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Friday 2 September 2022

Trash Talk



Tom Harris has a disturbing CAPX piece on the incompetence of the SNP. Disturbing as a reminder that incompetence is not necessarily a huge electoral liability when the politics of grievance are pushed with sufficient vigour.

Trash talk – will Scotland ever face up to SNP incompetence?

It’s been a busy few weeks for TV’s Nicola Sturgeon. The showbiz personality and Festival Fringe favourite has been interviewed numerous times on Edinburgh’s stages in the last month, sharing her opinions with the likes of Iain Dale and Brian Cox (not the one who lives here; the other one).

But, ever the trooper, she still found time to jet off to Copenhagen to open the Scottish Government’s new Nordic Office (which has been described as a sort of Scottish embassy, but is reportedly more accurately described as a desk in an existing UK government building).


Harris covers the refuse workers strike of course, linking it to what he calls "cynical responsibility-dodging", a characteristic of Sturgeon's SNP which even south of the border has been obvious for years

Such cynical responsibility-dodging has not been successful for the SNP, however. Just as a settlement was reached in Edinburgh, the strike spread throughout the rest of the country, including the SNP-run cities of Glasgow and Dundee.

The nationalist administration will survive all this, of course. It will take more than the smell of rotting nappies and having to fight off a ravenous rat while you’re trying to enjoy a quiet, outdoor lunch on the Royal Mile to persuade most Scots that governing isn’t really the SNP’s forte

Even the revelation that Sturgeon herself was not inconvenienced by the strike, because she employed private contractors (at public expense) to remove the rubbish at her official residence of Bute House, will do little to dissuade at least some ordinary Scots that everything is just fine.


Well worth reading as an example of just how cynically incompetent major political actors and their parties can be, yet still they thrive. 

5 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

The phrase "Do as I say, not do as I do" has been resting on the sidelines due to previous overuse. Perhaps it is time for a comeback?

Or maybe a phrase customised for Scotland - "Never mind the competence, feel the nationalism"?

Sam Vega said...

Also in the news this morning: the famous Edinburgh tram system was so late and over budget that Salmond ordered a public enquiry into how the fiasco happened. Now it's been revealed that the enquiry itself has over-run on both counts: no conclusion yet, for £13 million, the same as the Chilcott Enquiry into the Iraq War.

Maybe the English should vote on Scottish independence?

Nessimmersion said...

The vast majority of Scottish residents know nothing of this serial incompetence & venality.
There is Omerta by the msm of BBC / ITV & the remaining print media.
Complete refusal to carry any neutral reporting on the activities & consequences of the Scottisch Natzi Party, whether ferries, energy, Scottish version of Tavistock, education, police etc.
Positively N Korean in their professed adulation of the glorious leaderene.

Tammly said...

It has to be said that incompetence is no bar to advancement in the workplace either, from what I've experienced.

A K Haart said...

DJ - it's one of the arts of politics, they never seem to run out of evasive phrases.

Sam - one approach would be to set up an enquiry into the original enquiry, although I don't understand the attraction of trams in the first place.

Nessimmersion - yes, that's the disturbing aspect of the SNP, the lack of genuine mainstream criticism. If this can be done for the SNP it can be done for anyone else.

Tammly - I agree. Get rid of people sideways or even upwards was common from what I saw.