Gazing ahead while stopped at traffic lights near HM Theatre in Aberdeen I was flummoxed over why I was still banned from turning right.
The unpopular “no right turn” sign was still firmly in place even though council bosses had reluctantly and somewhat ungraciously agreed to drop it.
A token gesture after coming under intense fire over the hated bus gates they introduced into the city centre.
That seemed ages ago, but here it remained – an unwelcome squatter still taking up residence in the street and forcing a nonsensical detour.
Now I realise that others at the P&J were thinking the same thing as me: an article appeared asking why the “no right turn” was showing no sign of going away.
It’s bureaucratic red tape again, supposedly.
They’d move a lot faster if there was a sniff of pocketing a bus-gate fine from someone.
As the seconds ticked by at the lights, I wished they were a lot quicker collecting my recycling bin which lay sad and neglected for almost six weeks.
I never found out why; you can’t challenge managers directly these days.
As I pulled away from the lights I noticed a link to Stephen Flynn’s embarrassing double-jobbing fiasco.
A curious connection between the bus gates, former SNP council co-leader Alex Nicoll and current SNP Westminster leader Flynn.
It’s a Machiavellian serving of spaghetti, which takes some untangling.
A ‘spectacular falling out’
There has been a spectacular falling out.
Alex Nicoll quit the council in protest over the catastrophic effects of the bus gates, to the embarrassment of his SNP colleagues who control the town house jointly and foisted the gates on the public without proper consultation.
He departed with a savage parting shot in their direction.
Within weeks Aberdeen South Westminster MP Flynn was launching an audacious attempt to steal the Aberdeen South and North Kincardine Holyrood seat occupied by SNP colleague Audrey Nicoll (Alex Nicoll’s wife, as it happens).
The repercussions of that were fairly seismic: driving a damaging wedge through party loyalties.
Especially as Flynn intended to double-job as an MP and MSP which, whatever anyone says, meant he couldn’t give either job his 100 per cent attention.
The hypocrisy of it all is overpowering as the SNP previously banned double-jobbing.
Everyone knows that it’s an impossible balancing act.
Even Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) knew it while juggling her career with motherhood in award-winning sitcom Motherland.
Her boss told her, “We are getting rid of Viv, you can have her job, too.”Julia replies,
“But my workload is too much already, I can’t do two jobs.”
And you might remember another former Aberdeen council leader who quit the town house after winning a Westminster seat, and was quoted as saying it was because he couldn’t do two jobs at once.
Who was that? Flynn himself, of course.
He’s finally backed down from trying to keep both jobs if he won; something everybody else could see apart from him – worryingly.
Including me, one of his constituents, whose eyebrows are now stuck permanently to the top of my head over this stupidity.
But the issue of trampling over Audrey Nicoll remains.
Swinney is at the helm of a ship holed under the waterline, but as caretaker manager it’s not unrealistic to assume he’s keeping the seat warm for Flynn.
If Flynn did become the new SNP leader he would have his work cut out to turn the tide of failure of his predecessors over two decades.
A hard slog as he has to unify the party first.
After his tussle to oust Ian Blackford in Westminster and now targeting Audrey Nicoll, that’s actually a tall order when grievances and mixed loyalties fester.
Flynn might be the breath of fresh air the party needs
Flynn might indeed be the breath of fresh air the party needs as it crumbles under the weight of past failures and recrimination.
As all gardeners know, you have to be ruthless with the pruners to make things rosy.
Double-jobbing nonsense exposed a flaw in Flynn’s judgment.
And his leadership credentials were not helped by flippant arrogance over the latest farce to engulf Scotland’s Health Secretary Neil Gray.
Dons fan Gray was quite rightly forced into a humiliating apology for misusing a government limo, and his position, to attend prestigious Aberdeen matches.
Dundee United fan Flynn quipped that the only “scandal” for him was that Gray went to “far too many Aberdeen games”.
It was ill-judged: the sort of comment which would sound better on a football coach with his mates.
This Machiavellian plotting clearly has a long way to go before the Holyrood parliamentary elections in 2026.
But it seems inevitable that Flynn’s potential flight of fancy to Edinburgh will be a turbulent journey.
David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal
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