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PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 9:33 am 
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StuartW wrote:
Thought that if I didn't go back to work for another few weeks I'd manage to avoid the face mask thing entirely.

But now we've to wear them in Scotland just to go to the shops ](*,)

And what's the betting I won't be able to buy any now? :evil:

At least the rule doesn't come in till next Friday :-k

I wonder what's happening at midnight on Thursay that means we're all suddenly in great danger that will only be avoided by wearing a face mask to the shops :-s

Coronavirus: Face coverings to become mandatory in Scottish shops

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53252760

The use of face coverings will become mandatory in shops in Scotland as coronavirus restrictions are eased, Nicola Sturgeon has said.


Nicolas out there showing off her slaters nail bag and hammer just to be seen fixing the stable door of a horse that bolted almost 4 months ago. :roll:


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 8:14 pm 
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I wonder what's happening at midnight on Thursay that means we're all suddenly in great danger that will only be avoided by wearing a face mask to the shops :-s

It's all a load of old fanny.

The problem you have up there is the First Minister is trying to do different things to that which Boris is doing.

And she is making herself look increasingly stupid and petty.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 8:52 am 
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Sussex wrote:
The problem you have up there is the First Minister is trying to do different things to that which Boris is doing.

And she is making herself look increasingly stupid and petty.

Good to see that someone at the other end of the UK is astute enough to notice this =D>

Of course, many south of the border are taken in by Nicola, and what she *is* very good at is sounding competent and concerned, but the reality is that it's essentially PR, and she's certainly no more competent than Boris with regard to Covid-19.

It's working for her, though, with her approval ratings huge up here, and independence polling at up to 54% now.

But the real Sturgeon is all about stoking division between Scotland and England, with the ultimate goal of independence in mind.

Good summary of the last few months here:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ISLEY.html


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 9:25 am 
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I mean, check out the wee videos in this Twitter thread below:

In case the faces are unfamiliar, the woman in the first video is our health secretary, Jeane Freeman. Former Labour spin doctor and lobbyist, jumped ship to SNP. Nicknamed the Quango Queen because of the amount of public bodies she's served on.

Interesting wee nugget during lockdown, when a pro-Yes journalist (who was shielding) tweeted that some items were missing from an Asda grocery delivery. Freeman jumped to attention, saying her people would contact Asda to sort it out :roll:

A couple of newspapers covered this online, but the articles were pulled, apparently for legal reasons :roll:

But, as the Daily Mail article above mentions, when Freeman got some figures wrong at a press conference, Sturgeon said that she'd *literally* been working 24 hours a day for months, so was too tired to remember then. But obviously not tired enough so see to her journalist pal's Asda delivery, and tell the whole world about it on Twitter. (And which also suggests Sturgeon doesn't know the meaning of the word 'literally'.)

Anyway, the woman in the multi-coloured jacket is Catherine Calderwood, who was chief medical officer (our equivelant of Chris Whitty, I think). Calderwood resigned when she was caught during early lockdown on a weekend jolly with her family from her home in Edinburgh to a posh village on the Fife coast. Which she'd done more than once. So she hadn't had Covid, nor had her husband, and their kids weren't taken away in an ambulance. But it's all Dominic Cummings fault. Or something like that.

Anyhow, Sturgeon initially stood by Catherine Calderwood after that was all over the press, but eventually caved in.

The chap in the videos is Jason Leitch, national clinical director.

https://twitter.com/blairmcdougall/stat ... 4738825216


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 5:56 pm 
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Of course, many south of the border are taken in by Nicola

I'm not sure many down here actually give a monkeys about her, apart from the lefties at the BBC.

However what many of us down here are waiting for is the kerfuffle that will soon happen with her and good old Alex. :D

Be interesting to see her approval rate then. :-$

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 10:40 pm 
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Sussex wrote:
Quote:
Of course, many south of the border are taken in by Nicola

I'm not sure many down here actually give a monkeys about her, apart from the lefties at the BBC.

However what many of us down here are waiting for is the kerfuffle that will soon happen with her and good old Alex. :D

Be interesting to see her approval rate then. :-$


Yes, maybe I'm swayed by these people from England online who say that they wish Nicola was PM instead of Boris, or that they're thinking of moving to Scotland for the same reason :roll:

But like people online generally, they don't really represent the huddled masses :-o

She's very good at things like shifting the blame to Westminister for stuff, and saying that the Scottish Parliament needs new powers to deal with things, even though the parliament has had more than enough powers to deal with lots of things for twenty years now. Her PR and propaganda say different, and it's obviously very effective.

And related to that is the Boris/Tory effect, and the lamentable standard of the opposition at Holyrood.

As for the Alex Salmond thing, none of that kind of stuff seems to have any effect, so it'll be interesting to see if any forthccoming revelations make any difference.

What is quite interesting, though, is that the headbanger pro-Salmond element think that his stuff will bring down Nicola, so it's game on for a referendum, and independence is in the bag.

Realistically, though, it's really Nicola Sturgeon who's holding the whole thing together, and if she had to go because of what's coming up, or was badly damaged politically, it would hinder the independence cause, not help it.

So whether or not the Salmond stuff causes lasting damage to Nicola I'm not sure, but it certainly won't help the cause of independence, as his head-the-ball supporters seem to think.

Me, I'm stocking up on popcorn :D

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 10:35 pm 
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This is very good on how Sturgeon has used the 'seven principles' of PR to construct her image and effectively bury any bad news on her handling of Covid, and is now riding high in the polls.

The author (Brian Monteith, who was an MSP once-upon-a-time, and also elected MEP as a Brexit Party candidate) is a PR specialist, so he should know :-o



What has Scotland become when racists gather at England border: Brian Monteith

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/w ... th-2904702

What has Scotland become when a caravan of its citizens gather at the A1 Border outside Berwick to demonstrate that English people travelling north should “f-off” back home?

The idiocy of the demonstration had no bounds. The racists (for there can be no other description) intent on dividing us against each other flew Saltires to assert their Scottish nationality and railed against visitors from England – who for all they knew might even have been Scottish (or for that matter from foreign climes).

If it was not racialist by asserting Scottishness above “English” people then why the Saltire flags? If the point was about relative risk why not gather on the last southern layby on the M74 before the English border urging Scots from Dumfriesshire (where there is now an elevated risk of Covid-19) to not travel into England?

One can only conclude that these are people who actually want a physical border between Scotland and England – and would happily impose penury upon all of us that the restrictions on free movement of people and burdens on trade that such border posts would bring about.

The vision of the Black Knight, rendered limbless from demanding self-defeating fights then claiming “it’s only a flesh wound” would become reality – or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Caledonia debating “what have the English ever done for us” springs to mind.

Indeed the absurd Monty Python ridiculousness of it all was clearly lost on the participants – who would have to drive into England to be able to turn back and access the A1’s first northbound carriageway in Scotland to harangue travellers coming into Scotland. Whae’s like us – in Scotland at least, the madness of crowds now comes with a free Irony bypass.

But why were they there? What led to such an event happening?

Surely it had nothing to do with the First Minister making a highly divisive argument out of thin air by stating she reserved the right if required to put into quarantine any visitors who crossed the United Kingdom’s administrative border from England into Scotland – all because the lockdown was about to loosen in England while she cannot yet let go her control of Scots’ behaviour under her limited jurisdiction.

The First Minister also says she wants “alignment with the UK” – what? The last time I looked Scotland is in the UK, neither an honorary member nor associate member but a fully immersed, joined-at-the-hip member of the United Kingdom. I could say fully paid up member but that would in fact be disingenuous, for Scotland is a net recipient of funds from “Club UK” – we pay our membership but get far more back in grants and benefits in kind year-in, year-out. The coronavirus billions bear this out.

Yet, for all the Scottish Government has undoubtedly managed the Covid-19 pandemic very badly, our First Minister enjoys positive personal ratings and the SNP benefits in the polls.

Many people are baffled by this turn of events. I for one am not and swear neither is the First Minister nor her huge entourage, for they know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.

At times of national despair or crisis the public looks instinctively for a strong leader to calm their nerves by being unflappable; they look to get through the everyday challenges by supping on the self-confidence of the leader; they want decisiveness in decision-making and they want to believe that what they are being told is the unadulterated truth. Further, in Scotland the foregoing is set in an ever present constitutional context that the government uses to maintain a febrile political atmosphere where our government brooks no criticism and insists that any faults be measured against our neighbour, no matter how irrelevant.

From my near forty years’ experience of public relations I can identify at least seven guiding principles in the First Minister’s behaviour. The first is to remember that in the communication of politics public perception IS reality, no matter how distant the perception may be from the truth of what is actually happening.

The second is that in shaping the public’s perception EVERYTHING is political – even though it must be stated ad nauseam that nothing is political. The denial that it is political is in itself a political statement.

The third is that every news item, no matter how small or irrelevant must be channelled through the First Minister, unless she decides otherwise. The focus must be to elevate the decisive control of the leader and to combine this with the occasional common touch that emphasises humanity – such as the reading a pile of novels (but never scientific briefings, because apparently there are none).

The fourth principle is remembering that exerting control, even excessive control, will be viewed far more favourably as a strength to be welcomed when there are risks – real or imagined – than being relaxed and optimistic about the inherent good sense of people to make the right choices. People look for strength and caution, not stuttering bluster or indecisiveness or flip-flopping.

The fifth is that control of the information flow is paramount; ranging from the rationing of what information is made available (through restrictions on access and the ability to question it when it is released); to defining its context, by setting it against the performance of other jurisdictions (especially England) even though this will undoubtedly be comparing lemons with mangoes; to deliberately confusing the definitions of what information is used (using repeatedly hospital deaths after Covid-19 testing – rather than the larger figure of all deaths of those diagnosed as having been Covid-19 positive).

The sixth is to abuse anyone who doubts the sincerity of the First minster by doubting their patriotism, by claiming the high ground of putting the nation first (especially before politics, profits or preferment) and especially belittling others as anti-Scottish.

The seventh is to use advisers and arms-length organisations that should be outside of partisan politics to repeat the same arguments and messages of the First Minister so that her sage-like judgment is ever reasonable even though it has been calculated to maximise political advantage. This might be in defending the covering up of the Nike Conference Covid-19 swapshop or the lamentable track and trace that followed – or willingness to reveal the seminal occasion ever existed.

These principles explain why Sturgeon is riding high, but, as Alex Salmond might tell her, the higher one rises the greater the potential fall.


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PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 10:58 pm 
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StuartW wrote:
This is very good on how Sturgeon has used the 'seven principles' of PR to construct her image and effectively bury any bad news on her handling of Covid, and is now riding high in the polls.

The author (Brian Monteith, who was an MSP once-upon-a-time, and also elected MEP as a Brexit Party candidate) is a PR specialist, so he should know :-o



What has Scotland become when racists gather at England border: Brian Monteith

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/w ... th-2904702

What has Scotland become when a caravan of its citizens gather at the A1 Border outside Berwick to demonstrate that English people travelling north should “f-off” back home?


The idiocy of the demonstration had no bounds. The racists (for there can be no other description) intent on dividing us against each other flew Saltires to assert their Scottish nationality and railed against visitors from England – who for all they knew might even have been Scottish (or for that matter from foreign climes).

If it was not racialist by asserting Scottishness above “English” people then why the Saltire flags? If the point was about relative risk why not gather on the last southern layby on the M74 before the English border urging Scots from Dumfriesshire (where there is now an elevated risk of Covid-19) to not travel into England?

One can only conclude that these are people who actually want a physical border between Scotland and England – and would happily impose penury upon all of us that the restrictions on free movement of people and burdens on trade that such border posts would bring about.

The vision of the Black Knight, rendered limbless from demanding self-defeating fights then claiming “it’s only a flesh wound” would become reality – or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Caledonia debating “what have the English ever done for us” springs to mind.

Indeed the absurd Monty Python ridiculousness of it all was clearly lost on the participants – who would have to drive into England to be able to turn back and access the A1’s first northbound carriageway in Scotland to harangue travellers coming into Scotland. Whae’s like us – in Scotland at least, the madness of crowds now comes with a free Irony bypass.

But why were they there? What led to such an event happening?

Surely it had nothing to do with the First Minister making a highly divisive argument out of thin air by stating she reserved the right if required to put into quarantine any visitors who crossed the United Kingdom’s administrative border from England into Scotland – all because the lockdown was about to loosen in England while she cannot yet let go her control of Scots’ behaviour under her limited jurisdiction.

The First Minister also says she wants “alignment with the UK” – what? The last time I looked Scotland is in the UK, neither an honorary member nor associate member but a fully immersed, joined-at-the-hip member of the United Kingdom. I could say fully paid up member but that would in fact be disingenuous, for Scotland is a net recipient of funds from “Club UK” – we pay our membership but get far more back in grants and benefits in kind year-in, year-out. The coronavirus billions bear this out.

Yet, for all the Scottish Government has undoubtedly managed the Covid-19 pandemic very badly, our First Minister enjoys positive personal ratings and the SNP benefits in the polls.

Many people are baffled by this turn of events. I for one am not and swear neither is the First Minister nor her huge entourage, for they know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.

At times of national despair or crisis the public looks instinctively for a strong leader to calm their nerves by being unflappable; they look to get through the everyday challenges by supping on the self-confidence of the leader; they want decisiveness in decision-making and they want to believe that what they are being told is the unadulterated truth. Further, in Scotland the foregoing is set in an ever present constitutional context that the government uses to maintain a febrile political atmosphere where our government brooks no criticism and insists that any faults be measured against our neighbour, no matter how irrelevant.

From my near forty years’ experience of public relations I can identify at least seven guiding principles in the First Minister’s behaviour. The first is to remember that in the communication of politics public perception IS reality, no matter how distant the perception may be from the truth of what is actually happening.

The second is that in shaping the public’s perception EVERYTHING is political – even though it must be stated ad nauseam that nothing is political. The denial that it is political is in itself a political statement.

The third is that every news item, no matter how small or irrelevant must be channelled through the First Minister, unless she decides otherwise. The focus must be to elevate the decisive control of the leader and to combine this with the occasional common touch that emphasises humanity – such as the reading a pile of novels (but never scientific briefings, because apparently there are none).

The fourth principle is remembering that exerting control, even excessive control, will be viewed far more favourably as a strength to be welcomed when there are risks – real or imagined – than being relaxed and optimistic about the inherent good sense of people to make the right choices. People look for strength and caution, not stuttering bluster or indecisiveness or flip-flopping.

The fifth is that control of the information flow is paramount; ranging from the rationing of what information is made available (through restrictions on access and the ability to question it when it is released); to defining its context, by setting it against the performance of other jurisdictions (especially England) even though this will undoubtedly be comparing lemons with mangoes; to deliberately confusing the definitions of what information is used (using repeatedly hospital deaths after Covid-19 testing – rather than the larger figure of all deaths of those diagnosed as having been Covid-19 positive).

The sixth is to abuse anyone who doubts the sincerity of the First minster by doubting their patriotism, by claiming the high ground of putting the nation first (especially before politics, profits or preferment) and especially belittling others as anti-Scottish.

The seventh is to use advisers and arms-length organisations that should be outside of partisan politics to repeat the same arguments and messages of the First Minister so that her sage-like judgment is ever reasonable even though it has been calculated to maximise political advantage. This might be in defending the covering up of the Nike Conference Covid-19 swapshop or the lamentable track and trace that followed – or willingness to reveal the seminal occasion ever existed.

These principles explain why Sturgeon is riding high, but, as Alex Salmond might tell her, the higher one rises the greater the potential fall.


For all her self perceived popularity Sturgeon and her SNP are hanging on a shoogly peg, both the pro Unionists and the impatient pro Indy brigade are fast becoming fed up of both her and the SNP's lack of actual acheivement....she is trying to please all and has ended up pleasing no one and because of that her political days are numbered.


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