really fail to understand why an experienced QC would write to the UK Government 3 times asking for controls to be placed on people coming into the country if she didn't have to.
At that time border control was all under a UK umbrella.

The point is that border control wasn't necessarily the issue and that if it was then you do what you need to and deal with questions later. The Nike conference was in Feb and people were being moved out of hospitals and care homes from minimum early March onwards, if the request re borders preceded that then I can see that that may have had a dramatic effect on outcomes.

As this thread is to celebrate NS then I will say in her favour I believe she does not feel at present that Scotland is financially strong enough for independence. However she is forced into pursuing it by the grass roots for whom it is their driving force . She fears with coming elections she could lose votes if independence is not on immediate agenda. An American economist recently stated that of course we could be independent but there needs to be some honest financial conversations

which at present are being ignored . Heart over head.....

you know @annabelindajane, despite my apparent reputation as a raving anti SNP person, i don't actually have too much of an issue with people who just want to have more localised control of the countries destiny and appreciate that initially economy wise it's would be really really tough, that's a massive step that there is no going back from really. It's folk who think just swapping masters to Europe instead (unlikely to happen certainly in the short term) or that think/pretend that we'll be in the clover if we stand alone.

I hate the SNP but that doesn't mean I don't see that we could be independent but it's more of a should we, is it actually the best? Is having more autonomy worth it? we are gambling with DCs future really. You can't really debate any of that though as both sides think the other is lying and delusional. It's cut this country in half and it hasn't been good for anybody.

To be fair to NS, she did commission the growth report which tried to lay out a realistic scenario of how Scotland could become independent. But that was quietly forgotten about when the conclusions were 'too negative' for a lot in the SNP and they thought such an honest assessment of the challenges might lose them support. I agree though that if we must have this bloody conversation on a loop it should at least be an honest one. Face up to the considerable hardships of independence and then discuss whether it is worth it. Right now there seem to be too many people looking through rose-tinted glasses, ranting about Boris and the Tories, and refusing to accept that things would be very very hard for a long time if we took this step. More so after COVID flattens the economy.

Hmm, but then why sit with unspent money in your budget to help families while complaining that food bank use has gone up. It suits the SNP to keep people in poverty and blaming westmister for it, they could raise taxes more, I wouldn't mind paying more. They froze the council tax which meant that there was less money for projects etc but it mainly benefited people who could afford to pay the increases. They could have increased it a pound a week per household and it would have raised millions that could have gone to specifically target poverty.

There are understandably things that they can't control, but they don't make use of the things they can in case it's unpopular and therefor affects the only thing they care about which is gaining independence - at any cost.

But as a I said above, no-one on either side wants to listen to the other.