Wooden ships and iron (wo)men

Wooden ships and iron (wo)men

After the General Election of 2015 I didn’t need a set of tarot cards to predict Scotland’s future; I’d lived through the Free in 93 days, as an SNP councillor, one of three in Clackmannanshire – back in the days when that role was not a wise career move.

Once it was noted, despite the 56/59 surge, that there was no mass protesting at Westminster and neither the FM nor Westminster leader had a strategy to lead our country to Independence the outcome for the party was clear. A pretence from my own MP and MSP that we’d to trust Nicola because she had a plan – she was on it – has become as offensive as it is embarrassing – to the extent where I need to delete a few Facebook albums of pics from 2016 when I proclaimed to be with Nicola, fingers crossed behind my back. 

Carrots dangled from the front page of The National every few weeks, including the belter in January 2020 about the Constitutional Convention exclusively revealed – we’re still waiting. Why are we still waiting?

From January to March 2020 we watched political intrigue in criminal proceedings and a pandemic unfold; we learned that pandemic preparedness in Scotland was sketchy – even though the then FM had in her previous existence as the Cabinet Secretary for Health trained and prepared for this. We learned a lot.

We saw that courts and children’s panels had not done their homework; staff in courts had no supplies of hand wash or masks. There was no system to alert people who might have come into contact with one who’d come down with the virus. Courts just had cleaners who wiped down door handles and light switches at night. 

Hospitals and health centres were not prepared. They simply closed their doors. We learned that in some hospitals there were no non-covid wards – twice my now late Dad who never had covid was in wards in Larbert with covid patients.

We saw that prisons were not prepared – again neither masks nor hand wash, simple but absent measures. Staff sought masks they sourced in the workshops, because their bosses on six figures hadn’t bothered to stock up.

We saw that staff were poorly trained – Dad came home from hospital twice supported by ambulance men who had neither masks nor gloves. One such was from a private ambulance service – that thing the NHS says it doesn’t use. He was meant to have a Macmillan nurse and a hospice nurse. Not only had he neither of those – he didn’t have an allocated consultant despite the fact of a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Children whose parents lived apart became subject to guidance from the courts and Children’s Minister who said family contact should occur face to face; no such arrangements for children in care – those children ‘saw’ family by FaceTime and communicated by email. Social workers didn’t facilitate contact and family centres closed down for months without end. 

Schools were open for the children of key workers; teachers were glorified childminders and exam results were fiddled for teenagers who lost two years of education but we decided to pretend they were still smart enough to qualify for uni – self identification run riot. 

Friends employed in care homes messaged me daily and called, in tears, afraid and anxious, because patients were discharged from hospital to care home without testing and politicians, MPs and MSPs, knew this and turned a blind eye. 

And we learn today that our FM and those around her who promised transparency, accountability and honesty wiped their phones daily. This is not a surprise. It’s just another clicky pen moment – a signal that our governance is amateur, privileged, unaccountable and way below the standards set by those who founded and drove Scotland’s independence movement.

The Sturgeon Years have been a dreadful charade, from windows painted on ferries, to men in frocks running women’s services as feminists are defenestrated for standing up for the rights of women and girls – let’s set sail for better days where our politics are honest, our values real and we can speak the truth without fear or favour.