HMS Queen Elizabeth visits Western Scotland for the first time – Gov.uk

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The Royal Navy’s Fleet Flagship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, has arrived in Glen Mallan, Scotland, as part of final preparations before her first operational deployment.

Sailing in along the Firth of Clyde, the 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier has spent the last two weeks at sea testing and trialling her latest equipment, before berthing at the new Northern Ammunition Jetty for a routine onload of operational stores.

HMS Queen Elizabeth is the first of the Royal Navy’s fleet to visit the new £64 million facility, built by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).

Operated by Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) through Defence Munitions, the Northern Ammunition Jetty is specifically designed to support the surface fleet, allowing them to continue entering and berthing at Glen Mallan.

UK’s Covid-19 vaccine programme shows ‘success of the Union’, says Alister Jack – Yahoo News

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Scotland would still be in the “vice-like grip” of coronavirus if it had followed SNP advice on vaccinations, a UK Government minister has claimed.

Scottish Secretary Alister Jack hailed the vaccination programme against the virus as being a success for the UK.

He insisted: “Had we followed the SNP’s advice on vaccines and waited for the flat-footed EU, we would still be in the vice-like grip of the pandemic instead of confidently looking forward to better days.

“There can be no more eloquent expression of the success of the Union than this brilliant UK-wide approach.”

The UK, Mr Jack said, has developed a “Covid-19 vaccination programme that is the envy of the world”.

He described this as being as a “truly astonishing achievement” and on a “scale that dwarfs anything since the war”.

Why things could be about to get worse for Nicola Sturgeon – The Scotsman

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It might be a different world to how most Scottish people see things or what they face every day, but believe me, it is challenging – and it’s just about to get even more difficult.

As I anticipated in this column last week, Labour leader Anas Sarwar, being a Glasgow Southsider, has decided he will indeed stand against Sturgeon in her constituency of that name.