How To Succeed In Scotland
…Without Really Trying, Or Even Being Slightly Competent.
We should probably just make this a list.
But first it’s worth digressing for a moment to note where the new Head of Defence Medical Command comes to his new position from.
The Elanic Hospital is a private institution which opened last year, offering a wide range of vital healthcare services to the good townspeople of Scotland’s largest city, including such intriguing procedures as a “Mummy Makeover” (which we presume doesn’t just involve being wrapped in bandages) and a “Brazilian Butt Lift”, which – particularly in the context of the hospital’s web page below – sounds like an exotic and challenging sex position.
Leitch’s time as the National Clinical Director for Scotland was beset by all manner of controversy. He was in post when large numbers of known COVID patients were sent into care homes for the elderly, leading to thousands of avoidable deaths, and dodged any accountability at the public inquiry by having deleted all his WhatsApp messages.
Professor Leitch – the title is an honorary one from Dundee and Strathclyde universities, like his honorary Consultancy at Glasgow Dental Hospital – is also the subject of anger from the families of patients harmed by rogue surgeon Sam Eljamel.
But going from a series of scandals to the board of a cash-raking fanny-flap hospital is no barrier to high office in Scotland, because once you’re on the Scottish civic-society gravy train it’s a ticket for life.
You could ask digital guru Jonathan Cameron.
You could ask Jamie Dunlop, who oversaw the disastrous failures of safeguarding at the Scottish Youth Parliament, where SNP sex predator Jordan Linden got his start in child molesting, but walked straight into another cushy third-sector role.
You could of course ask Leslie Evans.
Or you could ask Kezia Dugdale, one of Scotland’s most prominent serial failures at everything she’s ever attempted, who nevertheless currently holds the grand and well-remunerated title of Professor Of Practice In Public Service and Co-Director/Associate Director of the John Smith Centre For Public Policy at the University Of Glasgow, in a role that involves doing nobody actually knows what.
(In her spare time she’s also on the board of the Electoral Reform Society, which is doubtless why there’s been so much successful electoral reform in recent years.)
Or you could ask Shirley-Anne Somerville, who’s now been a government minister for over a decade despite being measurably awful at everything.
We could go on. But in truth there’s nothing unusual about Jason Leitch. He’s just a run-of-the-mill player in a tiny clique of Scottish individuals who are never held to account for their failures, but just get shuffled around the pack and quietly stuff their pockets with cash until their feather-bedded retirements, because apparently Scotland is a nation that – with just two known honourable exceptions – can no longer produce a single competent or responsible administrator.
So we’re sorry, readers, that we can’t say we’re glad to be back from a highly enjoyable fortnight off. Because it’s business as usual in Scotland, and that’s shitty business.
