At 1.30pm yesterday:
Sally McNair:
The First Minister says Scotland is ready to go live today with an expansion of coronavirus tests to key workers but that’s on hold as the computer system struggles to cope with demand. Nicola Sturgeon said the portal had been overwhelmed and added that guidance was going to be issued to who could access the tests.…Andrew a bit of frustration there that this is not working as it should?’
Andrew Kerr:
Yes that’s right Sally. Frustration from people who are wanting the test. Frustration from Matt Hancock the UK Health Secretary who’s desperately trying to reach a target of one hundred thousand tests a day and I think perhaps frustration from the First Minister that she’s perhaps linked with this UK system, this portal that was not coping with demand today. It had to close mid-morning as thousands of key workers went on to request a test.
Not for the first time, I was gobsmacked by their sheer nerve and duplicity.
Why is Nicola Sturgeon and not Matt Hancock, who launched the portal, mentioned in the opening statement by McNair and, having made that association with her, why is it ‘the’ computer system and not the ‘the UK’ computer system if that is what it is and if it is not her Scottish Government’s system?
Who, please tell us, has ‘linked’ the ‘perhaps frustrated‘ FM with Hancock’s Half Hour Only functioning portal? Only BBC Scotland. That’s all. The portal is a UK system linked to the UK Government.
The Scottish Government, for whatever reason, was not involved in it and is thus not actually linked to its failure, unless some cunning reporter wants to try to suggest to the viewers that it was.
I’m reminded of their Lisa Summers, last year, calling NHS Tayside’s oncology department which, out of kindness, had reduced chemotherapy doses with no negative effect, ‘dysfunctional’, as if it were a quote from some authoritative figure, when she was just quoting from her own nasty wee brain.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
John
If this is scripted it is much more reprehensible, perhaps, than if it is McNair’s thoughtless stupidity which Kerr tries to address?
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According to a report in the Herald today the CMOs in Scotland and Wales were not told beforehand by the UK Gov that the system was going ‘live’ yesterday
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I read that the CMOs of the devolved countries/region only got to listen in to COBRA meetings on covid19. Any questions that they wished to ask had to be submitted in writing in advance. Helps to explain why the UK line was followed initially.
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I think that this is ‘scripted’, as Sam calls it. By coupling the SG with the Westminster Government, indeed, by placing the SG first, ‘links’ the two in listeners’ minds. Since the performance of the UK Government is widely seen as poor, even by many of its media cheer leaders, then by association the SG performance is implied to be equally poor.
Although some in UK media and Parliament are perceiving and admiring the difference in performance by the SG and the transparency and assurance with which it speaks to the people and are coming to view the charlatans in the UK cabinet for what they are, the unionist Scottish media, ignore reporting this and continue to plug the incompetence by association approach. Often, BBC Scotland simply uses the vague term ‘government’, despite knowing well that this is vague and, when attached to a bad news story, the SG is damned by implication, even when the substance of the story relates to England/Britain.
They clearly do not want more of the Scottish public to begin to think, “Maybe we can go our own way”.
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bbc scum
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I am really struggling to believe this. Can they really lie so blatantly?
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BBC totally biased, not independent journalists. Totally in hands of anti SNP UK Tory Government instead of doing g their propet journalist job. See they are learning from Trump in their increasingly blatant LIES, FAKE NEWS, duplicity, UK Tory fawning and bending, with not an independent, fair or moral morsel
backbone in any of them. Sell out for less than 30 pieces of silver, whilst Hancock & co recuperate on and count the pension money saved by thousands of UK deaths, but then, to them, it’s only cattle dying and canon fodder in the face of still inadequate PPE, lack of testing & malignant ‘policy’ of laissez-faire
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