Shot Down in Flames

 Calton has never seen a newly elected government so beleagured by bad press right from the get-go as the current Scottish Government. Usually there is a honeymoon period but that seems to have been cancelled, just like many other wedding plans and honeymoon trips over the last two years. Sturgeon moved quickly to bolster her position by bringing in the Greens after being denied a majority yet again but it doesn't seem to have helped her popularity, or her temper. Regular watchers of First Minister's Questions will have noticed that, lacking real answers to the opposition questions, she plays the man, not the ball, particularly where Douglas Ross is concerned. The Tory Leader is youthful looking, leading Sturgeon to mock him for being infantile. Such ad hominem attacks are not very smart coming from a woman of a certain age who looks like Maw Broon and sounds like a fishwife but intelligence is not one of the First Minister's strengths. For proof of that one only has to listen to the recording of her speaking on the topic of doors and ventilation at today's FMQs: "If a door is hung in such as way that it is inhibiting the natural flow of air, then one of the options the local authority should have is to rectify that." (She means by chopping bits off the door rather than opening it.) Having been chased up this particular tree by Ross's "absurd" line of questioning, Sturgeon refused to come down, rather like the cat in Trumpton. Unfortunately the real life Fire Brigade has refused to come to her rescue, choosing instead to pour fuel on the flames of the controversy by raising issues of fire safety. If only those pesky firefighters were as compliant as Police Scotland ...