The SNP's Sick Social Experiment

What is it with Nicola Sturgeon and vulnerable people? First she transferred elderly people out of hospitals and into care homes without testing them for Covid, thereby infecting numerous care home residents with the virus, some fatally. Now it transpires that, under her watch, male offenders have been transferred into women's prisons. Some are still in women's prisons although not the double rapist who has caused the First Minister to admit that transwomen are not women in certain circumstances ...

Just over a week ago Calton was sure that the demise of Sturgeon would be at the hands of angry older women. Now it looks like it has all but been achieved by a man in a blonde wig.

One could give Sturgeon the benefit of the doubt over the care home Covid disaster, however it has now become clear that men in women's prisons was deliberate, planned policy. The Scottish Trans Alliance, one of the Scottish Government's pet charities which is bankrolled by the Scottish taxpayer, deliberately targeted prisons as a means of persuading other public bodies to follow its radical trans agenda. Their reasoning was that, if putting transwomen into women's prisons could be shown to work, the rest of their trans-inclusive policies could be rolled out into society. The SNP government fell for this argument hook, line and sinker, with the result that female offenders became guinea pigs in a sick social experiment which Calton does not doubt was approved by Nicola Sturgeon. (A policy was introduced by the SNP Government under Alex Salmond in 2014 of accommodating transgender prisoners according to their chosen gender. Nicola Sturgeon has continued it.)

The death of elderly residents in care homes was carelessness. The traumatising of vulnerable female prisoners is deliberate and the blame lies with the First Minister of the government which introduced the policy of housing men in women's jails and the First Minister who has continued her predecessor's policy. In Calton's opinion, Nicola Sturgeon should not only resign but be charged with dereliction of duty - the duty to care for the most vulnerable in society.

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 ...

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.

A Waste of Time

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.

Policy-making on the High Heel

 If Calton had to pick one thing which demonstrates that Nicola Sturgeon is making it up as she goes along, it would be Thursday's announcement that masks should be worn in work canteens as of Friday but masks in corridors don't need to be worn until Monday. This is not just policy-making on the high heel, it's stupidity on stilts. If masks were required in canteens two days ago, except when eating, why the delay in requiring masks in corridors, which are usually more enclosed than a canteen? It's no surprise that a large part of the population now has no clue what they are supposed to be doing to avoid the spread of Covid. The clear messaging which the First Minister prided herself on has descended into a fog of stupid rules in spite of her continued daily appearances on our TV screens, thanks to the craven BBC.

Scotland has been locked down harder and for longer than England thanks to Sturgeon's fear and it has resulted in no real difference in infections north and south of the border, and yet she continues with her MacBoris approach - simply putting a kilt on what the Prime Minister does. He is not getting it right and neither is she. Lockdowns only work when they are in operation. When they are lifted, the virus continues its merry way. If the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed a temporary lockdown will help. Otherwise it's just ruining the economy, putting people out of work and causing excess deaths through cancer etc for sweet nothing. We are not preventing Covid deaths with the current strategy - we are simply delaying them and causing other deaths in the meantime.

We need to stop kidding ourselves on that we can control this virus and we need to stop looking to a vaccine as a magic bullet. We can't afford to keep paying workers who can't work and businesses who can't open due to government edicts and so the edicts need to stop. We should switch our attention instead to protecting the vulnerable as much as we can while learning to accept that opportunistic infections kill the elderly and vulnerable - always have, always will. If we don't, we will end up with millions unemployed, isolated, lonely, sick and dying from diseases which were preventable, unlike Covid.

The Smell of Pee

Back in April Calton wrote that Nicola Sturgeon reeked of exceptionalism. Now she stinks of urine - the pee some care home residents had to lie in due to the Scottish Government's mismanagement of the Covid crisis and care homes. Whenever someone dares to raise this issue with the First Minister, she complains that they are trying to make out that she did it deliberately. She plaintively protests that she did her best at the time and that, if mistakes were made, (note the 'if'), they will be examined at some future inquiry. She deeply regrets every death and, really, it's her we should be feeling sorry for because those nasty journalists and opposition politicians are trying to make her out to be a murderess.

No Nicola, the charge is not murder - it's manslaughter. Not intentional, pre-meditated killing but killing through incompetence. At the height of the pandemic you and your hopeless Health Secretary Jeanne Freeman shifted lots of vulnerable elderly patients from hospitals to care homes without testing them while at the same time lots of care home workers were having to stay at home for 14 days. You created a situation where an increase in residents coincided with a decrease in staff numbers and you did nothing to mitigate this. That is incompetence. The results of what you were doing were forseeable - you did not forsee them. The situation was exacerbated by a blanket directive (now deleted) that care home residents should not be moved to hospital if they got Covid.

Sturgeon's hands are not stained with blood - it's pee and no amount of washing will take away the smell.

Basic Geometry for Politicians

Nicola Sturgeon doesn't seem to be very good at maths or science but that doesn't stop her trying to get Head Teachers to square a circle and pour a quart into a pint pot (1.14 litres into a 568ml pot for the young amongst us). She's absolutely wedded to the 2m social distancing rule and so schools have been planning the return of pupils on that basis. Basic geometry dictates that if pupils have to stay 2m apart from each other and the teacher, the maximum class size in an average classroom will be 10 instead of 30. That's why so many schools were, until yesterday, planning on having pupils back one week in three. John Swinney had even invented a term for it - 'blended learning'. Now teachers have had to go back to the drawing board because our populist First Minister realised yesterday morning that the Education Minister's plan was not going down well. You've heard of pester power. Now we have parent power and a hashtag #usforthemScotland. We even have a former First Minister wading into the row.

The result of all this is that Nicola has now learned what happens when two objects collide - the smaller one goes into reverse. Forgetting the 2m rule, Sturgeon now wants kids back at school full-time as soon as possible. If only she wanted businesses back open as quickly, but then economics is another of her weak points. It's not wrong for a politician to listen to people, or for parents to want their kids back at school, but full-time education for all plus 2m separation is an unsolvable equation. Even 1m social distancing makes it impossible. So which is it going to be First Minister? School or social distancing? Calton awaits the answer with interest, as will many businesses.

Angels and Demons

Some time ago, when Jackie Baillie was Shadow Health Minister, Calton took a pop at her for being overweight in a blog post entitled Where Angels Fear to Tread... Well, Jackie is looking pretty angelic now in comparison with current Health Minister Jeane Freeman.

This is the woman who (deliberately in Calton's opinion) tried to mislead the Scottish Parliament over the number of NHS patients transferred from hospitals to care homes at the start of the Covid-19 crisis. She had to apologise. Nicola Sturgeon made excuses for her, saying that she was 'tired'.

Under Freeman's direction the Scottish Government bought up care home beds in order to empty hospital wards. What they failed to do was to ensure that the care homes had adequate PPE and adequate staff to deal with a highly infectious respiratory virus. It took weeks and numerous awkward questions from journalists at Sturgeon's daily briefings before Jeane got her act together with respect to PPE for care homes. At time of writing, the Scottish Government has still not got its act together with respect to regular testing of care home staff, in spite of Nicola Sturgeon announcing two weeks ago that this would happen. Freeman has also still not sorted out the problem of care home staff having to survive on statutory sick pay if they test positive.

Early Scottish Government guidance to care homes and the GPs who look after them said that it was not advised that patients with Covid-19 should be transferred to hospital but be cared for in the care home.  This was subsequently amended but only after the Scottish Government realised that the general population actually care about their old folks and want them to receive the best of care, including hospital treatment when required. How many care home residents could have survived the virus if the early guidance had not stipulated that they be refused transfer to hospital? The blanket issuing of DNRs (Do Not Resuscitate notices) in care homes, sometimes to people without capacity to agree them is also a real cause for concern.

Freeman has defended her actions in the ongoing coronavirus care home deaths scandal, saying that she did her best with the information available at the time. Even if this is true, her best was not good enough. People have died on her watch, some of them unnecessarily. Surely that is grounds for her resignation. Sadly there is no-one of Jackie Baillie's calibre in the SNP to replace Jeane.

PS. When she became Health Minister Jeane said she was going to lead by example and give up the fags. Is she still smoke-free?

Douglas Ross Gets It

When Calton wrote his post on exceptionalism, Dominic Cummings had been the one trying to keep on so-called superforecaster Andrew Sabisky in the light of unsavoury revelations about the latter. Now Cummings has become the story after revelations about his trip to Durham during lockdown and Boris Johnson is desperately trying to keep him on in the face of mounting opposition, not just from the opposition but from members of his own party. Just as Nicola Sturgeon's attempts to keep on Catherine Calderwood made her look weak, so Johnson's attempts are opening him up to ridicule and raising the question of who really governs the country. They also make him look weak.

Cummings has defended his actions in a painful, hour-long press briefing yesterday but a scan through Calton's social media feeds shows very little sympathy for him. He may not have broken the letter of the law but most people feel that he has definitely broken the spirit of it, and the strong government message to stay at home and not undertake any unnecessary journeys. Indeed, at time of writing, that is still the message in Scotland, as Sturgeon was quick to point out in her briefing yesterday.

If the highly unusual briefing by Cummings was intended to draw a line under the affair it has utterly failed, with Moray MP and junior government minister Douglas Ross resigning today and various Scottish Tory MSPs making their fury known. Even Jackson Carlaw has eventually been forced into saying that Cummings should consider his position. Not only has the Domnishambles eclipsed the UK Government's message on Coronavirus, it is preventing the Scots Tories from taking the SNP to task over their poor handling of the crisis in Scotland and is threatening their chances in the Holyrood election scheduled for next year.

Douglas Ross gets that rules apply to everyone without exception, even to pals of the PM. Boris doesn't get it and his ratings are plummeting as a result.

Something Rotten in the State of Scotland

There is something rotten at the heart of Scottish politics. Health Minister Jeane Freeman deliberately (in Calton's opinion) misled the Scottish parliament and people with regard to the number of delayed discharge (bed-blocking) patients discharged into care homes since the Covid-19 crisis began. She was forced to apologise and put the record straight after pressure from The Sun newspaper. However she still has the full confidence of the First Minister and, when Jackson Carlaw queried whether anyone else could have confidence in her, he was accused of playing politics in the midst of a crisis. Not something Nicola Sturgeon would ever do, no siree. She's totally focussed on dealing with the Coronavirus threat and if her daily appearances on the telly with not a hair out of place enhance the prospects of a future independent Scotland that is entirely by-the-by.

Accusing the Scottish Tories of being party political was obviously the message de jour from SNP HQ because John Swinney (suitably outraged) used it on Radio Scotland this morning to avoid answering the same question of whether the public could trust a word Jeane Freeman says and Sturgeon was back at it later in an attack on Ruth Davidson, who had dared to criticise the Dear Leader. Nicola is very good at telling us that she is above all these petty considerations and is just getting on with the job. Except that she isn't. Was there ever a Scottish Executive which executed less, and with more moolah from Westminster, than this pathetic excuse for a government? They are still in lockstep with Westminster, except that now they are three steps behind, and they've already had to row back on the stipulation that you only travel 5 miles to visit relatives (once you are allowed to) after a twitter backlash. Now it seems you can go further, provided your bladder has a good mpg.

If it wasn't so serious it would be funny. Scotland's tourist and hospitality industries are facing disaster, we are seeing around 50 excess deaths a week caused by lockdown, not Covid-19, and the First Minister is worried about whether or not you might need to visit the loo if you visit your parents. Maybe she should try treating us like grown-ups. Maybe she and her ministers should also try being honest and straight with the Scottish people they claim to serve. Then we might have confidence in what they say.

No-one Said It Would Be Easy

In his last post Calton talked about Nicola Sturgeon making decisions in good faith. Now he just wishes she would actually MAKE a decision. Instead, we were told today, not that some lockdown restrictions would be eased, but that we would be given a route map. On Thursday. The century is young but Calton thinks that this will still qualify as one of its biggest let-downs. On that basis, don't hold your breath for any of the teasingly promised relaxations to actually happen at the end of the month. That would involve Sturgeon actually making a decision, something which she seems increasingly incapable of doing. Think rabbit caught in headlights.

No-one ever said that being a leader was easy but, boy, this virus has a way of separating the women from the girls. The First Minister is the queen of spin but events are spinning out of control and her inability to lead is being exposed. As journalist Paul Sinclair so aptly put it: "If only we had an FM trained to govern rather than just media trained." Ouch. Brutal but true. There are no easy answers in this current situation. Covid-19 causes deaths and long-term ill-health in some people. Lockdown also causes deaths and ill-health plus bankruptcies, job losses and financial hardship. The risks have to be weighed up and balanced. Then a decision needs to be made. Nicola has got stuck at the first step. In a time of crisis Scotland is being led by a frightened little girl. How did we get ourselves into this mess?

On Accountability

Throughout this Covid-19 crisis, Nicola Sturgeon's attitude has been one of barely concealed irritation at anyone, journalist or politician, who dared criticise her handling of it. She has repeatedly talked about an inquiry afterwards when lessons can be learned but, at the moment, just let her get on with making decisions, which affect us all hugely, without question. Her hubris is incredible. Calton knows that a lot of her followers think she's a saint who can do no wrong and it seems that she has bought into their hype. Unfortunately the opposition parties at Holyrood bought into the idea that we all need to pull together in a pandemic and that criticism of any sort would be bad form, so for weeks Queen Nicola has been calling the shots and no-one has dared to gainsay her.

Thankfully Jackson Carlaw has finally woken up and seen sense. At a time of national crisis it is vitally important that the decisions of those who lead us are subjected to scrutiny. It is not a sign of disloyalty or disunity to do so. Calton would go as far as saying it is actually a civic duty to question our leaders. It may come as news to Nicola but no-one is perfect. We all make mistakes. Hence the need for accountability. Journalists have been trying to hold the First Minister to account at her daily briefings but without the chance to reply to her (non) answers, their teeth have been drawn. The whole thing is staged to make Sturgeon look good.

Calton has no doubt that Nicola Sturgeon has made decisions in good faith in this difficult situation but that does not mean that they were, or will continue to be, the right decisions. We are a democracy not a dictatorship. It's time the Scottish Parliament played its part in the decision-making process. Hopefully today's parliamentary session will be just the start of that, because it seems that Sturgeon needs reminding on a daily basis that she is not God.

The Problem with Care Homes

In one of her lunchtime briefings this week Nicola Sturgeon pointed out, rather pointedly, that most care homes are private businesses. Calton thinks that she was trying to suggest that they pull their weight in the current crisis. Chutzpah on stilts. Here's why:

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Scotland's care homes were underfunded. This is because local councils do not pay enough to cover the cost of care for those who are not self-funded. They are subsidised by those who are paying for their care out of their savings or the sale of their home. If the ratio of council-funded clients to self-funded clients in a home gets too large the home becomes financially unviable. If a care home becomes financially unviable it may have to close. For years the Scottish Government has been cutting the cash it gives to local councils, causing them in turn to look for savings in things like the cost of care, so the buck stops with the First Minister here.

In normal times, care homes manage infectious diseases like norovirus and they use disposable gloves and aprons, which they procure like any other business on the open market. Now they have been faced with a new, highly infectious, respiratory infection which also requires the use of face masks at time when there is a world-wide shortage of all PPE and associated price-hiking. This is costing them extra, unexpected expenditure when they are already cash-strapped (see above). Health Secretary Jeane Freeman patted herself on the back recently because she had distributed one week's worth of PPE to every care home in Scotland. One week's worth!!! I'm sure it was welcome but it's hardly going to plug the ongoing hole in the dyke!

Care homes have also been asked to take a lot of extra residents at short notice recently as the NHS cleared out its hospitals in preparation for an influx of Covid-19 patients. This was a huge transfer of liability from the state-funded NHS to the private sector. None of these patients were tested for the virus for the first few weeks. Now we have a massive problem with Covid-19 in Scotland's care homes, including one on Skye. Oh but never mind - according to Nicola Sturgeon they are private businesses who need to step up to the plate. Problem solved.

Sturgeon's comments were in response to a journalist pointing out that many private care homes are on their knees and may not survive the current crisis. What Sturgeon needs to realise, and realise fast, is that care homes are essential businesses. ESSENTIAL. If the Scottish Government can find the cash to prop up Prestwick and Ferguson, it should find the cash to support our care homes. Otherwise where are the residents still left after Covid-19 has done its worst going to live?

Let the Scottish Government be the Baddie

Although Calton now lives in Edinburgh he grew up on the west coast of Scotland and still has relatives in the Highlands, some of whom earn their livings through tourism. So he has a dog in the fight when it comes to Covid-19 and its effect on the Highlands and Islands. He understands the concern of those who live there when faced with an influx of sasunnachs wanting to escape the virus. Unfortunately the way that concern has been expressed runs the risk of doing long-term damage to the industry which many in the Highlands depend on. Hand-made posters saying "tourists go home" will not be forgotten once this pandemic is over and neither will flat motorhome tyres. Visitors were not buying up all the food in the shops - the locals were managing to do that for themselves quite nicely well before Easter and the traditional influx of tourists (which the shops are geared up to cater for). Fears that sick visitors would swamp local health services were legitimate but, here's the thing, this should have been addressed by the Scottish Government, that SNP Government voted in by a majority of the Highlands, and not left to individuals or communities to deal with themselves.

The Scottish Government closed the schools on Friday 20th March, the forecast for that weekend was superb and yet those in power didn't seem to realise that a considerable number of people might, quite literally, head for the hills (or at least the carpark at Nevis Range). It wasn't until Sunday 22nd that the Government announced a ban on non-essential travel, including travel to second homes, and even then, their Chief Medical Officer thought that the advice was optional. That left vulnerable rural communities across Scotland unprotected for two whole days. It's not surprising that some of them decided to take the law into their own hands but it was extremely unfortunate and unwise.

Now that the travel ban is in place and is being enforced by Police Scotland, Calton would like to see all the unwelcoming signs taken down. Let the Scottish Government and the Police be the baddies, not local people. That's the smarter way to handle this. Covid-19 is decimating the tourist industry right now but it won't last long. A bad reputation will last a lot longer and the effect on the Highlands will be much deeper.

On Competence

Calton has no doubt that the First Minister was sincere when she said how much she supported health care workers and wanted them to have the correct PPE in her press briefing today. Unfortunately sincerity doesn't provide PPE - competence does and Nicola Sturgeon is a bit short on that quality. She's great at presentation and carefully crafted speeches - her responses are slicker than her hairdo and more pointed than her shoes - but this Covid-19 crisis is showing her up for what she is - all fur coat and nae knickers.

What Scotland needs right now is a leader who gets things done. What we've got is someone who talks the talk but can't walk the walk. Nicola Sturgeon is all show, from the top of her immaculate hairdo to the tips of her stiletto heels. When she was Health Minister some described her as a helicopter - landing with lots of noise and disturbance, staying for a few minutes then taking off again in a flurry of rotor blades. Now we have Jeane Freeman who has provided guidance about what PPE to use and a helpline to report it if you don't have PPE but doesn't actually seem to have managed to provide PPE. Less helicopter more submarine, sinking without trace when what the troops need is a Hercules, full of supplies.

Sturgeon's response to a letter from 100 medics about PPE was basically "I understand and I will act". If she doesn't do the latter and do it soon, she and her Health Minister will look like WW1 generals, miles behind the front line, saying everything is fine when thousands are dying. It's not a good look.

The Smell of Exceptionalism

Since Catherine Calderwood is obviously an intelligent woman, Calton is diagnosing her deliberate flouting of the lockdown travel laws not just once, but twice, as a bad case of elitism. Nicola Sturgeon, on the other hand, is suffering from a bad case of exceptionalism. Just as the Prime Minister and other Tories defended Priti Patel on the grounds that she was doing a jolly good job, and Dominic Cummings overlooked the dubious online background of Andrew Sabisky because he was a "superforecaster", so the First Minister tried to keep on CMO Calderwood because seemingly she couldn't do without her and, of course, she was doing a jolly good job. Big mistake.

The current extreme restrictions being placed on the general public rely on the idea that we're all in this together. There can be no exceptions, none whatsoever, because if a single exception is allowed, others will follow. It is an unfortunate British trait that quite a lot of us think that rules are good but they don't apply to us. We all have a tendency to think we are the exception. Police Scotland get this, which is why they didn't waste time hot-footing it round to Calderwood's residence to 'have a word'. Nicola Sturgeon doesn't get this. Even at today's press conference, when specifically asked about the damage done to the Government's message and the need to rebuild trust, she didn't get it. Instead, although she was more in control today, the image of her as a wee girl who can't bear to be parted from her best friend lingers. She didn't show leadership yesterday - she stalled, prevaricated and, finally, about 12 hours too late, reacted to public opinion.

No-one has put a smell on Sturgeon - they don't need to. She reeks of exceptionalism with a whiff of cronyism and fear.

PS. And lest anyone accuse Calton of having  it in for Sturgeon, he's also extremely suspicious of the haste in which more than one Tory MSP, including Jackson Carlaw, is seeking to draw a line under this whole sorry affair. Are there some Tory-voting second home owners thinking "there but for the grace of God" and changing their plans for this coming weekend?

Calderwoodgate

Calton is so mad he could spit nails. After nearly two weeks of looking longingly over the Forth to the Fife coast when all he could do was a once-a-day flight round Arthur's Seat he finds out that the SNP Government's Chief Medical Officer has been nipping across to Earlsferry for the weekend. Twice. During lockdown. She has now, quite rightly, been spoken to by the police and has offered her resignation. Astonishingly, the First Minister has refused to accept it in a colossal error of judgement which is, as Calton writes, turning the episode into a question about Sturgeon's decision rather than the original offence.

Sturgeon is usually a canny political operator who is perfectly willing to throw someone under a bus if they get in the way and so it is a measure of how rattled she has become with the Covid-19 pandemic that she has made such a poor decision in this case. She should have sacked Calderwood immediately or at least accepted her resignation with alacrity. Surely there are other suitably qualified people in Scotland just as able to give her advice? Such as Professor Hugh Pennington?

Presumably the First Minister hoped that today's press conference (described as "excruciating" on Radio 4 news) would put the whole thing to bed. She was wrong. A quick scan down the associated twitter hashtags indicates that far more people think #Calderwoodshouldgo than the minority who see this as a media conspiracy to bring down Sturgeon. More worryingly for the SNP, a number of people are now saying that they will henceforth take their guidance from Westminster, not Holyrood, when it comes to Covid-19. Calton has a lot of sympathy with that view. In a crisis like this, are the devolved powers a help or a hindrance? In Scotland it looks very much like the latter now. Sturgeon's response to the Calderwood incident may well prove to be her Watergate.

The Post-Resilient Society

Covid-19 is exposing some fundamental flaws in the way we live today. If schools had had to be shut 50 years ago it wouldn't have been a problem as most children came from two-parent families with one parent at home. Shops and industry hadn't yet heard of "just-in-time" delivery and so would have had more stocks available to cope with shortages and panic buying. People still understood the concept of rationing and the idea of selflessness. Most Mums knew how to make food stretch and most kids loved beans on toast and home-made chips from the sack of tatties in the bottom of the larder. We were resilient. Not now.

Now we have a guy filling his trolley with pasta and refusing to give a packet to a pensioner. We have had a run on toilet paper even although Covid-19 does not cause the runs. Parents are panicking because they can no longer rely on schools, nurseries and grandparents to do their parenting for them. Chinese people have been abused in the street and woe betide anyone who coughs in public.

The government has responded by throwing money at the problem. A lot of money, which is devaluing Sterling. It's a quick fix for an urgent problem but the real issues are much deeper. We have a housing shortage which has pushed up prices, forcing both parents in families to work just to afford a home. We have far too many workers on zero hours contracts or in pseudo-self-employment with no sick pay entitlement. Family breakdown and the idea that kids don't need both a mother and a father has meant a rise in single-parent families, which, unless there is wider family support, are less resilient and usually less well-off.

The only positive thing Calton can see so far in this epidemic is the sign that it may kill off or at least weaken the rampant individualism which began in the Thatcher years and has only grown since. For every pasta hoarder there is a selfless helper. May the latter grow in strength!