The continued slide in standards in our schools is not news, but a depressing slew of Scottish Government statistics this week provides plenty of evidence for the prosecution.
Most mums know instinctively when something isn’t quite right with their babies, and as a nurse Bernadette Phillips was sure her six-month-old son Nathaniel wasn’t moving like other babies his age.
SNP Finance Secretary Shona Robison isn’t exactly a ray of golden sun at the best of times, but she surpassed herself on Wednesday when condemning Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s budget as a “betrayal of public services”.
Tuesday was a depressing day, sitting in the Scottish Parliament powerless to stop the SNP and Greens approving Finance Secretary Shona Robison’s defeatist budget, which will do deep damage to key services, not preserve them as she claimed.
The General Election in Scotland should be about SNP failure and the continued threat of nationalism, according to the new Scottish Conservative candidate for Edinburgh South West, Sue Webber MSP.
Maybe I should have sympathy for SNP health secretary Neil Gray. After all he’s barely been in the job long enough to remember the way to the gents from his new office and he’s had to swing the axe on a raft of promised new facilities vital for NHS Scotland’s future.
Most people I know outside of politics don’t have much time for consultations and studies. Their lives are busy enough without getting involved in campaigns, pressure groups and political parties.
The Scottish leg of the Covid Inquiry is over and our attention must focus on the crisis our NHS faces while Baroness Heather Hallett gathers more evidence about what went wrong in the past. Or at least as much evidence as still exists.
It would take a hard heart not to feel some sympathy for Nicola Sturgeon at the Covid Inquiry on Wednesday, pictured, struggling to contain her emotions as she tried to explain her actions at the height of the pandemic.
Maybe the pandemic has changed attitudes towards death and the dying, but there is little doubt public opinion has swung behind changing the law to legalise medically assisted dying.
