The Smell of Death

The stink of corruption and sleaze coming from the SNP has been rather overpowering recently but underneath it is the sickly smell of something far more worrying - the smell of death. Nicola Sturgeon seems to think that admitting to making a mistake which lead to the deaths of thousands of elderly care home residents will somehow act like febreze, dispelling all smells, but thousands of grieving relatives think otherwise and the promise of an inquiry is small comfort. Early Scottish Government guidance which said that it was advisable for covid cases in care homes not to be sent to hospital and the blanket issuing of Do Not Resuscitate notices or DNRs in care homes show a scant regard for human life, especially elderly, vulnerable human life, on the part of the SNP, and is in keeping with the hope expressed by numerous SNP supporters, including current Edinburgh Central candidate Angus Robertson, that the sooner the older generation die off, the sooner Scotland will be independent.

That desire to see the back of troublesome older people makes it all the more worrying to see that the SNP, in their current manifesto, are planning, if re-elected, to set up a citizen's assembly to look at legalising assisted dying. The Scottish Greens, who might help the SNP to form the next government, are already committed to introducing assisted suicide. At least they are being honest - the SNP are employing their old trick of only committing to some sort of consultation on a contentious topic before an election but their track record shows that their consultations always lead to the outcome they desire (same-sex marriage, the smacking ban being two examples of this).

At the other end of life, Nicola Sturgeon announced in September 2020 that expanded abortion access was a priority for the Scottish Government and the SNP currently does not seem to support the right of politicians of Northern Ireland to decide on abortion laws for the province, preferring to sit on their hands while Westminster imposes extremely liberal abortion laws on a devolved government against its wishes. This is total hypocrisy on the part of the SNP who would scream blue murder if Westminster tried the same tactic with Holyrood.

The Scottish Government has recently tried to say that saving lives has been their priority during the Covid pandemic. Calton thinks that they have actually become accustomed to a culture of death, whether it be in care homes due to covid, a back alley due to drugs or in the womb due to abortion because actions (or inaction) speak louder than words and the statistics speak for themselves.