Fringe politicians David McLetchie and Margo McDonald are playing rent-a-quote in today’s Evening Labour Rag.
The story is about the Scottish Executive Government spending ₤90,000 on a campaign to send information packs on preventing the spread of infections through simple measures like hand-washing to every local authority nursery and primary school in Scotland.
Ian Swanson, their Scottish Political Reporter must have a slow news day or all his labour lackeys are taking advantage of some freebie and haven’t phoned him up. He calls this 90K a splash in an obvious hit on the Scottish Nose Pickers for no reason at all.
Anyhoo, two of Edinburgh’s MSPs decided that as Swanson had taken the time out from Labour party meetings to give them a call they would join him in knocking what we see as a worthwhile programme.
Edinburgh Pentlands Tory MSP David McLetchie said: “In my day it was parents who told their children to wash their hands and stressed the importance of doing so.
“It should not need an expensive government information campaign to teach young children the basics of personal hygiene.
McLetchie should bloody well know better – his wife is a sister in the ERI. The government spends millions and millions of pounds in hospitals throughout the country telling doctors and nurses to wash their hands and it seems that is not getting through to people with degrees, so the government spend even more millions and millions on hospital acquired diseases. A truly stupid comment from an MSP but hopefully his wife will give him a slap round the head when he gets home this evening.
And independent Lothians MSP Margo MacDonald said the Government should look at what value for money it was getting from other health education campaigns.
She said: “They are already spending a lot of money on information campaigns that should be carrying this message.
“It should be parents that tell children to wash their hands. As part of toilet training children should learn about washing their hands.”
Well what we have said above about hospial acquired diseases etc this makes the people’s Margo look quite the fool as well especially as she has recently spent a fair bit of time in hospital herself and will see the millions of signs all over the place.
Please MSPs, just because you are pissed off because you are not in power and start throwing a “Ewan” – it doesn’t mean you don’t have to think before you open your big gobs and put your stupid foot in it. We are 100% certain that the electorate of Scotland think that the ₤90,000 spent on reinforcing handwashing in the kids is money a lot better spent that the money that is put in your bank accounts at the end of the month.
More Info: Ministers splash £90k on school hand-washing blitz
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