During the pandemic, I was a guest on a BBC news panel show via Zoom.
We were discussing the Scottish Government’s handling of the pandemic and whether they should have done things differently.
I made the point that we were facing a uniquely complex crisis and – while mistakes had undoubtedly been made – the public seemed largely supportive of the approach taken by Nicola Sturgeon and her government.
I suggested that this was due, in large part, to the scrutiny that the Scottish Government had willingly subjected itself to during the daily briefings.
Fast forward a few years, and my praise of the Scottish Government’s openness and transparency during the pandemic looks frankly ridiculous.
We live and we learn.
In recent days, a row has broken out over the Scottish Government’s failure to hand over material that might be relevant to the UK Covid inquiry.
The inquiry was told that 70 Scottish government ministers and officials were asked for their WhatsApp messages but “very few appear to have been retained”.’
It has since emerged there are thought to be at least 137 WhatsApp groups used across the Scottish Government and partner agencies during the pandemic.
Reports suggest that some senior officials routinely deleted their WhatsApp correspondence or used the auto-delete function.
On Sunday, the lead solicitor for Scottish Covid Bereaved families group, Aamer Anwar, was scathing in his assessment of the Scottish Government’s lack of transparency.
He told The Sunday Show that from as early as May 2020, the Scottish Government knew that there would likely be an inquiry into its handling of the pandemic.
“From May 2020, if there was a position of auto-delete, if there was a situation where government ministers and senior civil servants were deleting their WhatsApps, it should have been ordered to stop’’ he said.
“We want to know when was the deletion brought in, who ordered it, why was it not ordered to be stopped?
“And did they continue after the event? Because that’s deletion of material.”
Columnists like me have dedicated many thousands of words of criticism of Boris Johnson and the culture of wanton rule-breaking he allowed to fester across Westminster during lockdown.
He set the tone for how his officials and staff behaved during the pandemic. They thought the rules didn’t apply to them because Boris Johnson made it abundantly clear that they didn’t apply to him, either.
If deletion of correspondence between officials was routine and widespread in Scotland during the pandemic, then that didn’t happen spontaneously.
As soon as the Scottish Government knew there would be an inquiry, an order should have went out from on high that all material must be retained.
In recent days, Humza Yousaf has claimed the Scottish Government didn’t discuss Covid decision-making via WhatsApp.
But it is for the inquiry and its lawyers to decide what might be relevant, not politicians.
Bereaved families deserve answers. The Scottish Government assured them they would get them in due course.
Those assurances look hollow now, as we grapple with the fact that thousands of messages may be gone for good.
No government wants to give the public a glimpse into its real-time thought processes and discussions during a time of crisis.
The messages submitted to the inquiry by the UK government have revealed the dysfunction that engulfed No.10 during the pandemic.
They are embarrassing.
Which is why the Conservative government fought so hard to try and ensure they’d never see the light of day.
If the Scottish Government was trying to avoid a similar humiliation and either ordered or allowed messages to be deleted, then that’s a huge scandal in the making.
And it’s a slap in the face to all the families who were promised transparency and instead were served a stitch-up.
I truly want to be an outdoorsy person.
In theory at least, I enjoy beautiful scenery and fresh air.
I even like exercising outdoors, providing it is moderate enough to not disturb my heart rate from its usual plodding beat.
At the weekend, my boyfriend took me up a hill. He does this quite often. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that all hills – no matter how piddling the slope – render me too out of breath to speak.
I did very well, in that I made it to the top without swearing.
But then he led us off the official track, so we could get a closer look at a waterfall.
Right in the middle of a monologue where I lamented the increasing dangerousness of our outdoor activities, my feet consciously uncoupled from the giant rock they had been planted on and I fell – bum first – back to earth.
As a result, I’ve now got a very sore shoulder and a bruised ego. But at least the waterfall was pretty.
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