Nicola Sturgeon branded a ‘charlatan’ who ‘exploited Covid to create division’

NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY

And so it should. It would give me great pleasure to have that kind of relationship with some of West Dunbartonshire Council’s finest, the ones who banned me from receving accreditation as a bona fide journalist and being allowed the time honoured courtesies attached to that in democracies.

That’s not much. Just a seat at a meeting where I could see and hear what was going on and a glass of water perhaps. They wouldn’t even allow me that.

When they discovered I wasn’t an SNP terrier or a Labour lapdog or even a Tory Chihuahua and that I wouldn’t be cosying up to them and making them look good in exchange advertising revenue or exclusive stories for The Democrat they threw me under a bus – or so they thought.

The sanctions they imposed were no more than lame excuses to keep my prying eyes off the poor decisions they make week after week in their Church Street chambers.

For them there is only one story in town and that’s their story.

They don’t want counter arguements to theirs made known to the public. They don’t want their failures and deficiencies, and there are many, exposed to the public.

It was to that end they set up a so-called Communications Department at a cost of around £500,000 a year to fund. That’s half a million pounds of public money squandered on propaganda.

It was voted through unanimously which means that the politicians are all in this together. It’s about the only thing they are agreed on. And their highly paid officials are at one with them.

They refused me a seat at a press bench in Church Street – in fact, they never had a press bench on the grounds that if they didn’t encourage reporters to come to their meetings then no one would know what they were up to.

I was told that unless I took membership of an obscure press regulator in England that I would not be allowed to ask questions of their spin doctors and would have to join the queue on the often unanswered telephone lines to their complaints “team” with the rest of the plebs.

And plebs is how they look upon the electorate, like mushrooms which are kept in the dark and fed copious amounts of manure to pass on to the public.

They will say they don’t do that, but readers know the mess West Dunbartonshire is in – and the shambles it will descend into in the future if they get their way and impose their unchallenged will on this community.

Will our main towns ever get out of the bit? Well, not with the planning decisions these people are making. Look at what they are doing with Dumbarton Town Centre, Vale of Leven and Balloch.

They should be challenging these plans. They are too accepting of everything. They were elected to stand up for this community. Instead they are far too accepting of plans with no vision and the mis-spending of £millions we don’t have and will have to leave to future generations to pick up the bill for. It’s time they were called out.

It’s time someone shouted STOP!

The Scottish Parliament is equally blighted by similar hubris to the Church Street mob.

The ongoing row between Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay exploded into the national press on Monday as the pair traded insults.

Mr Findlay labelled his rival a “charlatan” and claimed that she used the Covid pandemic to “to create division and further her own selfish political obsession with independence.”

Findlay, pictured right, accused the former First Minister of perpetrating “unpleasant hostility towards journalism and journalists and any scrutiny.”

He referenced her contentious daily Covid briefings where she spoke about the virus situation in Scotland and took questions from journalists.

Mr Findlay described it as “little more than political grandstanding half the time and seeking to build her brand while differentiating from the rest of the UK for no discernible benefit to the people of Scotland.”

A former journalist himself, he claimed that it was “often laced with a kind of arch antagonism towards particular journalists that I found to be quite inappropriate and quite disturbing. It’s about shutting journalists down, stopping scrutiny, and that is fundamentally wrong.”

One of the most famous examples of this was Sturgeon’s reaction to a question from Daily Mail political editor Michael Blackley who innocuously asked whether the Scottish Government is giving enough financial support to hospitality businesses after she decided on stricter lockdown-like measures during the festive period in 2021, with England remaining open.

Findlay has now responded by highlighting the scandals which have surrounded Ms Sturgeon and her government during the pandemic years, including deleting her messages and madcap schemes which made Scotland different from the rest of the UK.

He said: “Nicola Sturgeon exploited Covid to create division and further her own selfish political obsession with independence. She regularly attacked journalists who had the nerve to ask reasonable questions about the SNP’s failures on so many fronts. Sturgeon’s main goal was often to create a ‘rammy with the UK Government’, as her close friend and advisor Liz Lloyd admitted in private WhatsApp messages published by the UK Covid Inquiry.

“It should never be forgotten that Nicola Sturgeon was responsible for sending Covid-positive patients into care homes, leaving Scottish businesses without the help they needed, and keeping our schools closed for far too long with punitive restrictions and stupid rules, including ill-fated proposals to chop the bottom off classroom doors. She was no saint, she was a charlatan who relied on political spin to hide how incompetent she really was.”

One comment

Mary Campbell says:

December 14, 2024 at 8:39 am

Totally agree with your editorial. Journalists need to be allowed into council meetings etc as there should be openness, transparency and accountability for the general public. The council are public servants after all

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