Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
Yes, that Sturgeon.

Very sensible suggestion at the time (although not directly from Sturgeon). Improved ventilation at minimal cost, and brought school buildings into line with the UK Building Regs for new housing.

Surprised you are still parroting the Scottish Tories sneering attack line. There are many better reasons to denounce Sturgeon and the SNP - but for me she and Drakeford, the SNP and Welsh Labour, were head and shoulders above the Westminster Tories when it came to leadership and public information during Covid (and beyond Covid too).

Sturgeon's government was cutting an inch off the bottom of some school doors. Johnson's government was handing multi millions of public money to their mates to produce unusable PPE.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-b2006900.html
Johnson's government were also supporting millions of people through furlough who otherwise would have been financially ruined by the inability to work. Reducing it down to "deals for their mates" is entirely disengenuous.

My experience, living in Wales is that at the time my opinion of Drakeford rose in the first part of the pandemic. I think he came across as sober and professional. But he also saw it as a political opportunity to create often artificial policy waters between him and Westminster and there's no evidence any of it worked and some of it (closing off the toy aisles for example) was spiteful and struck me as power hungry. Generally speaking I think people looked to Westminster during that period. I remember numerous texts about 'boris speaking at 7pm' or whatever but people didn't say that about Drakeford.

More than anything, I'm in favour of devolution generally, including of healthcare, but I think a UK wide approach to COVID would have worked better even if that was never going to happen. For Sturgeon in particular it was just another opportunity to parrot lines about independence.