Today's party political broadcast daily briefing by Nicola Sturgeon was a complete waste of time. All she did was tell us that she is going to tell us the stuff we really want to know in the Scottish Parliament tomorrow afternoon. The only real substance to her presentation was the daily figures on cases, deaths and vaccinations which are repeated anyway by broadcasters, sometimes even before the briefing is over. Since today is Monday, the one figure Calton suspects we pay most attention to, the number of deaths, is inaccurate. Given all this, what was the point? OK it gets Sturgeon's wee face on the telly once more but it also gives the lie to her saying that she is 100% focused on defeating Covid. There is no way that she can be even 50% focused on that when she spends so much time preparing for each briefing, preparing suitable answers for the questions she is likely to be asked after it, travelling from Glasgow to Edinburgh, giving the briefing, being unpleasant to any journalist who dares ask an awkward question, even although she's prepared for just that eventuality, and then travelling back to Glasgow. Even a very perfunctory cost-benefit analysis would show that this just isn't either efficient or good value for money.
We don't need a briefing every day. The daily numbers can be given out in a press release. We only need to hear from the First Minister when something significant changes. That way, she really can give her full attention to improving Scotland's vaccine rollout so that it catches up with England, instead of just talking about it.
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