Let us hope SNP’s 2017 resolution is to listen
TOODLE-PIP then 2016, I can’t say I’ll miss you. Never mind Brexit and Trump, a year that featured Ed Balls on Strictly Come Dancing and killed off Kathy Selden from Singin’ in the Rain deserves to be forgotten the second the bells chime midnight.
Before they do, however, allow me one last look in the rearview mirror for a highly personal and entirely subjective review of the year.
In her Christmas message, Nicola Sturgeon talked about Scotland’s reputation as a ‘caring country’. She suggested that during this festive time of reflection we all took time to give ‘comfort, companionship and support to those who need it’.
I’m sure many Scots support such a sentiment, but I’m not convinced about the SNP. This has hardly been a year in which the Scottish Government has covered itself in glory in the caring stakes.
In October, Audit Scotland issued a sternly worded warning about the abysmal state of the NHS in Scotland.
Underfunding, a lack of reform, missed targets; a litany of embarrassing failures. The very institution at the heart of caring in this country is falling to bits, under the SNP’s watch.
Meanwhile, in education, we learned that Scotland’s schools had recorded their worst ranking in an international survey of pupils. Scores for reading, maths and science have all slid down the tables, placing our children behind pupils in countries such as Estonia and Slovenia.
As a friend remarked dolefully of her nineyear-old daughter: ‘This is her generation. They don’t get another chance.’
Then there is transport – you know, another of those basic, infrastructure things that keeps the country ticking over – which thanks to the wobbly management of Transport Minister Humza Yousaf and a dreadful performance from ScotRail, is becoming an endurance test for anyone wanting to do something more complex than pop to the end of the street.
Yes, these are the things most Scots care about, but sadly they seem to pale into significance for Miss Sturgeon. For what she still cares about, more than anything else, is independence.
The First Minister has spent much of this year obsessed with Brexit, doing everything she can to undermine the process while using it to further her own cause for independence.
Only the other day she reflected on her remarks on the morning of the EU referendum result, when she appeared in front of TV cameras, the ghost at the feast, to declare the result made an independence referendum highly likely.
‘That,’ she said this week, ‘remains the case.’ Really? Honestly and truly?
MISS Sturgeon appeared an exploitative careerist when she demanded another referendum as the country came to grips with the EU vote. Seven months on, the mantra appears desperate.
Even those who voted Yes back in 2014 are growing tired of the SNP’s Sisyphean inability to let go, wondering if perhaps they ought not to get on with running the country.
The world has changed momentously over the past 12 months. Britain is headed out of Europe. Russia is flexing its considerable muscles. America is about to be taken over by a reality TV star who looks like a Wotsit.
Now is not the time to be faffing about with another independence referendum. I know I bang on about this but since the message never seems to get through, I’ll say it one more time. We had a vote. We said no. It is time to move on.
If I have one hope for 2017 it is that the First Minister and her party listen to their country. Listen to what Scotland cares about – and convince us that you care about it, too.