Quintin Jardine's blog

On Sunday I put a specific question to the Scottish Government Central Enquiry Unit. I was expecting visitors from an amber list country, one not fully vaccinated the other 11 years old. Their visit was for seven days. Each was required to take a PCR test on Day 2. The adult was required to quarantine , the child was exempt.

Like all arrivals in the U.K. they were required to buy test kits from Corporate Travel Management, the outfit commissioned by HMG to run the portal. However, the portal only sells kits with two tests, the second being for Day 8. There is no alternative offered to minors or to those who are staying for less than eight days.

My question addressed this anomaly. It took the Scottish Government four days to respond and then the reply was automated and did not answer the question. The truth is that there is no option. My visitors were forced to buy four tests at £68 a time, even though two of them will never be used.

There are two issues here. One is the basic principle of the government designing a shoddy system and the handing it over to a commercial organisation that will profit from the rip-off. The other is the contempt shown by the Scottish Government by its obvious lack of concern for those who put it in place.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55910874

Is the word ‘Vanilla’ racist in this context? Or am I not allowed to ask that question?

At a time when we are striving to build a diverse and multi-cultural society, I am not certain that Sir Trevor is helping.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/20/biden-press-briefing-jen-psaki-white-house-secretary

Nicola Sturgeon, ‘Nippy’ to her opponents, hasn’t got too much wrong over the last ten months. The pandemic has been prudently managed in Scotland.

That said, I have reservations about the way the vaccine programme is being rolled out. We’ve all had a leaflet, at significant cost, that’s a bit of a chocolate fireguard. Its core message is ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ Not unnaturally, most of us want to know when that will happen. We’re not being told; worse, we’re being told not to ask.

I know two people, both in their eighties, one in England, one in Scotland. The former will be vaccinated this week, the latter has been told that there are many people ahead of him in the queue.

The information gap is frustrating, and it contrasts with the English situation. Implementation north of the border has been handed, we are told, to individual health boards. To me, that builds in potential inequalities across the country, a postcode lottery, to resort to a phrase I dislike. I would prefer to see an individual tasked with personal responsibility for delivery. The Health Secretary might argue that it’s her. If it is, she should be front and centre giving much more specific information.

My wife is in group one. I have been told that she’ll be contacted by our medical practice, but nobody is quite sure how. It’s most likely, it seems, to be a letter. That begs a question. How are GPs equipped to issue dozens, maybe hundreds of letters to their elderly patients? And another. In the case of the most vulnerable, who might still be living alone but in need of support, what means are in place to ensure these letters are understood?

Lots of questions but no apparent will to answer them. Come on Nippy, step up.

Like all of you, I have reflected on the past year and how the invisible enemy, Covid-19, swept across our beautiful country. All Nations have experienced
— Read on www.whitehouse.gov/articles/first-lady-melania-trump-path-forward/

How to be a deeply unlikeable Remainer
— Read on www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/how-to-be-a-deeply-unlikeable-remainer-20191113190721

I am not in Dis-United Kingdom at the moment. I am in Catalunya which has its own troubles but that doesn’t stop me from being outraged by the shenanigans in our Parliament this afternoon.

I worked in that environment in the eighties when it was populated by serious people and when Oliver Letwin was a twerp in Maggie’s policy unit in Number 10. He wasn’t any old twerp, though, for it was he who recommended to his mistress that she use Scotland as a test bed for the Poll Tax.

That goes to show, rather spectacularly, that he doesn’t always get it right, as he proved yet again this afternoon when the dimwit pulled a stroke which condemns us to yet more Westminster chaos, to the delight of the minority who believe that marching through London waving EU flags and demanding something that was rejected at a referendum is in any way democratic.

I have two grandkids and it’s my earnest hope that they both see the 22nd Century. It’s also my hope that they live to see it in a sustainable planet. In that I have just as much interest as the pseudo-hippie anarchists, yummy mummies and attention seekers who are currently doing their best to screw up the traffic around Westminster.

Apart from being futile in that it alienates people like me, the majority I believe, it is also stupid because they are preaching to the reasonably converted, and because in the short, medium and long terms it will do absolutely no good at all.

Rather than chain themselves to manhole covers in London or join the hordes under the thrall of a criminal teenager, (Organising mass school truancy has to be against the law, surely) they should target the real enemy, the planet’s biggest polluters. Let them disrupt the traffic in Beijing, Washington or Delhi and see how they are treated there.

Or, if they are determined and selfish enough to persist, let them pursue a more effective tactic and contract the job out, to Edinburgh City Council, whose elected members have been fucking up the traffic in their city for decades.

Rory Stewart: Ex-Tory leadership hopeful to step down
— Read on news.sky.com/story/rory-stewart-ex-tory-leadership-hopeful-to-step-down-11826934

I believe it was Groucho Marx who said that he wouldn’t want to join a club that would have him as a member. Rory seems to be taking that a couple of stages further by resigning from a party that had already kicked him out.

Looking at our Prime Minister on telly, I don’t believe a word he says, and neither does Ms Kuenssberg.

But I don’t want Corbyn!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49890199

For the avoidance of doubt I regard Boris as a bumptious twat full of misplaced self-importance. He does strike me as the sort of bloke who might squeeze the odd thigh under the table halfway through the third bottle of Rioja, then forget all about it. I don’t have any trouble believing Charlotte Edwards’ story.

However I do have two pertinent questions. 1) Why has it taken twenty years for her indignation to surface? 2) Why did she choose to tell all to the Sunday Times precisely when she did?

I have just seen an ad on telly, telling me to be prepared for Brexit.

Won’t bother because it isn’t going to happen. The majority voted to leave but the minority won’t allow it.

If that’s how it goes, I want my Scottish passport, Now.

The Supreme Court has ruled effectively that in future, Prime Ministers must seek the approval of Gina Miller or someone like her for every major decision they make.

I didn’t vote for Ms Miller; nobody did. I didn’t vote for a single member of the Supreme Court. I didn’t vote for Boris either, but somewhere along the line I feel that I have been cheated.

Parliamentary democracy has just been shot in the head.

Is this a hidden job creation project, another attack on employers, or just shameless, irresponsible electioneering bullshit?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49798357

I am a ‘named person’. The name is Granddad.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-49753980