By Rab Bruce’s Spider

The Daily Telegraph has confirmed what most of us already knew; that the mainstream media will say pretty much anything to smear the SNP because of the threat it presents to the established order. Yes, it’s Welliegate, a shocking tale of Scotland’s First Minister daring to wear an expensive jacket and costly wellies when visiting the victims of the floods in Aberdeenshire. How dare she, an alleged Socialist, wear expensive wellies? This, if the Telegraph is to be believed, is proof that the SNP are hypocritical in their claims to want a more socially just society.

Wow! Quite apart from the pathetic inanity of this sort of claim, we should be grateful to the Daily Telegraph for showing us just how low the Establishment is prepared to go in order to smear its opponents. Of course, the Telegraph failed to notice the real issues of the story, which were that Nicola Sturgeon actually met flood victims and announced a fund to pay each of them three times the amount the UK Government is paying victims of floods in England and Wales. Not that £1,500 can possibly replace the household items and personal effects lost in the floods but it does at least show a willingness to help. Hopefully the Scottish Government will also allocate more funds to flood defences to prevent a reoccurrence of this calamity.

But the Telegraph chose, instead, to make snide remarks about the First Minister’s choice of wellies. Needless to say, this has backfired on social media where several people have pointed out that the prices quoted in the Telegraphs’ article are those from an expensive London store and not necessarily applicable in Scotland or in cheaper alternative outlets. Not that the price really matters because what the Telegraph was trying to do was portray Nicola Sturgeon as a closet posh toff who is out of touch with the ordinary people of Scotland and who is quite prepared to take advantage of her salary to enjoy luxury items which are out of the reach of many people. It is a stunningly stupid argument, born of the belief that anyone with socialist values thinks everyone in the country should be poor. This is simply a misrepresentation of the issue. Nicola Sturgeon is well paid for doing a difficult and challenging job. Why should she not spend her money as she sees fit? As for her socialist values, the view of the likes of the Daily Telegraph and its Tory/UKIP readers is based on their own values of greed and selfishness. They cannot comprehend that it is perfectly possible to earn a lot of money and still be concerned that the majority of people in the country are not earning enough. They believe that a Socialist wants to take everything away from the wealthy and redistribute it to create a level playing field. But that is not what the poorer people in society want. It’s not an absolute levelling they are crying out for, just a shifting of the balance so that they have more than they have just now and that the wealthy lose a little of their income in order to help society as a whole. It is not a Communist revolution we want, just a fairer society where everyone in the country could afford to buy a pair of expensive wellies if they wanted to.

This is not the first time the media has attempted to smear Nicola Sturgeon in this way. There were howls of outrage when her expensive coffee maker was seen in a TV documentary, as if this, too, were proof of her high living. The truth is, though, that most of the people of Scotland couldn’t care less what sort of coffee maker or wellies she buys. They are more concerned with whether she is doing a good job as First Minister and, if the polls of leader approval ratings are to be believed, she is doing a better job than the leaders of any other UK political Party.

Image is important, of course, but the public are not as daft as the media likes to think. When David Cameron sent one of his lackeys out to buy a cheap pair of wellies for him because he didn’t want to appear too posh when filmed visiting flood areas in England, it is unlikely that anyone watching was fooled into thinking Cameron is not a millionaire. But Nicola Sturgeon’s image is about far more than wellies and most Scots know this.

Still, let’s hope the media continue to come up with this type of personal attack because it shows they know they have lost the real argument. The UK is a failing state, a plutocracy rather than a democracy, where the media sees its role as to preserve the rule of the wealthy. The subliminal message of the Telegraph’s article is that ordinary people should not aspire to wear expensive wellies because these are the preserve of the upper classes. That’s not the sort of country most ordinary people want to live in. We want a country where we can all wear whatever wellies we like. And, let’s face it, the way the climate is changing, we’ll all need expensive wellies soon.