
Swinney sails into trouble over ferries fiasco
In the circumstances, it was brave of John Swinney to mount a robust defence of the SNP's record on ferries for the Clyde and Hebridean service at first minister's questions this week. Brave and, indeed, bold.
Brave because this week the state-owned shipyard Ferguson Marine confirmed there would be a further delay in delivering the MV Glen Rosa to the state-owned ferry company on behalf of the state-owned commissioning agency.
The cursed Glen Rosa will not sail this year and the cost of its construction has increased by up to another £35 million. All in, it will have taken a decade and £460 million to build it and its sister ferry, the MV Glen Sannox. A bargain at any price.
And bold as well because,
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Scottish Sun
an hour ago
- Scottish Sun
SNP's blame game and ‘grievance' politics is out of control – voters are fed up
Anyone following public debate will have been aware of this dreary, dismal sound for the past decade or so CHRIS MUSSON SNP's blame game and 'grievance' politics is out of control – voters are fed up A DARK cloud has lingered over Scotland for years now – pumped out and replenished daily by the doom-mongering SNP. With less than 11 months until the 2026 Holyrood elections, the daily drumbeat of despair from the machinery commanded by Nats chiefs is starting to grow ever louder. 2 Chris Musson has his say on the SNP's blame game rhetoric under John Swinney Credit: Andrew Barr 2 The First Minister recently said Scotland is 'prey to a broken system and a failing economic model' Credit: Alamy Anyone following public debate will have been aware of this dreary, dismal sound for the past decade or so. More often than not, it emanates from the industrial-scale, taxpayer-funded grievance machine which the Scottish Government has morphed into under recent incarnations of the SNP. The person currently at the control panel, twiddling the dials of misery and blame, is Captain Glass Half Empty himself, First Minister John Swinney. Those who don't tune into Scottish politics may be blissfully unaware of the gloom and grumbles. I envy them. They may even think that Scotland is a pretty good place to live in the grand scheme of things. Which it is. Despite being tuned in daily, as a journalist, I sometimes forget about the monotonous moaning, given it's become like background noise. But every now and then, the beat grows louder, the shrieking more hysterical, making you sit up and pay attention. Recently, that's happened again, with Swinney's return to focusing on independence ahead of next year's election. The 'grievance' dial has been turned up to ten, culminating in Swinney's deranged, paranoid drivel in a self-billed 'keynote' speech last week. Fresh from an event where he claimed the 'status quo is broken' - ignoring the fact he has been the status quo since 2007 - Swinney dusted off the decades-old nationalist playbook. John Swinney defends Gray's car use after minister was 'driven to pub' He told an Edinburgh audience that Scotland has been left to 'thrive on what amounts at worst to poison pills and at best policy scraps from the UK table'. We are an 'afterthought' for Westminster, he complained - ignoring the fact that devolution means that we are, by and large, left to our own affairs with key services. As the SNP says it wants. And with a bizarre, anti-capitalist flourish, Swinney claimed Scotland was 'prey to a broken system and a failing economic model'. Has he got one eye on another coalition with the Scottish Greens next year? Or maybe Swinney has been coming out with this nonsense for so long he actually believes it. Find out what's really going on Register now for our free weekly politics newsletter for an insightful and irreverent look at the (sometimes excruciating) world of Scottish Politics. Every Thursday our hotshot politics team goes behind the headlines to bring you a rundown of key events - plus insights and gossip from the corridors of power, including a 'Plonker' and 'Star' of the Week. Sign up now and make sure you don't miss a beat. The politicians would hate that. SIGN UP FOR FREE NOW After all, this is the man who, in 2001, appears to have invented the SNP's claim that rivals think Scotland is 'too wee, too poor, too stupid' to be independent - a charge levelled only by the SNP. What Swinney actually said all those years ago, during his first, disastrous stint as SNP leader, was that Labour and Tories were 'terrified of the idea that the lives of millions of Scots would be improved if control of Scottish resources were in Scottish hands'. He then said: 'And that is why they will always say we are too stupid and too poor to be trusted to run the affairs of our own country.' Swinney's frankly bonkers suggestion - in 2001, and now - that leaders in England desire and indeed plot for Scotland to be impoverished and miserable is the kind of zoomery you might get from a basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist. This sort of nonsense has a ceiling in terms of public support. We're seeing that now, borne out by polls showing the SNP nowhere near a majority next year. Listening to Swinney last week, I found myself asking a question which the SNP of 2025 should also ask itself: Is this really what we want to be as a country? Because, by God, this party of devolved government has lost its way. A movement which had flirted with sunshine in those latter years under Alex Salmond, has turned into a thunder cloud that's hung over the country ever since. Optimism is snuffed out as they look inwards. Their primary aim is no longer to better Scotland's lot. That is the only way to independence, and if the SNP were to get there by those means, then they would deserve it. But their underlying and self-destructive mission since Nicola Sturgeon took the helm, and continuing since she left, seems to be to persuade people that Scotland is terrible because it's part of the UK. Of course, everything is far from ideal. Not only for the UK, but for Europe and for much of the world. The economic headwinds which have battered the world, from the pandemic to wars, have taken their toll and continue to. But let's get some perspective. We are a successful, advanced nation. We have leaders who are generally trying to do their best. We're not oppressed or subjugated. At the last count, for 2023/24, a staggering £22.7billion more was spent on public services in Scotland than was raised here in taxes. That's £2,417 per head MORE than the UK average - meaning all those universal freebies, that extra cash spent on benefits, the higher public sector pay despite lower cost-of-living than elsewhere in the UK. Is that the 'poison' Swinney refers to? In the past decade it's seemed at times that nothing - not even cold, hard figures - can stop the SNP-run grievance machine. But as we've seen in the past year or so, the mood music of the nation is shifting. More and more people are looking at the downbeat drudgery of a party who claim to speak for Scotland, and are thinking they no longer speak for them. If the SNP don't change their tunes, then come next May, voters may finally show them the door.


BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Highland-wide holiday lets control zone proposed by councillors
A Highland-wide control zone to limit Airbnb-style lets has been suggested as a way of tackling a shortage of homes across the proposing the move said 7,011 short-term let licences had been granted across the Highlands, but only four lets are not banned in control areas, but operators need planning permission as well as a short-term lets councillors said the powers could be used where there was local demand for them. Highland Council officials said control area status for the whole of the Highlands would require research and, if it was introduced, could mean additional costs and workload for its planning department. The idea of Highland-wide status has been suggested by Inverness councillors Michael Gregson and Duncan a paper going to next week's meeting of the full council, they said the region needed more than 24,000 homes over the next 10 added: "The private long-term rental market has shrunk disastrously: estate agents are withdrawing from letting out properties because of the shortage of properties available. "Even taking into account the efforts of Highland Council and the Housing Associations, there is a shortage of affordable housing."The councillors said the local authority should first ask the Scottish government to revisit its original plan to have an overprovision policy within short-term lets said if that was not possible, then to seek approval for Highland control area their response, officials said there would be financial implications for the local authority around both suggestions from the also said there could be potential challenges to Highland-wide of Edinburgh Council had to amend its licensing scheme following a court ruling. The whole of the City of Edinburgh Council area was designated Scotland's first short-term let control area in September 2022.A law requiring operators to have a licence came into force across Scotland in October the following Council's first control zone was approved in December 2023 and covers Badenoch and who supported its introduction said it was needed because workers and local young people had difficulties finding affordable the Association of Scotland's Self-Caterers (ASSC) said at the time that targeting legitimate small businesses to address longstanding housing issues showed "a muddled sense of priorities".


The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Our industrial decline gives a lie to Better together claims
The collateral damage has been massive with whole communities, dependent on these jobs, being virtually abandoned. The subsequent social damage is all too obvious with the skilled jobs that sustained previous generations being replaced by a gig economy characterised by short-term, poorly-paid and often unskilled work. The consequences are there in plain sight – growing levels of poverty, lengthening queues at food banks and the scandal of children going to school poorly clothed and hungry. Of course, a healthy economy depends to a certain extent on inward investment but over the last decades the ownership of a whole host of British companies has moved overseas. Scotland has been hit particularly hard with the loss of control over our once-famous banking and finance sectors. Scottish Power and SSE are largely owned by Iberdola and a Qatari investment company. While foreign capital investment must be welcomed, it brings with it the constant threat of closures and asset-stripping. Regrettably however, it is not just our industrial and financial sectors that have been taken over but vast sections of our utilities and public services as well. In a famous speech in 1964, Harold Wilson slammed the Tories for glorying in a country "where the rewards go to land racketeers and property spivs". It was Neil Kinnock who described the then Conservative government's privatisation policies as "selling off the family silver". However successive governments both Tory and Labour have overseen vast swathes of our public services falling into private hands. So, for example, there are now 27 separate rail companies operating in England and Wales and 10 water companies. The long-suffering public have experienced worsening standards of service and ever-mounting costs while huge bonuses and dividends are being paid out to bosses and shareholders. What makes the situation even worse is that the Government pays out vast sums in subsidies to these failing companies. When you consider that in England large sections of welfare, care, probation, prisons, schools and even the NHS are now in private hands then it is no wonder that our national debt continues to soar while public complaints about failing standards rocket. Is this really the future promised by the Better Together campaign? Eric Melvin, Edinburgh. Read more letters Indy would mean 'normal' politics John NE Rankin (Letters, June 20) is obviously a stickler for accuracy. He castigates attributing the "ongoing ferry shambles" to Calmac rather than Caledonian Marine Assets Ltd and, ultimately in Mr Rankin's opinion, the SNP Government. He cannot then resist taking a swipe at supporters of this government, which he says "could not run a country". Whether or not the SNP could successfully run an independent Scotland is a matter of opinion. What is a matter of fact, however, is that Mr Rankin's opinion of the SNP would be tested by the Scottish electorate in all subsequent elections post-independence. The SNP would stand or fall on its record of government alone. In other words, we would have "normal" politics where voting would be dominated by the same concerns as every other Western European democracy. And, oh yes, the Scottish electorate would not have its near neighbour's choice imposed on it by sheer weight of numbers. David S McCartney, Forres. Make Scotland a beacon for peace Watching the latest developments in the Middle East war from Scotland can make you feel depressed and powerless. Yet Scotland is involved, and should be taking a strong stance against the war. Firstly Scotland is acting as a staging post for the US bombing missions in Iran and their assistance to Israel's war. Prestwick Airport, which is owned by the Scottish Government, has seen large numbers of US war plans landing and being refuelled on their way to wage war on Iran and to assist the Israeli war effort. It's time the Scottish Government closed this route for war by banning US warplanes at Prestwick. Secondly if this war in the Middle East extends to a global war Scotland's nuclear base at Faslane will be the number one target for attack and if it's hit then much of Glasgow will disappear surely it's time that this expensive and ineffective nuclear base was closed. Thirdly Scottish arms industries are supplying the Israeli war machines with vital spare parts and it's time this was ended. Of course I realise that none of this can be achieved while Scotland is part of the UK and where Keir Starmer's Labour Government is guilty of failing to condemn Israel for genocide in Gaza or the US for its warlike interventions' instead they are grovelling to Donal Trump in the hope of crumbs from his table. Support for Scottish independence has reached a new high of 56% recently. Now let's turn that into a pro-independence majority in the Scottish elections next year. If that happens the Scottish Parliament should declare our independence and end our complicity in war and instead make Scotland a beacon for peace in the world. Hugh Kerr, Edinburgh. • I'm an idiot. I admit it. I believed Donald Trump when he said before his election that there would be no more of America's endless wars far from America's shores. Instead he has thrown in his lot with America's triad of evil – the military industrial complex, the Neocons, and the powerful Israeli lobby. Benjamin Netanyahu, facing three charges of corruption at home, has achieved his long-held ambition of bringing the United States into a war with Iran. Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine. He hasn't. He promised to bring peace to the Middle East. He hasn't. Instead he has continued with his country's history of bombing countries and killing thousands. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Vietnam. Cambodia. Laos. Iraq. Somalia. Libya. Syria. Yemen. Iran. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. William Loneskie, Lauder. Donald Trump (Image: PA)Give us back our licence fee BBC Scotland boasts that Scotland gets 90% of its licence fee for funding. Given the heavy Anglo-centric bias of the BBC platforms funded by the UK-wide licence fee (BBC News 24, Radios 4 and 5 etc), why don't we have 100% of our licence fee back, and use it in Scotland to make programmes relevant to us, our history and culture? Scots traversed Europe for 500 years, then the globe for the next 300, so it need not be parochial. There is also income from BBC Commercial, which brings in a couple of billion pounds a year. Why does Scotland not share in that? GR Weir, Ochiltree. Politicising the bus pass The US Government's cackhanded launch of a 'Trump card' golden visa scheme, its promotional card bearing the visage and signature of that country's current elected head of state, conflates state functions with the personal identity of an incumbent officeholder. That sort of nonsense befits authoritarian tyrannies not democracies Sadly but somehow not surprisingly, the shambles echoes the sorry state of Scotland's bus passes. Rather than simply calling them bus passes, as happened for decades, the separatist regional government emblazons them with the crux decussata. They carry the irrelevant legend 'Saltire cards' (not even their formal name), predictably stylised without a space. English bus passes are at least more suitably named to reflect their purpose. They do bear a St George's Cross though: Scottish separatists' divisive identity politics have spread poison down south, alas. Ought one, though, to call Scotland's bus passes merely 'bus passes'? The scheme's website describes what is properly known as the national entitlement card as 'Scotland's National Smartcard', again grammatically wrong as well as ideologically questionable. In principle, enabling some local government services to be offered digitally could be a helpful move. But an overtly politicised design combined with the Orwellian whiff of identity cards introduced by the back door bear the grubby fingerprints of nationalist authoritarianism. Witness their unthinking use on buses even by primary school pupils. Christopher Ruane, Lanark.