MY daughter was feeling Fergus Ewing-levels of dissatisfaction with my leadership as we neared the end of school strike week.
She was unhappy with my strategy of concentrating on the work that actually pays the bills, rather than the optional schoolwork that her teacher had issued.
So I did what any responsible leader would and I used a rare morning off to take her out for breakfast to try to wriggle my way back into her good books.
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It worked for as long as it took her to chomp through a bacon roll and drink a hot chocolate, but when we returned home, and I broke the news that it was time to put on First Minister’s Questions, she showed signs of preparing to cross the floor and try her luck with another party leader.
When Nicola Sturgeon was first minister, my daughter would just about tolerate FMQs. Now it’s an all-lads line-up she is decidedly less enthusiastic.
Douglas Ross and Anas Sarwar both asked the First Minister about waiting times for cancer treatment. From what I could hear, their questions were interesting and it’s obviously a very important topic.
Unfortunately, the detail was drowned out by my daughter asking me to remind her what the party leaders’ names are and tell her where Nicola Sturgeon sits now.
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The only time she was quiet was when Willie Rennie got up to speak.
The reason for this is two-fold.
One: Willie Rennie was asking about poo and kids find that kind of thing very amusing, whatever the context.
And two: she still remembers a chance encounter she had with Willie Rennie a number of years ago, when we were wandering around a rural area looking for a log cabin we’d booked to stay at.
We had inadvertently ended up on the route for a race and, as Willie Rennie came running past, my then five-year-old started screeching enthusiastic words of encouragement to him.
She had never shown any LibDem tendencies before or since, but you never know…
Willie Rennie said that he was “astonished” by an answer that the First Minister had given Tory MSP Liz Smith about contaminated beaches in Fife.
“It’s astonishingly complacent. 50 out of 89 of the most popular beaches in Scotland are beyond safe standards for bathing. That should be an alarm bell for the First Minister: so when is he going to implement the proper measurement of all sewage outflows and when – at last – is he going to set legally- inding targets to end the sewage dumping?” he asked.
In response, the First Minister said that this is an issue that Scottish Water takes seriously. He went on to say that there has been considerable investment made in a comprehensive monitoring programme for sewage outflows.
“Nobody is complacent here. I’m fully accepting that there are particular instances that must be investigated where there must be action that is taken but I go back to that point that 98% of Scottish bathing waters currently achieve the bathing water quality standard,” he said.
Commenting on the poo news my daughter said: “That’s terrible! I don’t know how to fix it but somebody should definitely fix it.”
Spoken like a true politician.
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