They are clearly at it

See aw this feigning confusion over pretty simple and clear advice coming out of Nicola Sturgeon’s mouth, it’s getting a bit worn oot, is it not?

Oh borders, borders, borders, whine the yooniversity of the bewildered, red, white and blue, and the hard of thinking.

‘The virus doesn’t recognise borders, so it’s pointless having different precaution advice for Scotland and Our Green and Pleasant Land’ they yodel from the rooftops of Bedlam. Politicians, journalists, talking heads, social media shouters and ex rugby players, they are all at it.

Wee Davie Mundell, the former Viceroy of Joy, bringer of all things misery and smoke and mirrors on behalf of the British state to the country he was born in from the country he sycophantly adores, is the latest. He’s “confused”. (To be fair, it doesn’t take much to confuse him) on the issue of face masks, as he describes it, and the conflicting advice coming from Scotland’s First Minister and those he toadies for in London, even though he got huckled out of his job for a guy with a weekend hunting estate.

Firstly. It’s face covering, not masks, masks are for frontline health workers, the heroes that Panorama the other night so easily exposed as being thoroughly let down and left in mortal danger whilst doing their jobs by the government that Wee Davie loves so much and craves to get back into. A government criminally negligent, a government that had a cheek to stand in a minute’s silence the other day in tribute to over a hundred medical staff who could still be alive if they had done their job properly and protected them.

It’s face covering in public places and public transport where it might be difficult to adhere to social distancing. Easy really. Around yer ample gub and nose Davie. Could be a scarf, a cloth, a pair of Union flagged Y- fronts, could even be a cutoff section of that ermine cloak you’ve got hanging in your wardrobe in anticipation of a wee £320 a day reward you are expecting at some point for services rendered. Any of the above will do.

It’s not mandatory, it’s advised. It’s not considered 100% effective, but here’s the thing, there is some evidence that it does help slow the spread of the virus as we protect each other from much of the droplets associated with coughs, sneezing and talking. ‘Some’ is better than Rona roulette I would suggest.

Sweaty Matt Handless at the daily evasion exercise that the London Government Corona virus updates have become (they cannae even be bothered to provide somebody to sign for the deaf) tells us that ‘the science’ doesn’t support wearing face covering.

I’d love to see that science the Tories keep going on about, the science that varies from most other countries in the world, apart from the one governed by a big baby in a nappy the size of a hammock, the science that is killing the people of the UK in droves, that science.

Matty the perspirer, on several occasions has also disavowed the idea that stopping 50,000 people a week flying into the UK, without health checks, quarantine or restriction is a sensible thing to do, as in his, and “the Science’s” opinion this isn’t adding to the spread of the virus, a view which frankly is clearly bonkers, a situation which in reality will continue to perpetuate the spread of Covid-19 and kill more people until eventually, tails between their legs, the Tories decide to take that action. So I wouldn’t really pay the slightest bit of attention to him.

The media are at it as well, trying to stir up the constitutional shyte, like a wee group of primary school
kids taunting two of their classmates into a fight, and misreporting the First Minister’s words, claiming constitutional chaos and confusion.

Just stop it. The whole world is involved in just staying afloat and keeping people alive right now. The people of Scotland will remember, when this is all over what they saw and heard for themselves in the Scottish Government virus briefings, and how these were subsequently reported in the media. We have long memories.

Better together?

So there we have it. Near chaos.

Smoke, mirrors, planes sitting on runways for days to pick up vital equipment that were apparently supposed to land in the south of England the day before they were even ordered (work that one out).

A rudderless ship heading for an iceberg the size of a huge temporary hospital that they built without ensuring that it is adequately staffed, therefore resulting in gravely ill patients being turned away.

Who is currently the Prime Minister? Is it the unelected Cummings? Where currently is the Prime Minister?

If Boris Johnson is well enough to speak to the world’s most dangerous narcissist, an individual who is so self-interested and thick that he is going to cause record numbers of deaths from this virus in his country, from inside his fridge at Chequers, a conversation to work out a joint ‘Special Relationship’ approach to the crisis, (God save us all) why can’t he deal with media questions from a comfy fireside armchair there? The man is a lazy incompetent coward. He wanted the job title, not the job.

It begs the question is there a daily raffle amongst Tory ministers to see who ends up looking sweaty, nervous and uneasy at media conferences in Johnson’s absence, even though the BBC aren’t giving them a hard time anyway? Hancock is looking like he is going to burst into either tears or flames. And now we’ve got a military presence at the briefings too, cue signalling to the Home Counties heartlands images of Vera Lynne, D-Day at the Daily Mail, St George’s Day, good old Winston, ‘we’ll fight it in the fields, we’ll fight it in the isolation wards’… etc …and dry boak.

Why are bureaucrats and medical experts covering up for incompetent negligent governance?

In the past few days a senior medical officer has made comments, attempting to rewrite the history of the last couple of months, which suggest that the UK’s approach to the Covid-19 crisis is an ‘exemplar’. What planet is she on?

We’ve also seen a senior bureaucrat, who when questioned by an oversight committee on why it was that the UK did not take the EU up on their offer to be included in a scheme to source and distribute vital patient ventilators, said initially that it was a political decision, a government choice not to be involved, suddenly overnight change his mind and ‘correct’ himself saying that the UK hadn’t received the details of the invite on time to allow this to happen. Oops, a wee slip of the memory. Yet he seemed so sure of his first answer on the video recording of his answer to the question. Curious that.

What pressure is being placed on these people, and by whom?

Did the cover up of their attempt to cut Scottish and Welsh health and care workers off from vital life saving PPE go well, once they were caught red handed?

Do the allegations of the last few days that false social media accounts were being used, again until they were found out, with the images of real NHS workers, but given fake names, to back up the government’s falsehoods on twitter and Facebook that there is enough PPE to go round, and that the deeply disturbing herd immunity idea, debunked by the WHO, was a good thing sit well with you? Is human life that disposable?

Why is it, if Westminster’s government feel, by some means of serious self-delusion, that they are in control of this crisis, and have reliable strategises to address the changing requirements of getting through a pandemic, do they send out a succession of junior ill equipped ministers like lambs to the slaughter, to be eviscerated by the usually loathsome but currently performing a vital national service in exposing governmental ineptitude, Piers Morgan?

Do they think this instils confidence in the population of the countries of the union, watching such exposure of grave incompetence? Yet more cowardice from those in power.

Does the fact that although, thankfully, responsibility for health services is a devolved power to Scotland, (imagine it wasn’t?) all other powers that would assist the Scottish government in its battle against the coronavirus, keeping Scotland’s people safe, powers like border security, are still in the hands of these right wing numpties in London, make you uncomfortable? It should.

Does the knowledge that many other countries of a similar size and population to Scotland around the globe, countries with full autonomy, are recording significantly less mortality as a result of the pandemic than Scotland make you wonder why that is?

Better Together? My auntie Fanny.

Don’t ever forget this.

Caught red handed

It gets worse. Caught in the spotlight being underhanded, in fact being potentially criminally negligent with the health and safety of health and care workers in two of their “precious union’s” member countries, to the benefit of their own, the London government reverted to type.

As is their way they evaded official questioning until some sort of half baked denial could be prepared (Matt Hancock felt suddenly as vulnerable as a security guard stuck in a lift wae Jason Bourne, delaying a phone conversation with Jeane Freeman), they released a statement to their loyal and true red, white and blue patriotic nationalist media, to start pumping out damage limitation propaganda, and then, with a straight face, denied that there was ever a problem in the first place.

Oh aye, the concerned Ministers of the UK’s devolved governments, anxious to find out how the English NHS and English social care system somehow managed to achieve priority in the procurement of life saving Personal Protection Equipment were much assured about that.

‘It wisnae us’, pleaded the Britarse Empire. ‘We didnae tell them to do that. It was a big boy wae a goggly eye and one arm shorter than the other, who then ran away.’

This despite the clear factual evidence of two of the four PPE providers in question and the CEO of Scottish Care, who let the cat out of the bag in the first place during a radio interview, categorically still insisting that the instruction to deny frontline care staff in Scotland and Wales, fighting for the lives of the old and the vulnerable, losing out to the benefit of carers in England, came from Public Health England.

The BBC and others will tell you this is all speculation, a mistake, those nasty nats just stirring up trouble again, and oh look, how could they do this at a time of such crisis. Some of you will believe them. Those who believe the 24/7 unionist propaganda will lap it up, reassured and validated in their cognitive dissonance.

The fact is this. They have been caught red handed. The British government in times of peril do not care about the people of the other countries in their union. You do not matter, they do not need your vote, you are an irrelevant inconvenience. You are tolerated only for the resources and assets they can take from your country. You are expendable. You may as well be the sheep they supplanted your forbears with centuries ago.

There will now be a clean up exercise. The companies involved will be persuaded, one way or another, that actually they were confused, they interpreted the directive wrongly and it was all their mistake in the first place. The CEO of Scottish Care will find a mini-character assassination coming his way to fog up his credibility, and our government in Scotland will be urged to shut up about it in the interests of unity at this time of crisis, with promises that it will never happen again, until the next time.

The British government haven’t even got the integrity to be honest during a time of unprecedented crisis for the health of the planet’s human population.

Oh what a miserable corrupt non-entity the United Kingdom really is. Scotland must take all matters of government into its own hands. Our people’s lives depend on it.

Don’t ever forget

So there you have it. The glorious Union. That much vaunted and propagandised vessel of ‘Pooling and Sharing’, in our lives a constant day after day secure and safe ‘Broad Shoulders’ upon which we can all rest,(boak) in a moment of extreme crisis reveals its true self to us, the ‘equal partner’ nation’s, once again.

News revealed by Donald Macaskill, CEO of Scottish Care, the body representing the care sector in Scotland, that there has been a “massive dry up” in the procurement of Personal Protection Equipment coming to Scotland because the four main providers of this equipment are prioritising providing it to England comes as a blow to frontline care workers across care homes in Scotland.

These companies will not be sending equipment north, prioritising the English NHS first, and then English social care providers.

This means that in a clearly identified high risk, susceptible to the virus, frontline sector, where care workers are working flat out to keep our elders and our vulnerable safe and healthy across Scotland, an area where there already has tragically been a number of fatalities, those brave care workers and those they look after, increasingly at the moment in their last days of life, are put at yet further risk due to a decision someone has made, somewhere in a government building in London.

A decision that in the pecking order of life or death Scottish health and care workers, and those they are caring for, are considered expendable in order for their equivalents in England to survive. This is unconscionable.

The Scottish Government, amongst the many other tasks it currently finds itself working tirelessly on to get through this crisis with as little loss of life as is possible, is now scrambling about looking to find alternative suppliers and seeking that Scottish suppliers of PPE, who were quoted the other day as already being ‘maxed out’ in terms of production find another gear to up production yet further, for our frontline heroes in the SNHS and care home workers.

Thanks for making what already requires a Herculean task to achieve just that bit harder British government. The deaths, the sacrifices and the extreme personal risks thousands of human beings are taking every day to help their fellow human beings, without vital equipment you should have had already prepared for such a crisis,equipment you are now depriving these essential front line carers of, will be remembered.

They will never be forgotten, neither will your failures.

Never mind though, we can all look forward, when this is all over, to the nuptials of the daughter of the disgraced and corrupt hereditary privileged couple, one of whom was caught charging cash for access to royal patronage, the other the close personal friend and regular visitor of a convinced sex offender, who is scandalously refusing to cooperate with further investigations into victims claims. He doesn’t sweat apparently.

Seeing as her low key (just the 150 guests at St James Palace, and a reception at Buckingham Palace) has had to be postponed due to this naughty virus, she’s planning on setting a new date for a much bigger ‘extravagant’ do. Apparently, according to an insider, she feels that ‘as the granddaughter of the queen, it seems unfair that she should have to hide her nuptials because her sister didn’t have to’. What are these people for? Does anybody know?

Meanwhile the death toll across the UK from the horrible invisible blight of Covid-19 is around 11,329.

A Union of equals? My arse.

Should Scotland make its own decisions for itself? Emphatically yes. Now, more than at any other time, where not having the full ability to make the entire range of decisions a normal self-governing country would make has become life threatening, is a clear demonstration of that.

If you don’t recognise that fact there is nothing that will ever convince you, not even negligence that costs thousands of live, that Britain is not your country, and Scotland is.

Eyes down for the Golden Hat Bingo

Eyes down for the Lizzie Sax-Coburg-Gotha Golden Hat Bingo!

1.”The Blitz”
2.”The Dunkirk Spirit”
3.We’re all in this together”
4.” We must unite as never before”
5.” We must be prepared to make sacrifices and be resolute.”

For a shout you’ll also need one of these….

6..“Therefore I’ve asked my government to immediately prepare a wing of Buckingham Palace to start to accept and shelter, during this crisis, those identified as homeless and vulnerable in the central London area from the end of this week.”

7.”In discussion with the Treasury and the Prince of Wales I’ve arranged for the immediate transfer of a 0.5% portion of 1% of the annual dividend from various stocks and shares held in my personal portfolio, and the annual income of last year accrued by Charles from the Duchy of Cornwall, including death duties where the deceased died without a will, to various important medical research establishments across the globe. This will boost vital resources in establishing a viable inoculation against the coronavirus, an effective treatment to attack the virus once contracted, and the development of better, safer and more available personal protection equipment for the brave heroes on the frontline of health care during this crisis.”

Unfortunately it’s not expected that we’ll have a winner….. anyway, marker pens out, happy Bingo!

The people, the Pipers, and the snorkel

This is a story of strange times, uncharted territory, a journey through a fog cloaked maze.

The people, unsuspecting as usual, flocking of a Saturday morning to shopping mall and High Street, greeting friends and family with hugs, with kisses, with touch skin-to-skin, unconcerned, assured, complacent and comfortable, were stunned.

Overnight the world changed beyond the ken of virtually all alive, apart from the few over-centenarian’s who could just, only just, recall the blight of 1918/20.

Almost instantly humanity recoiled in horror. Mortality was rife. Horrific descriptions of patient, of symptomatic decline. Numbers, charts, graphs, experts, politicos, talking heads. Out of their depth, mixed messages, confusion. deflection. Celebrity dose. Herd immunity?

OUT OF THEIR DEPTH!

At a time when it was most needed the post war established English speaking order let the people down badly, apart from a real leader in a far off country of north and south islands, who seeing the signs, hid her people away, promising to feed them and provide warmth and confidence, in a future, to emerge from shelter once the storm has passed, to breathe the fresh clean air of safety.

Otherwise the perfect storm had formed and risen with ferocity. How did we get here, thought the people? How did we get to a point where a such ill equipped individuals as a mentally ill narcissist, a posh hail-fellow-well-met after dinner speaker and a born again evangelist are in charge of making life or death decisions on a grand scale for the peoples of both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and Terra Australis?

Then something extraordinary happened.

All over the world the people, seeing their numbers start to deplete, spending their time away from loved ones they could not comfort or hug, watching the valiant and heroic efforts of those on the front line, seeing those stepping in front of the rest of us to face the demon, putting themselves in harms way, for us, said to themselves enough is enough.

The fury grew at the thought of the injustice, the incompetence, the grave failures to test test test, to provide the proper equipment in sufficient volume to protect our horrors, to isolate in time, to cancel fucking Cheltenham.

Particular ire was raised at the casual dismissal by those in power of the elderly. They’ve had their lives let them die, the policy chiefs were comfortable, circle the phrase in red, underline and initial.

It started slowly at first. The people met in their communities, on the streets, ensuring a safe distance from each other at given times to acknowledge in emotional applause the work of those fighting the war that threatened to engulf them all.

The pipers played for the Brave, ‘Bella Ciao’ resounded around the olive trees of northern Italy, the fences around the German autobahns began to resemble grocery stores as thousands of bags of food and necessities for those most in need appeared and were replenished.

The people spoke to their ‘leaders’. “Get out of the way”.

With this simple act a flood of clear clean fresh water rushed forward breaking the dam of established inertia and incompetence.

The people got busy. A vast network of children and senior high school students set up 3D printers to produce extensive supplies of Personal Protective Equipment, little old French grand-mere’s, Florentine Nonna’s and the Granma’s of Nairn organised, via the wonders of social media, a worldwide drive to produce face masks, working like dervishes, no one could refuse them, or would even dare.

No longer able to tolerate the lies and excuses fed to them regarding the lack of ventilating equipment, the grim failure of government and corporate sleazership, retired engineers, hospital technicians and innovators worked feverishly to create, build and adapt existing equipment to help meet the needs of the front line angels.

Some bright spark even created a hundred working ventilators from diving snorkel masks.

As is always the case in the time of major crisis or war innovation grew exponentially, as ventilators were produced via new and ingenious methods, anaesthetic equipment adapted and exisiting ventilators reconfigured to provide much needed life saving care to multiple patients at the one time.

Meanwhile, at last, widespread testing for the virus became commonplace. The curse was being actively pursued. ‘Look out Rona, we’re fucking coming to get you, you horrible bastard’ test-test-test and test again, identifying clusters, treating and isolating those who had contracted it. Fighting, fighting, caring, humanity demonstrating love for one other. Some making the ultimate sacrifice for others.

One day, not too much later, the people emerged from shelter. Somewhat wary, still dazed, they stepped into the light.

The cool breeze washed over them as they rushed to meet each other, long separated parents and children, brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, hugging tightly, tears. It’s over.

We will take nothing for granted again. We will find joy in every day of our lives. We will never forget.

The chaos of Cummings Britain

If ever there was a moment in time which clearly demonstrated the critical need (once this is over) for Scotland to take up the reins and return to self-government, it is right now.

Observe the chaos which abounds in Downing Street, where they are falling over themselves to contract this mysterious royal/celebrity watered-down version of the dreaded virus, in order to play the, ‘this is all too hard for me, my head hurts, can I hide away?’ type of shambolic behaviour which passes for leadership in 21st century self delusional-former-glory-resting Britain.

Like rats scurrying down the ropes of a sinking ship they are diving for floating debris, all of them two seconds away from screaming “Don’t blame me!”

Media conferences are a farce, leaving the public more confused and less reassured at the end of the briefing than they were at the beginning, they cannae work out whether they’ve ordered ventilators, excavators or refrigerators, and 30 of whatever they’ve ordered, arriving at the weekend, is just a wee bit short of 30,000, even by my arithmetic.

Interesting tactic to use that, ignore tried and tested reliable companies who produce live saving equipment as their core business in order to throw vast sums of money at a guy that makes bagless vacuum cleaners so that he can diversify. Right oot the Government for Dummies manual that one.

Then the gormless toff decides to spend a fortune that could have been spent on manufacturing and supplying PPE to the heroic front line and support workers in health, dealing every day with this curse, on a letter he wants to send to every household in the UK. He’s got the BBC, SKY, his Twitter account, every paper in the country, and a myriad of other ways to communicate FREE, but no, let’s spend the money, £5.7m, let’s have the posties, already at risk, marching up the path with a letter from Boris. It’s like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party!

Gove, Johnson, Raab C, that weird fellow that is the Health Secretary, these are all henchmen of the running away, self isolating, happy to view pensioners as expendable Dominic Cummings. Watch out soon too as the not so Priti ,when it comes to having an actual heart, Patel rises to the fore. Beware!

The serious side to this, in fact the deadly side to this, is that because of their complete arse up, because of the massive collective incompetence of this bunch of right wing self-serving wallies, ordinary people, mothers,fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, will die, or will suffer grave illness that could have been prevented.

Contrast that approach with what is happening in Edinburgh.

We’re in a once in a hundred years global pandemic situation and the triumvirate of the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Cabinet Secretary for Health Jeane Freeman and Chief Medical Officer for Scotland Catherine Calderwood are impressive in their clear, calm reassuring communication, their responses and reactions to the ever changing goal posts (sometimes hourly) that the huge challenges of this crisis represent, and their honesty and candour.

What they are doing is focusing number one, and above all else, on you, doing what they can to try and keep you and yours safe. Not the markets, not the ‘Square Mile’, you.

I said it myself the other day, and I don’t know where I heard it first, but I heard Nicola Sturgeon say something similar very recently. An economy can be rebuilt, thousands of victims of this virus cannot be brought back to life.

Stay safe and healthy folks, you and your loved ones. Follow the guidance.

Come the day and hour that this horrible situation we all find ourselves in passes there will be a reckoning, and that reckoning will include the final step to an independent Scotland.