Scotland Indyref 2

I cannot remember what it was the tories wanted included as a cost for voting or abstaining

More police officers. Hardly, something the SNP would object to, other than having to rebalance the books.

The idea that the current SG are exemplars of good governance is laughable. The Nolan principles which underpin governance rules in UK public service organisations are:

• Selflessness: Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest.
• Integrity: Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. They should not act or take decisions in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.
• Objectivity: Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias.
• Accountability: Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this.
• Openness: Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner. Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for so doing.
• Honesty: Holders of public office should be truthful.
• Leadership: Holders of public office should exhibit these principles in their own behaviour. They should actively promote and robustly support the principles and be willing to challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.

The current SG score null points.

Hurricane – examples?

I think there is more appetite for horse trading or pacts with Tories amongst the hierarchy of Labour in Scotland than there is amongst ordinary membership

I’ll bite (though all self evident)..

Selflessness: Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest. The ongoing ferry scandal. The launch of the Glen Sannox with painted on windows to allow the then FM a moment of glory.
Integrity: Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. They should not act or take decisions in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships. Operation Branchform.
Objectivity: Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias. The £500m guarantee (and the highland estate) provided to Gupta.
Accountability: Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this. The attempts to avoid FoI legislation (and to suspend during the Covid epidemic). Currently the SG is fighting the CoS judgement in favour of the Information Commissioner re Hamilton (not mentioning the redactions in his report).
Openness: Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner. Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for so doing. See above. The mass deletions of WA messages revealed as part of the Covid enquiry.
Honesty: Holders of public office should be truthful. The former FM was found to have misled the SP by the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints.
Leadership: Holders of public office should exhibit these principles in their own behaviour. They should actively promote and robustly support the principles and be willing to challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs. The current FM’s inability to do anything about the continued presence of Michael Matheson on the SG front bench as a Cabinet Sec.

Hurrican – you are wasting your time, TJ has a huge blindspot where the SNP are concerned.  Almost nothing in Scotland is better than it was 14 years ago.

A9 dualling? A96 improvement? Rest and be Thankful. A new Forth Crossing which was planned to be unable to meet current traffic levels. Replacing a 4 lane bridge built for 1960s traffic levels with another 4 lane bridge.

“One of the fundamental aims of the Forth Replacement Crossing Project is to maintain traffic capacity at 2006 levels and not to increase capacity except through public transport improvements. “

https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-17-02563/

Mathieson attempting to bill the taxpayer for an £11k bill for watching football them lying about it when caught. Still in a top govt job. That the best the SNP can do?

Oh I am quite happy for the SNP to be called out for things they have got wrong.  What I will challenge is the spurious made up claims that appear.

the boats for example – clearly a huge cockup with layers of hubris, cover up and so on.

One of the fundamental aims of the Forth Replacement Crossing Project is to maintain traffic capacity at 2006 levels and not to increase capacity except through public transport improvements

this I agree with – where is the traffic from a  6 lane bridge going to go?.  Its well known and proven that increasing traffic capacity on roads leads to increases in traffic.  a six lane bridge would just have meant increased congestion elsewhere particularly on the roads into Edinburgh.

Mathieson should have been sacked as well – not for the cockup but as usual for the coverup.  He should have come clean, been contrite and paid up straight away then its a non story.  The ridiculous coverup he attempted should have led to his sacking for lying.

I’ll also add its time for the SNP to have a spell on the side benches out of government. Like any government after 10 or more years in power they have run out of ideas and energy and cronyism and self preservation becomes more and more prevalent.

Ive never voted SNP.

Im looking forward to the labour / tory calition that I believe willbe the next scots government.  thats gonna be fun 🙂

On a technical point:

SNP are the political party, which is different from,

Scottish Ministers, who are the cabinet, the ministers, the group of elected officials who make policy decisions, which is different from,

Scottish Government, who are the civil servants and neutral – serving the Ministers of the day.

The fact that the post above confuses and conflates all these groups does not help with credibility and I won’t start on the non-facts, misinterpretations etc.

Thank you hels. I was also twitching at some of the mixed wording and misinterpretations.

I’m an SNP member and I qgree with TJ the ferries contract is at best a shambles , they should never have been anywhere near Gupta I worked that out with a couple of hours online research. They’re also in danger of being seen as a party for the central belt, and not for the rest of Scotland. There have been successes in reducing the impact of various Westminster policies but you can’t keep doing that forever. The mps have been pretty ineffective at campaigning for independence in Westminster.
Do I want a period in opposition? No but it looks likely.
Am I here to campaign for a party that wants to run a devolved administration? No

Scottish Ministers, who are the cabinet, the ministers, the group of elected officials who make policy decisions, which is different from,

Scottish Government, who are the civil servants and neutral – serving the Ministers of the day.

Not quite the case. From the SG’s website…

The First Minister
The First Minister is head of the Scottish Government and is ultimately responsible for all policy and decisions. The First Minister:

• oversees the operation of the government and its agencies
• appoints members of the government (cabinet secretaries and ministers)
• is the principal Scottish Government figure in the Scottish Parliament

The First Minister is Humza Yousaf. The official residence of the First Minister is Bute House in Edinburgh.

The Deputy First Minister
The Deputy First Minister supports the work of the First Minister.

Cabinet secretaries
The Scottish Cabinet is made up of the senior members (cabinet secretaries) of the Scottish Government.

Ministers
Ministers are aligned to and support the work of the Scottish Cabinet.

Every Tuesday, during the Scottish Parliamentary term, the Cabinet meets to discuss the most important issues for the Scottish Government.

https://www.gov.scot/about/who-runs-government/

where is the traffic from a  6 lane bridge going to go?

6 land bridges are more learning from previous, where bridges tend to have more maintenance per mile than other roads, so an extra land either side helps to minimise distruptions.

I’ll bite

How magnanimous of you, it must have been quite the inconvenience to back up what you claimed.

@irc not sure where you got that impression, he’s a Nat but always quick to point out he’s not an SNP fan.

@argee, just as well they have two spare lanes in either direction then isn’t it?

I have no issue with attacking the SNP for stuff they have made a mess off.  what I will not accept is making stuff up to attack them ( why bother when there is real stuff) and I have real issue with those that ignore the many successes from the years they have been in power.  Of course most of those successes ar  for the poor, the sick and the elderly so right wing dogmatists hate them

Argee – thats nonsense and you must know it  Exactly the sort of nonsense that bugs me

If they had built a 6 lane bridge the bleating would be ” why waste the money on a 6 lane bridge when ll the feeder roads are 4 lane?”  or ” why not build all the roads 6 lane as well?” or some other spurious attack

name me a 6 lane bridge that feeds into 4 lane road networks anywhere

~A9 dualling – yes it needs to be done.  Now explain to me which other government functions you want to cut in order to complete this expensive infrastructure project.  Remember the scots gov has a basically fixed budget half of which goes to health

Could you give us a clear list of these SNP led SG successes to avoid any confusion?

Edit to add a helpful primer from 2021 (things have got worse since on all the metrics discussed)..

https://thinkscotland.org/2021/04/snp-record-good-bad-report/

@argee, just as well they have two spare lanes in either direction then isn’t it?

Good stuff, never been on that bridge, last time i went to Edinburgh was about 25 years ago!

Done so many times

1 alleviated the nasty 2 child benefit limit that leads to child poverty that leads to entrenched illhealth and disadvantage with the “scots child payment”

2) taken assessment for disability payments out of the hands of a private company ( who were given incentives to deny payment) to in house leading to a far fairer assessment process, vastly reduced appeals and a reduction in poverty in disability

3) opened up new railway lines and electrified the main Glasgow / Edinburgh line leading to faster and nicer train journeys and a reduction in pollution plus bringing Scotrail back into public ownereship

4) Got rid of the fake markjet in the NHS that cost 10% of the total NHS budget and then did not interfere significantly further apart from significant recruitment

5) reduced privitisation in the NHS reduciung costs

6) stopped punative parking fees on NHS premises were possible

7) avoided strikes in the NHS by paying staff better and sitting down and working with unions

8) an end to prescription charges

9) free social care fo0r the disabled and elderly

10 ) free university education – no tuition fees

11) an end to bridge tolls

12) Tax relief for small businesses

13) higher bursary for nursing students

14) minimum alcohol pricing

15) alternations to the tax system to make it more progressive despite the tax varying powers being minimal and set up in such a way as to be almost unworkable

thats just a few off the top of my head – but of course if you are a dogmatic rightwingere none of these things will be seen as the good things they are

another one – ending of “right to buy”

and mitigation of ” the bedroom tax”

land reform act and support for community buyouts

More secure lets for tenants making no fault evictions much much harder, providing security, a cap on rent rises and a stop on evictions during covid

Ill stop now 🙂

From Wikipedia – which explains it about as clearly as possible – people tend to use “Scottish Government” as short hand

The Scottish Government consists of the Scottish Ministers, which is used to describe their collective legal functions. The Scottish Government is accountable to the Scottish Parliament, which was also created by the Scotland Act 1998 with the first minister appointed by the monarch following a proposal by the Parliament. The responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament fall over matters that are not reserved in law to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Ministers are appointed by the first minister with the approval of the Scottish Parliament and the monarch from among the members of the Parliament. The Scotland Act 1998 makes provision for ministers and junior ministers, referred to by the current administration as Cabinet secretaries and ministers, in addition to two law officers: the lord advocate and the solicitor general for Scotland. Collectively the Scottish Ministers and the Civil Service staff that support the Scottish Government are formally referred to as the Scottish Administration.

IU am laughing at the use of ~”thinkscotland” as  a source – an opaquely funded rightwing unionist think tank with zero credibility 🙂 set up by a right wing figure with an axe to grind who has made a fortune out of care homes – care homes that have an appalling reputation

I thought it might be fun top unpick one issue that is often used as a stick to beat the scots government with.  Drug deaths in Glasgow..  these deaths are mainly in a small population of long term hard core heroin users which is a pretty difficult issue and of course drug policy is a reserved matter.  Scots government have made several attempts to alleviate the situation creating policies based on best evidence from worldwide experience.  Because drug policy is a reserved matter Westminster has blocked these policies and refuses to devolve drug policy.  so how is this the Scots government fault when any steps to alleviate the situation is blocked by westminster?

the cynical amongst us would say this was blocked purely to create a stick to beat the SNP with

IIRC the “shooting galleries” are now in place which is one part of the solution.  Ill bet drug deaths drop dramatically.  Its taken the best part of a decade of fighting with westminster to get this in place.

The problem I have with what @Hurricane and @IRC are saying about Scotland not being better than it was (debatable, but moot) is the implication they make that the rest of country has gotten better. That ain’t gonna fly or stand-up to any scrutiny.

The issue with the SNP and how they’ve managed Scotland is that they are the least worst option. And while Scotland may not be better than it was (again, debatable depending on how you look at it), it’s not got nearly as bad or suffered the same fall as the rest of the UK.

Do I wish Scotland was better? Yes.

Do I wish the SNP had performed better? Yes.

Are the SNP the best thing since sliced bread? No.

Will I/would I vote for them again? Yes.

By being the least worst option, are they significantly better than Tories/Labour/Lib Dems? Yes.

Am I a nationalist? No.

Do I want Scotland to be Independent of Westminster? Yes.

Can I square those seemingly contradictory thoughts? Yes. I want a modern constitution, I want shot of the royal family, I want a better voting system than FPTP, I want back into Europe, and I want to see positive, progressive change. And most of all, I want to see us transcend the notion of nationality and patriotism – nonsense concepts. Take us into a Star Trek style federation

reluctantlondener pretty much said everything I was thinking.

One point I would raise, in reply to whoever it was who said everything has gotten worse over the last 15 years, one thing that has improved is knife crime and murder rates.

Stabbings and murder are definitely down quite considerably.  15 years ago I remember Glasgow being the murder and knife crime capital of Europe.

Now, I know the SNP can’t really take credit for that.  But then they get blamed for so much stuff that they don’t really have that much control over I think it’s also fair to point to the stuff that has definitely gotten better while they have been in charge.

Personally I would like a proper federated UK in the EU with a proper modern voting system and constitution fit for the 21st century.

No one is offering that and its seems unlikely in my lifetime.

My judgement is an independent Scotland would be a better place to live than remaining anchored to the backward looking and right wing rUK.  Its not as good as a proper federated UK IMO – but its a far better prospect than remaining anchored to a sinking rUK

I am not an ideological independence supporter.  I am pragmatic based on what would improve my quality of life

there are a lot of things that have got better in Scotland over the last 15 years.  All things that improve the lot of the poor, the sick, the disabled and the elderly.  Hence none of these things are seen as good by rightwingers and are not seen by the middleclasses at all.

surprising no one has been sticking the boot in?  Yet another example of its not the crime its the cover up!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/08/scottish-health-secretary-michael-matheson-resigns-ipad-roaming-bill

TBF in that case it was the crime. Unless you think charging the taxpayer £11k for a streaming bill to watch the footie isn’t a resigning matter.

If he has said ” Oops how stupid of me, I’ll pay it back immediately” he would have got away with it

About time that arsehole got the boot for something TBF. Still remember the shit show he caused when education was his game. (well, I remember a shit show, the specifics elude me right now)

An Independent Scotland would do so much more for Scotland as a whole, especially if inserted back into the matrix.

The east coast could open up totally(and it needs it) from Peterhead to Edinburgh with ferry and freight terminals for goods coming across the north sea.

There used to have a Rosyth Zeebrugge service. We looked at using it for a short break. It didn’t add up pricewise compared to driving to Hull.  Seems the ferry service finally stopped because it wasn’t economically viable.  Independence   wouldn’t change the size of the customer  base.   I would love to be able to drive to a port in Scotland to get to Europe either with a car or a bike. I don’t think it is being part of the UK that is stopping me though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosyth_%E2%80%93_Zeebrugge_ferry_service