DON’T believe the hype! It’s a sound rule of thumb in politics.
Remember once-in-a-generation vote? Another £350m for the NHS? Boris Johnson’s marriage vows?
But now and again you need to believe, as Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf learned to his cost after he waved away warnings about the terrible nick of Scotland’s nicks.
That police officers had posted photographs and videos of rampant rot and disrepair on social media didn’t appear to matter to him.
Facts, trifling facts and evidence. All very tiresome and off-message.
“Describing police stations as ‘falling apart’ is unhelpful hyperbole,” he drawled on Tuesday after MSPs pointed out the problems.
Three hours later a ceiling caved-in at his local cop shop in Broughty Ferry and it shut on health and safety grounds. Unhelpful, one might say.
At FMQs, Tory leader Jackson Carlaw asked Nicola Sturgeon for a second opinion on the police estate.
“Water pouring in through ceilings and windows, mushrooms growing in the carpets and rats scurrying about the mouldy floors - what word would the FM use to describe the state of some of Scotland’s police stations?”
Ms Sturgeon really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
After all, everyone loves a nice shower, and what could be as healthy and relaxing as rainwater?
Hadn’t he heard vermin-friendly, irrigated cells are the future?
And once you’ve had justice al fresco there’s no going back.
Far worse was the whiff of Tory perfidy stinging her flared nostrils.
Mr Carlaw had “something of a nerve” to even mention police funding when the UK Government had cut Scotland’s budget and slashed police numbers south of the border.
“We will take no lectures from the Conservatives on matters of public services,” she said.
The blue benches groaned like the sodden plaster over a custody suite.
At FMQs, “no lectures” is the lamest, corniest line of defence.
“The cliché meter was ringing loud there, was it not?” Mr Carlaw quipped, noting “the one word that she did not use was ‘hyperbole’.”
The Police Federation, Scotland's top fuzz union, said warnings about lousy working conditions had been ignored for years, he went on.
“Who is right - the Scottish Police Federation or Mr Yousaf?”
Ms Sturgeon conspicuously did not say it was her Justice Secretary.
Instead, she thanked the police for all their hard work under pressure.
Snorkelling around the office really takes it out of you.
Mr Carlaw was unimpressed.
Scotland’s budget was rising again and what was there to show for it?
“Leaking police stations and collapsing ceilings; half-built ferries; boarded-up hospitals and closed-off children’s wards; and a crisis in Scotland’s schools,” he railed.
Years of missed chances from “a distracted, disengaged government”, yet still Ms Sturgeon wanted to bang on about independence, he said.
The FM scoffed. She’d take no lectures. That was all just hype.
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