The idea Scotland has handled Covid well is a PR con job – Kevan Christie

The Scottish Government seems to have convinced some people it’s handled Covid well. Kevan Christie disagrees.

Sport for the socially distant: Tennis is set to be allowed again (Picture: Ian Georgeson)

I remember as a teenager often being told that I couldn’t do something and when I asked why was given the answer “because”. Of course being naturally inquisitive and a bit annoying, I would pursue this reason to get to the bottom of why I couldn’t stay at a friend’s house, go to a football match or attempt to get into an over-18s’ discotheque – well it was the early 80s.

The answer to this follow-up question was “just because” which left me even more frustrated at being denied the thing I desperately wanted to do. It actually became a joke in our house with my old man telling me and my younger brother that we had to learn to accept “because” as an answer. Character building.

This did little to shake my conviction that most adults should be ignored at every opportunity until they imparted something genuinely useful – money, for instance, or chocolate.

I imagine this is how golfers, tennis players, bowlers, people who fish and those who like nothing better than to mooch around Dobbies must have felt the past fortnight or so and I sense their frustrations.

Oor Nicola, the self-anointed Mother of the Nation during this time of crisis, had spoken and said you’re all staying in – no questions asked. “But my cousins in England are allowed oot.”

That nice dentist guy, Professor Jason Leitch, the self-styled man of the people who appears on Off the Ball with Tam Cowan and Stuart Cosgrove and can speak fluent jakey said so as well.

“But why can’t we play golf when it’s so easy to social distance and there’s loads of folk queuing outside Lidl?”

“Because.”

“But why can’t we play when golfers in England have been doing so since 13 May and courses in Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic opened this week?”

“Just because.”

Now I know the answer as to why golfers, tennis players and the like aren’t allowed to play isn’t really “because” but it’s easy to see why it seemed like that once you’ve gone through their perfectly reasonable logic.

Both sports have in-built social distancing as a matter of course and in the case of tennis a wipedown of the racket and no handshakes before you head home would make for love all round.

It must be frustrating for golfers to see their courses being used by others in the pursuit of having good walks unspoiled and the like.

I wandered round a course near me the other day and was shocked to see a couple building a sandcastle in a bunker, a pipe band practicing on the 3rd tee and the Little Twinkles dance troupe being put through their paces on the 18th green.

I paused to talk to the chap riding his Penny Farthing who told me he’d been coming here since lockdown began and had found over 200 golf balls to date. Bravo.

But of course this is now about to be firmly in the past tense and in the past tense it shall remain.

Rejoice, for all of the above are being allowed from 28 May or a few days later after Oor Nicola addressed a grateful nation and announced “Scotland’s route map through and out of the crisis”. Freedom. Ya beauty – bowlers gonna be bowling – let the games begin.

The sickening death rate from the Billy Ray Cyrus has fallen for the third week in a row and despite the all-important R number still hovering between 0.7 and one, our glorious leader has decided enough is enough and the nation needs to get back to drinking in parks.

As I write, #ThankYouNicola is trending on Twitter and Sturgeon’s popularity is soaring having successfully pulled off one of the biggest PR con jobs of all time on the truly gullible.

They’ll be studying this at universities, I tell ye.

I am of course referring to the incredible notion advanced by huge swathes of mainly independence supporters that the Scottish Government has somehow handled the Covid-19 crisis well – when all the evidence points to an unmitigated disaster that has left thousands dead.

“Aye, but Westminster’s worser...” and so it goes. Unfortunately the media have been complicit in this charade.

No-one and I mean no-one has asked if spending £43m on an empty hospital that has not treated a single patient, as was revealed earlier this week, was a good idea in the case of the NHS Louisa Jordan-definitely-not-Nightingale emergency hosser in Glesga. Strictly verboten.

Oor Nicola was “absolutely delighted” with this news and as a keen bookworm was no doubt channeling the spirit of Colonel Cathcart in this Catch-22 type situation.

At least by default, it now looks like NHS Louisa will be put to good use dealing with the soon-to-be-urgent, non-urgent healthcare.

That money, a healthy chunk of change, would have been better spent providing much-needed PPE for the care homes where the full scale of the tragedy has been laid bare. Anyway, at least we’re finally being “distracted” by the testing.

In the interests of research, I went for a test at a sports centre in Glenrothes on Tuesday afternoon. The place was completely empty apart from me and four nervous-looking squaddies.

I swabbed the place where my tonsils used to live before shoving the wee stick up my nose and putting my underpants on my head.

The result came back a day later – I tested negative for Covid and positive for hypochondria. Over and out – have a gid weekend.