Having met Ms Sturgeon I can attest to the fact she is personable and spent a great deal of time visiting a newly opened facility in her constituency. She chatted, she drank tea and she posed for selfies. But I did not get the impression I was dealing with a towering political intellect. In fact she seemed no different to other MPs and worthies I've met over the years. People trying to do their best and I believe motivated by good intentions but I fear we conflate a public plateform or being a member of the media with intellect or special abilities.
Ms Sturgeon was dealt a brilliant hand didn't play it. She couldn't because she lacked the political imagination to do so. Had Salmond been in charge, or Joanna Cherry things might have been different.
This was evident during covid when it seemed she proposed policies just to be different from the rest of the UK. There was no evidence base and she slipped out of responsibility for discharging infected people from hospital to care homes. She looked presidential - easy to do when Westminister is paying for furlough and providing the vaccines.
She didn't like medical staff- that was clear to anyone in the NHS and thanks to her NHS Scotland has more vacancies at consultant level. In my last hears at work I activly discouraged my younger colleagues from seeking consultant posts in Scotland because they were openly offered job plans that made it difficult to do CPD let alone discharge their clinical duties withou burnout.
Education is now worse than in England - I never thought I'd say that. And as for her bonkers inability to say Isla Bryson was a man was to me, the final demonstration of a woman more in thrall to ideology than rationality or even commons sense.
I suspect her interest in LGBTQ politics may solidify into something more tangible soon.
All that said I hope she finds whatever she is seeking.
Very good article. I agree more or less with it all. I voted for NS Snp as she gave commitment to reform social care which has now been abandoned like most of what the snp Holywood manifesto talked about. Parliament is far more parochial without NS but less divisive, so can see both sides of her influence over last decade. A huge figure in Scotland politics undoubtedly.
Having met Ms Sturgeon I can attest to the fact she is personable and spent a great deal of time visiting a newly opened facility in her constituency. She chatted, she drank tea and she posed for selfies. But I did not get the impression I was dealing with a towering political intellect. In fact she seemed no different to other MPs and worthies I've met over the years. People trying to do their best and I believe motivated by good intentions but I fear we conflate a public plateform or being a member of the media with intellect or special abilities.
Ms Sturgeon was dealt a brilliant hand didn't play it. She couldn't because she lacked the political imagination to do so. Had Salmond been in charge, or Joanna Cherry things might have been different.
This was evident during covid when it seemed she proposed policies just to be different from the rest of the UK. There was no evidence base and she slipped out of responsibility for discharging infected people from hospital to care homes. She looked presidential - easy to do when Westminister is paying for furlough and providing the vaccines.
She didn't like medical staff- that was clear to anyone in the NHS and thanks to her NHS Scotland has more vacancies at consultant level. In my last hears at work I activly discouraged my younger colleagues from seeking consultant posts in Scotland because they were openly offered job plans that made it difficult to do CPD let alone discharge their clinical duties withou burnout.
Education is now worse than in England - I never thought I'd say that. And as for her bonkers inability to say Isla Bryson was a man was to me, the final demonstration of a woman more in thrall to ideology than rationality or even commons sense.
I suspect her interest in LGBTQ politics may solidify into something more tangible soon.
All that said I hope she finds whatever she is seeking.
Very good article. I agree more or less with it all. I voted for NS Snp as she gave commitment to reform social care which has now been abandoned like most of what the snp Holywood manifesto talked about. Parliament is far more parochial without NS but less divisive, so can see both sides of her influence over last decade. A huge figure in Scotland politics undoubtedly.