In a piece of writing saturated with after-the-event wisdom Iain Macwhirter gloats, thinking he’s scored over the First Minister and Professor Sridhar. I was going to leave it, ‘e’s not warf it‘, but then thought, if this stops just one person believing him, my time is not wasted.
See his gloomy ‘It’s looking like a six month sentence‘ and his Christmas warning?
Here’s what the First Minister actually said:
I also want to address talk that there has been in recent days about restrictions being needed for six months or more. It is certainly the case, that until scientific developments such as a vaccine change the game in the battle against COVID, it will have a continuing impact on our lives. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the new restrictions I am announcing today will be in place for six months.
By acting early and substantially, our hope is that these new measures will be in place for a shorter period than would be the case if we waited longer to act. In the first instance, we will review these measures in three weeks – although given the nature of this virus, it is important to be clear that they may be needed for longer than that.
Here’s what Professor Sridhar said on Channel 4 News last night.
If you move early, you can have minimal restrictions, hopefully for a shorter amount of time. So these are in place for three weeks. If there’s good compliance with them, it could means that in three weeks, they could be lifted and we’d be in a good position and testing and tracing can take over.
Remember Scotland’s locally-based testing and tracing teams have been around 99% successful.
https://www.channel4.com/news/scotland-bans-visiting-other-peoples-homes
Listen to her and toss the Herald.
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
We all have to earn a living.
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‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’. Upton Sinclair.
So apt and so very true especially in the case of Scottish British Nationalists.
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A number of years ago one of my jobs was to transport journalists, and the overpowering impression I got was their sense of entitlement. Theirs was the power of the press, that was until I witnessed two of them getting, literally, thrown down a flight of stairs, when they tried to doorstep a recently widowed lady.
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Tele-transporting would be useful for those who seek to deceive the public.
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The quoted paragraph reads like the bombastic cynical pronouncements of the know-it-all golf club bar bore.
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Alasdair
Left a reply for you back at “SNP Members for Independence”
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/09/22/snp-members-for-independence/
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Mr McWhirter’s column in today’s Herald was pretty abysmal which is saying something given the low standards he has been setting himself recently.
He talks about the testing, or lack thereof, in care homes but does not say that testing in care homes is the responsibility of the UK Gov’s privatised Pillar 2 system. It is true that the tests being used lack the required sensitivity and specificity necessary to give accurate results but who is responsible for the procurement of the tests.
He mentions Aberdeen but does not acknowledge how quickly action was taken to bring that outbreak under control including effective track and protect. In fact he seems to be suggesting there is another spike. There may well be given that the Universities are back and several cities with Universities are seeing spikes in numbers related to students.
He does not acknowledge how close Scotland came to elimination or that the goal of elimination started to fail from August onwards in large part due to ‘fine out to help out’; foreign holidays and failure to isolate and the importing of cases due to an influx of visitors.
Just a few of the sins of omission and Commission present in his column.
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Firstly, the policy was not eradication, which can only be done on a global scale, but elimination which can be achieved, and very nearly was, within a defined geographic area eg Scotland.
Secondly, how many deaths from flu would there be if there was not a vaccine? There is a preventative measure for flu but not for Covid other than social distancing masks, and hand washing but still there is transmission.
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Must delete you for misogyny.
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Macwhirter and Mc Kenna… bought and sold….Food on the table is no excuse.
The Herald and Scotsman are Dead Tree Scrolls, ancient forms of communication which crumble to dust when exposed to the harsh glare of daylight.
These two stale old hacks deliver their clickbait nonsense on the equivalent of 78 RPM records.
Another of the Herald Hacks, I’ll not name her, because she is a nobody in the real world, called Sturgeon names, Ronnie Corbett, and Ernie Wise, in a hilarious ‘double act’ analogy conflating Scotland’s response to that of Johnson England.
This lady hack normally writes drudge about TV shows…
I, and millions like me, will no longer allow English (yes and that includes Oxford based Aunt Tams like Anneliese Dodds) politicians and pundits to continue with the delusion that they can tell us Scots citizens what to do.
WE are not a militarily occupied colony of England.
We are Scotland.
On the 15th October, when the EU27 close their borders on England, we Scots have a mighty confrontation ahead, this autumn, not Jan 1st 2021, or more insanely, May 2021.
LD ‘leader’ Davey has reiterated what all Brit Nats have peddled in the past few months. If every Scottish citizen voted for pro Independence parties in the SGE, then England would still forbid their pet colony to leave their Empire.
They can’t be more open about it. England conquered Scotland 300 years ago.
In their eyes, we have no country to defend.
Now is the time.
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