Two weeks ago, the Scottish Government announced its intention to use the health crisis to purloin more power for itself. The blatant bare faced arrogance of it was breathtakingly yet so ineffective and compliant is the fourth estate that this shameless seizure of power barely registered in the main stream media.
The follow up, earlier this week was the announcement of an alliance with a minority party, the Scottish Greens. The clear aim was to consolidate power and to use the threat of a climate crisis to slip further into soft totalitarianism. The leader of the party, Patrick Harvie, is a regional list MSP. He is not a constituency MSP. That means that, in the hybrid voting system we have in Scotland, he has been elected because of his position in the party. No one, in effect, voted for him. His allegiance is to the party and not the constituency. Now he and his colleague have seats in the government of our nation. You just have to watch a few minutes of the parliament video (https://youtu.be/Wqj4IibnyjQ) to see him lick his lips and be aware that he is the one who is now in charge.
On Wednesday, it was the announcement on vaccine passports. This means that the government will have power over what you can and cannot do, dependent on the disclosure of personal information relating to your personal health. This was the sort of information that was previously private and confidential and jealously guarded. No one had the right to know or ask about what medical interventions you might have had. It was private. It was your body. Now the government will have that right to know, provided, of course you decide not to play the game and are not interested in going to a night club, a football match, a concert, a rally, get on a train of a bus or go to a supermarket. In other words, just about anything.
Yes I know, it has to be ratified by parliament “signed off” as the media amusingly puts it. But It’s a done deal. We know that. Any opposition to it is likely to be muted and those who are willing to speak out will be quickly shouted down. The movers and shakers have learned a lot from their successes in the past while, the introduction of same sex marriage being a case in point. (https://wordpress.com/post/crawfordmackenzie.net/95) They know that to come out with an outrageous directive like this would be seen for what it is, a violation of personal freedom, unjustifiable discriminatory and a naked form of apartheid. So, they introduce it by a drip drip process, bit by bit, leak by leak, giving the impression that it is just about night clubs…and we can do without them. That way the population are softened up and anyone who raised concerns can be dealt with in the usual way, by ad-hominin name calling.
So that is it, three moves, all in quick succession and together a great leap forward in the progress towards the new normal.
Restless Spirit 
I kinda think you don’t understand the Scottish parliamentary system. Someone like Harvie should be responsive to the regional voters. I regularly contact my list MSPs as well as my constituency one. As to being loyal to party rather than voters I don’t think it is Whataboutery to point out that, certainly in the case of the Tories and Labour in Scotland, it is pretty much a constant, especially since in these two cases the line of real party authority goes south of the Scottish border. I rather think that on this point you have rather bought into the reactive hysteria in the tabloid conservative press.
Yes, I concede and yes that will be right. It just seemed interesting that a list MP from a minority party could be in the government. I do understand how the system works but am not necessarily convinced it is a good one. As for the “buying into the hysteria”, on this one, I heard or read nothing from anyone left or right on it. All I saw was the parliament video and that was what struck me.
While clearly astute politicians, as Nicola Sturgeon certainly is and Ruth Wishart was, I always had the feeling that no one really knew what they were actually doing. Patrick Harvie on the other hand seemed to know exactly what he was doing and when I saw the video with him sitting directly behind the First Minster in parliament, I had a wry smile. I didn’t see any strings but I imagined he was pulling them.