Wee Burney promised Police Scotland her 'full co-operation' with the investigation into her (ex) husband's theft of more than £400,000 from SNP funds.
Yet after being interviewed for seven hours, she flatly refused to answer a single question.
On the advice of her lawyer, Sturgeon claimed, she would only offer a repeated 'No Comment', like some Glaswegian gangster being given the Third Degree on Taggart.
So while Peter Murrell does his time in Barlinnie, the notorious Bar-L – or, more likely, some cushy country club open prison with a nine-hole golf course – Wee Burney is still free as a bird, even though she's now thoroughly discredited and indeed despised by many of those in the party she used to lead.
I put (ex) in brackets because all the crimes Murrell has admitted took place while the couple were still married and living under the same roof.
So either she's the least curious woman in the world or was happy to turn a blind eye to the conveyor belt of luxury goods turning up at the house almost daily without bothering to ask where the money came from.
About the only thing missing was a cuddly toy.
Didn't they do well!
After stepping down as First Minister, Sturgeon had her lucrative future on the celebrity circuit all mapped out – TV punditry, stage shows with the novelist Val McDermid, guest appearance on Two Doors Down, etc.
While Peter Murrell does his time in Barlinnie, Nicola Strurgeon is still free as a bird, even though she's now despised by many of those in the party she used to lead
I suppose Love Island is out of the question, but after her brush with the law which ended without charge, I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! has to be an option. And she'd be nailed on for the next series of The Traitors.
There's always Celebrity Mastermind, with Clive Myrie, although she'd probably insist on being accompanied by her brief. I imagine it would go something like this….
Our next contestant is Nicola Sturgeon, formerly First Minister of Scotland. And your specialist subject is…?
No comment.
Nicola Sturgeon, you have two minutes to answer questions on…
No comment.
Starting now. When your husband drove home in an £80,000 Jaguar i-Pace, didn't you wonder how he managed to afford it?
No comment.
What about the £124,000 Niesmann+ Bischoff motorhome he parked at his mother's house, claiming it had been purchased as an official SNP battle bus? Weren't you surprised when it didn't turn up during the election campaign?
No comment.
Why did you need four top-of-the-range coffee machines, one of which cost more than £3,200?
No comment.
Did you not notice the £3,192 Frank Smythson tea set and vanity bureau or the Joseph Joseph designer bread bin in the kitchen?
No comment.
How about the £2,600 Lalique Feuilles salt and pepper grinders? What's wrong with John Lewis?
No comment.
Sturgeon has continued to maintain she was unaware her husband, the party's chief executive, was robbing the SNP donors blind to the tune of more than £400,000
When your husband bought a Celestron NexStar 8SE computerised Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope costing £1,200, didn't you ask him a) why he needed it, and b) how he could afford it?
No comment.
The Husqvarna robotic lawnmower, £3,070, including installation? The special edition, gold-plated Beatles fountain pen and rollerball, another £1,475? Oh, or the other two fountain pens, one a Mont Blanc, costing the thick end of six grand?
No comment.
The silver wine coaster, £3,500, Le Creuset champagne and sparkling wine bottle opener, and the £2,495 jewellery box? Did you ever use them?
No comment.
Not one but three Wusthof manicure sets, £193.70? Do you do your own nails, or go to that Korean nail bar on the High Street like everyone else?
No comment.
Eight umbrellas, two grand? You must have noticed them cluttering up your hallway. In your world, it obviously never rains but it pours.
No comment.
How about the gold pendant he bought you on Shetland? You've been photographed wearing that.
No comment.
Your ex husband also bought two Ideal Standard toilet seats. Have you got his'n'hers khazis, or do you travel with your own toilet seat, like King Charles?
No comment.
You appear to have more pairs of high-heeled shoes than Imelda Marcos. Were any of them bought using SNP funds?
No comment.
As First Minister and party leader you have overall responsibility for finances, yet you consistently and angrily denied there were any irregularities…
No comment.
I've started so I'll finish. At meetings of the NEC you warned the so-called 'awkward squad' to stop asking difficult questions.
No comment.
Yet you continue to maintain that you were blissfully unaware your husband, the party's chief executive, one half with you of 'Scotland's Power Couple', was robbing the SNP donors blind to the tune of more than £400,000 – most of the proceeds of which ended up under your own roof?
No comment.
And at the end of the round, Nicola Sturgeon, you have scored no points and 18 No comments. You do not have to say anything more, but it may harm your defence…
No comment.
And can we have our next contestant. Your name, please...
Peter Mandelson.
And your specialist subject is…?
No comment.
More than one million, and rising, 16 to 24-year olds are not currently in education, employment or training. They’re known as the NEETs, and things are only going to get worse unless the law and welfare systems are reformed urgently.
That’s the stark warning from both the former Blairite minister Alan Milburn and the Centre for Social Justice think-tank.
It comes as a new report says that non-EU mass immigration is being fuelled by the need to fill low-wage jobs which British youngsters can’t, won’t or are being prevented from doing.
Thousands who could work are being forced straight from school or college to a life on benefits, from which they may never escape. Contributory factors include Labour’s National Insurance increases, higher minimum wages, the ban on zero hours contracts and laws which prevent people working below a certain age.
I hadn’t realised until now that everyone today has to stay in education or training until they are 18.
As Ian Dury might have remarked: What a waste. These days there’s no call for a ticket man at Fulham Broadway Station.
It wasn’t always thus. I got my first paper round at 11 – though the legal age then was 13, no one cared.
I did short-lived grocery and milk rounds and talked my way into a job as a DJ in a club behind a pub when I was 15. I started work proper on a local rag as a cub reporter after leaving school at 16.
This wasn’t untypical. Kids everywhere did before- and after-school jobs. With boys it was paper/milk rounds, while the girls did Saturday shifts in sweet shops and hairdressers and stacked shelves in supermarkets. We all learned the value of work and earned a few bob into the bargain.
Those were the days when you’d see notices reading ‘Smart Boy Wanted’ in the windows of local businesses. Low wages were our starter for ten, preparing us for life in the real world.
Today, most of those avenues are closed, either by ‘safeguarding’ laws, or because printed newspaper circulations have fallen, no one delivers milk any more, traditional shops are being forced out of business by high taxes and red tape, and mollycoddling parents are reluctant to let their kids out of their sight, fearing nonces round every corner.
Youngsters themselves, especially during Covid, have become used to staring at their phones, dreaming of a lucrative, soft life as an ‘influencer’.
That’s how we’ve ended up importing millions of migrants instead. Milburn says there may soon be 1.25 million NEETs. AI is already swallowing up low-skilled jobs.
Unless things change quickly, I’m not even sure what kind of work they’re going to be out of.
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