Opposition fails to hold Sturgeon to account

This week I had the misfortune to watch Scottish Parliament TV in the hope that I might receive some enlightenment from the First Minister on the reasons for the shambles surrounding the introduction of the Scottish vaccination app and its harmful effect on the hospitality industry.

Also an explanation as to why the same computer system was sending elderly Edinburgh City residents to the farflung reaches of East and West Lothian for their flu vaccinations, and residents in those regions into the city for the same vaccinations. These latter instances have already been aired on several occasions in these columns, as has the inadequacy of the telephone helpline.

As we have been told relentlessly by Ms Sturgeon over the last 18 months, we are “in the midst of a global pandemic” and one can only commend the fortitude and patience of the long-suffering NHS staff in remaining endlessly polite and helpful in trying to cope in the face of the total organisational shambles perpetrated by the SNP Government.

When this incompetence is accompanied by smirking smugness and endless selfpromotion it becomes unforgivable. Needless to say, the session in the Parliament did not add in any way to the sum total of human knowledge, being the usual circus of perfectly reasonable questions from all the opposition parties receiving no substantive answers from the First Minister .

However, the piece de resistance from the First Minister was that she achieved a hat trick in not answering the question raised. Ross Greer raised a really important point about the fund set aside to improve the ventilation in schools, asking how much had been spent already and what work had actually been done. One would have expected that, given how much the education of our children has suffered due to pandemic forced closures, the First Minister would have been only too happy to deal with the question. Instead she read a prepared answer about helping small businesses. No wonder even Ross Greer looked bemused.

As I could not believe what I was hearing I replayed the question and answer and there was no doubt that the answer did not address any part of Mr Greer's question.

What was even more concerning was that no MSP queried the meaningless answer nor raised a point of order. Surely Scotland deserves better governance than that provided by the SNP on autopilot and the failure of all the opposition parties to really hold them to account.

JOHN DONALD

Edinburgh