Nicola Sturgeon

[Malachite234]

Hospitality restrictions extended today and a 5 tier system?

Why not just have the same as England? Why is she insisting on harsher lockdowns then blaming Westminster for no funding.

Edinburgh and Glasgow will be like ghost towns soon. I’m sure more than 50% of bars and restaurants won’t re-open.

Are you all following the restrictions ( question for the central belters) ?

Raspberry it's not like that AT ALL. Absolutely ridiculous. Are the Welsh ' building a wall' as you put it? No.

The FM has always said she can't rule out putting restrictions on people coming into Scotland from anywhere in the UK ( or world!) with higher rates of covid. The Tory press/ MPs deliberately say she's picking on the English ( ignores everyone else).

Here's Mr Ross deliberately misunderstanding the Welsh Gov, exactly as they do re Scot Gov.

I totally hear you @MissEliza. DH's family is south of the border. My parents nearest big shop is in Berwick. There are thousands of people who travel both ways, every single day.

It's a great soundbite which goes down well with the very anxious and the rapid nationalists. But is there actually ANY evidence that the spread is being caused by people coming to Scotland on holiday, to see family or for work? If people are sticking to the rules about socially distancing, not mixing households and whatever else there is no point in drawing an arbitrary line across the country which you must not cross. Parts of England have a much lower rate of Covid than parts of Scotland - banning Londoners travelling to Edinburgh for example is just nuts.

There is also a huge impact on our tourism sector which has already been destroyed through 2020. No foreign visitors are coming to Scotland, ban the rest of the UK from visiting too and you can kiss goodbye to thousands of jobs. Tourism is a huge employer in Scotland. Hotels, B&Bs, visitor attractions, campsites, outdoor activity providers, shops - all decimated.

@chrislilleyswig
It gets frustrating explaining the same thing repeatedly to ppl who can’t seem to read.

Travel restrictions can happen to anyone living anywhere. Is BJ being anti English imposing them in Liverpool for example? Of course not.

The pandemic has made it obvious devolution is a failure. We do not need the expense and confusion of making every decision 4 times. It is insane that we have different track and trace systems for each country.

And Sturgeon was damned a long time before Covid.

Not really - having our own test and protect means Scotland has in the 90s percentage success rate whereas privatised Serco's South of the border is around a 63 per cent success rate.

Local knowledge helps - in Scotland each local area has a team. My friend ( Public Health Officer) has been seconded to Test and Protect for the last few weeks.

The 'Nicola announces first' argument is facile. We have a devolved parliament, nowhere is it written that we need to wait for the UK gov to brief or make decisions on devolved matters. Also given BJ barely ever briefed, we'd have been waiting a long time wouldn't we?

Scotland has had separate education, legal and religion ( eg no state religion) systems since the Act of Union. Our publicly funded NHS is not a part of the UK Health service and was developed independently starting in 1913.
We have NEVER been gifted these powers by the UK but they have simply been continued as regional assemblies and parliament have been devolved.
Its not that Nicola wants to separate the COVID response, health is a completely separate system in Scotland. For example we do not have trusts and our health and social care is integrated to a large degree ( and will be further).
The Scottish restrictions would still be different to the English, Welsh or NI no matter if we still had a Secretary of State for Scotland and no parliament. They are historically separate just as we have a separate judiciary, prisons and sentencing.
These things cannot be easily unpicked even with the proposed legislation.
This system is not solely in the gift of NS or the SNP.
And @MissEliza Please do not post misogynistic pictures of women as witches or the grim reaper, they are offensive.

@grumplass

Scotland has had separate education, legal and religion ( eg no state religion) systems since the Act of Union. Our publicly funded NHS is not a part of the UK Health service and was developed independently starting in 1913. We have NEVER been gifted these powers by the UK but they have simply been continued as regional assemblies and parliament have been devolved. Its not that Nicola wants to separate the COVID response, health is a completely separate system in Scotland. For example we do not have trusts and our health and social care is integrated to a large degree ( and will be further). The Scottish restrictions would still be different to the English, Welsh or NI no matter if we still had a Secretary of State for Scotland and no parliament. They are historically separate just as we have a separate judiciary, prisons and sentencing. These things cannot be easily unpicked even with the proposed legislation. This system is not solely in the gift of NS or the SNP. And *@MissEliza* Please do not post misogynistic pictures of women as witches or the grim reaper, they are offensive.

This says NHS Scotland was formed at the same time (part of or or not I don’t know), in 1948 www.ournhsscotland.com/history/timeline

Happy to be educated if there’s more to it than that though

@GreyishDays
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HighlandsanddIslandsMedicallService

[quote grumplass]@GreyishDays
[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlands]]anddIslandsMedicallService

[/quote]
That was hard to find, sorry!

Thanks. Interesting.

It's so interesting to learn that air ambulances had their first flight in 1933!

@GreyishDays no problem it's just so interesting I love telling people about it! Especially love the nurses and midwives who got round on motorbikes 🏍
You should have heard me ranting at the call the midwife Christmas Special!

The Unionists here slating SNP, what’s your choice? Tories who voted not to feed children? Douglas Ross who only 2 days ago championed feeding kids then abstains from the vote and every other Scottish Tory voted not to fund it.
Certainly not who I want reresenting me, selfish self serving wastes of space each and every Tory.

It's really depressing to see the misogyny on this thread, pictures of witches and the grim reaper, talk about " wee nippy ". (The "wee Jimmy Krankie " insult which isn't in here yet. )
Yes argue with NS but take out this language it does you no favours. No matter what your views Nicola has to work 6 times as hard as any male leader to be taken seriously.

I hated Margaret Thatcher but those "ding dong" comments on her death were disgusting

Yes that's exactly it. Everyone who doesn't worship Nicola is a waste off space who relishes starving children.

I really thought posters on MN were brighter than that. Obviously not.

@RaspberryCoulis you don't have to worship Nicola to see that Douglas Ross needs to decide where his values lie

@cdtaylornats you are spot on about track and trace. A huge factor in Spain's resurgence was that eaxh Autonomia had its own track and trace. Some were good. Some were appalling. Obviously people are moving between regions for a whole host of reasons. There really needs to be a uk wide system. Or at least information sharing.

@RaspberryCoulis
I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself there🤣🤣
The only ‘not bright’ ppl I’ve seen is the unionist who spout utter nonsense and misinformation. No right thinking person in Scotland can honestly say the Tories have our best interests at heart, if you do then you are not very bright.

And it's a binary one or the other choice, obviously.

Douglas Ross did the same with the WASPI women. Photoshoots galore then voted with his party once elected.
The up- coming No Deal Brexit which the PM has chosen (there were deals on the table but he walked away and chose a no deal). Why? His donors have made billions short selling UK stocks. Worth wrecking a country for? I don't think so. The leave campaign said the UK unequivocally couldn't survive that WTO situation.. unmitigated disaster. Yet here we are. Next year the PM will resign and join his rich friends in Barbados . How on earth can anyone wish to stay in the UK is beyond my understanding.

The biggest spouter of trash and misinformation on here is snp. Drops things as absolute facts for the faithful to snuffle up, can't or doesn't ever back them up.

Do SNP activists get an annual fee or is it pay per post or share in social media?

It's not independence they are looking for, it's separation and a change of management.

The fact is that despite the advantages Scotland has had in this whole thing, we are doing no better, it's just all fucking spin.

Apart from being a control freak, there is no one with any talent that can be delegated to. It's wowful. I don't agree with virtually anything she does but she is a talented politician, or appears so given the dearth of any talent anywhere else. She gets away with so much given the rub of the green from press.

I don't have any issue with her being a woman or about what she wears or styles her hair, any more than I care about any other politician.

She asked to be judged on education, I have and it didn't go well.

@RaspberryCoulis there is UK wide information sharing. In fact the lighthouse labs were set up as a uk national system.
NHS Scotland had existing public health track and trace systems for norovirus etc. Which have continued and been extended.
NHS England was not involved in contact tracing. This was outsourced to SERCO and Dido Harding.
(In fact an early Scottish outbreak was at a private call centre in N Lanarkshire contracted to SERCO. Such poor work conditions as it was done as cheaply as possible. )

Test results are processed through the lighthouse labs, collated at I'm level and that data is then supplied to Scotland. We also collate and share private results, hospital and care home data and others. This is gathered at a UK level on a weekly basis by the Office of National Statistics.
This all went pear shaped when schools in England went back and people were sent to Inverness from the Home Counties as it was a uk system.
Another problem now is the amount of community transmission which is completely overwhelming the system especially south of the border.

@WaxOnFeckOff
What a nasty condescending comment? Reverse that, every post regards SNP and the unionist shuffle out with the same nonsense. Scotland haven’t voted Tory in a very very long time, SNP can bring independence and maybe other parties will emerge because at present Tories and Labour are a waste of space.

@WaxOnFeckOff please find some misinformation from the SNP on here. I'd love to see it but I can't seem to find their username, so they have a corporate mumsnet account