A DAILY Mail columnist and former press secretary to the Tory leadership has called Nicola Sturgeon an “overstuffed little haggis”.
Amanda Platell, who worked as communications boss under William Hague during his time as the head of the Conservatives, also said she would be happy to see Scotland “infested with rats”.
She made the comments during a segment on GB News.
In a discussion entitled “Broken Britain” on a show hosted by Dan Wootton, Platell claimed there was “one thing which gave [her] great hope” amid the pressures of the cost-of-living crisis.
She told GB News viewers: “With this huge union strike in Scotland which started in Edinburgh, now that the streets are getting infested with rats. Did you know that a rat, from the moment it gets pregnant, has up to 12 babies in 12 weeks.
“So by the end of August, now that all the litter’s been all around, the whole place is, Nicola Sturgeon – that overstuffed little haggis – is going to have her whole country infested with rats.”
“That is my silver lining,” she added.
'Nicola Sturgeon, that overstuffed little haggis, is going to have her country infested with rats.' Daily Mail Columnist Amanda Platell reacts to the ongoing bin strikes in Scotland. pic.twitter.com/7Hpu7EO46C
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 24, 2022
Wootton responded that the First Minister needed to have a “big wake-up call because she’s been a terrible leader of Scotland”.
Edinburgh has made the headlines amid an ongoing strike over pay among refuse workers. Politicians on both sides of the constitutional argument have pointed fingers at one another over who is to blame as rubbish has piled up on the streets of Scotland’s capital.
Trade union Unite confirmed that the strike action among waste service workers would spread to other Scottish councils in late August and into September.
Other councils seeing strikes from August 24 to August 31 include Aberdeen City, Angus, Dundee, East Ayrshire, East Lothian, East Renfrewshire, Falkirk, Glasgow, Highland, Inverclyde, South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, and West Lothian.
A total of 19 councils are expecting further waste service strikes from September 6 to 13.
Unite's Wendy Dunsmore said the industrial action was a "direct response to the abject failure by both Cosla and the Scottish Government to fund a fair pay offer particularly for the lowest paid".
Incidentally, Platell’s claims about rats were wrong. A standard black or brown rat has a gestation period of between 21 and 24 days – not 12 weeks.
