Whoosh! He went off like a rocket and tore through SNP’s record
The Nairn bypass isn’t a subject that often sends holyrood into a meltdown. But Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth was answering a question about road upgrades to the royal burgh when the microphone began emitting a loud grating noise.
Gilruth was nearing the end of her spiel, with First Minister’s Questions about to begin, but sinister scratching sounds drowned her out.
Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone scrambled to locate the problem, before finding herself unable to be heard over the metallic scrape, scrape, scrape. everyone knows the SNP’s fondness for secrecy but this was the first time they’d been caught on mic burying the bodies.
eventually Johnstone was forced to suspend the sitting for a quarter-hour during which time all the microphones in the chamber were silenced. It’s the most sense any of them have ever made.
The feed difficulties addressed, FMQs was called to order, a day early to accommodate today’s local elections. Not that you’d have needed a reminder if you’d tuned in. The council elections were all anyone wanted to talk about.
IT’S ironic. The one day when all the parties wanted to talk about that most Lib Dem of issues – local democracy – and Alex Cole-hamilton’s poor blighters didn’t get a question. Douglas Ross did, mind you, and he fair launched into it. Whoosh! Off like a twobob rocket, he was, fizzing flames as he tore through the SNP’s unhappy record.
‘A quarter of a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money has been spent and not a single ferry has been built, and the crucial document detailing why this awful decision was made has disappeared,’ he reminded the First Minister, over the groans of her front and backbenches. It sounded rude but I understand it’s a medical condition called ARA: Allergic Reaction to Accountability.
Ross challenged her to apologise for the ferries debacle instead of deploying ‘weasel words’ such as ‘regret’. ‘When the First Minister suggested chopping off the bottom of classroom doors, that was regrettable; wasting a quarter of a billion pounds is much, much worse,’ he jabbed.
Sturgeon refused to apologise, telling the Scottish Tory leader: ‘I know there is a lot of anger across Scotland right now, although I’m not sure it’s for the reason Douglas Ross has raised and I suspect he is going to feel the force of it tomorrow.’
Ross pivoted to a run-through of all the current SNP scandals, which was ambitious. FMQs only lasts 45 minutes. he recalled the £50million lost on BiFab, ‘the worst ever A&e waiting times on record’, record-high violent crime and ‘the highest number of drug deaths in europe’.
‘Surely,’ he pressed, ‘that is a record the First Minister is ashamed of?’
Apparently not. Sturgeon’s self-serving rebuttal demonstrated, conveniently enough, that everything was just dandy and she was doing a fine old job. By contrast, she ventured, the Westminster Tory government had delivered ‘Brexit and austerity’ and ‘worst of all, we have had Boris Johnson’. Worst of all.
‘That is shameful, First Minister,’ Ross began, but struggled to be audible above the howling of the hyenas. ‘It is shameful that the 1,319 individuals who died as a result of drugs in the past year did not even merit a mention in the First Minister’s response. That is 1,319 lives lost and families destroyed and Nicola Sturgeon – yet again – ignored them to get cheap applause from her SNP backbenchers.’
The hyena enclosure hollered itself hoarse over that one.
Sturgeon branded Ross ‘the cheerleader in chief for Boris Johnson’. ‘No consistency, no principle, no resolve and no backbone – that is Douglas Ross,’ she spat. ‘he is not a leader. he is just a follower.’
All in all, I preferred her with the microphone off.