IT was all needle at FMQs. Jackson Carlaw wanted to know why pensioners weren’t getting their fancy-dan flu jabs.
The over-75s had been promised “adjuvanted trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine” for Christmas, and delicious adjuvanted trivalent inactivated influenza they must have.
Winter was coming, and very possibly a snap election. Did the First Minister not realise the Scottish Tories didn’t have a voter to spare?
Why, one 85-year-old nana hadn’t even got a date for getting a dose pitchforked into her. It was an outrage!
Ms Sturgeon was unmoved. She’d seen these hiccups before, back in the day when she was health secretary, overseeing the mortality stats.
“There are adequate supplies of vaccine in Scotland overall,” she reassured him. It just wasn’t where it was needed. “There will be local mismatches between supply and demand for a variety of reasons.”
Curiously, the thought of boxes stacked in sheds, byres and privies round the country didn’t calm the Tory leader.
Could the FM guarantee all his ballot-owners would get the hypodermic of their dreams?
The aTIV vaccine was this year’s must-have med. Think of the empty stockings.
Ms Sturgeon had had enough. “I say this to Jackson Carlaw gently...” she snarled.
“There is no need to be gentle,” Mr Carlaw shot back. He needn’t have worried.
“This is a serious issue,” the FM went on. “It is incumbent on all of us to raise and not undermine public confidence.”
Given the needle right between the eyes, Mr Carlaw looked suitably deflated.
The session ended with a vision of the apocalypse.
Nat Bill Kidd raised reports of 500 “safety events” at Faslane since 2006, which didn’t sound very safe at all
The FM said it was “a stark reminder of the potentially disastrous consequence” of having giant tubes of mega-death overby. “There should not be nuclear weapons on the Clyde, and the sooner that Scotland is a nuclear weapon-free country the better!”
SNP MSPs clapped themselves loudly on the back. Say what you like about plutonium, it does wonders for one’s moral superiority.
But then Jackie ‘Bomber’ Baillie spoiled the fun by raising a point of order. The Labour MSP has Faslane in her seat, and like most things evil, it’s a big employer.
“I’m sure the FM would not want to mislead the chamber intentionally,” she purred, but only two of the 500 events were of the most serious kind, and the last was in 2007.
“I’m sure the FM will want to praise the staff and trade unions at Faslane for constantly improving the culture of safety,” she smiled.
At which the Tories cheered their pro-nuclear comrade, the Nats went ape over the Tories, and all sense of decorum went out the window. If only there was a vaccine against it.
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