Latest news with #MSPs
Telegraph
a day ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
SNP members get vast majority of online abuse of MSPs
SNP politicians have been showered with the most online abuse, according to figures that reveal more than 700 messages sent to MSPs across the political spectrum were deemed 'criminal'. The scale of online abuse directed at Holyrood politicians is revealed in a report released by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB), which claims it is 'readily apparent and growing'. Between June 2023 and March 2025, more than 31,600 abusive messages sent to MSPs on social media were logged. The vast majority – 22,370 – were directed at members of the SNP, followed by Scottish Labour (4,432) and the Scottish Conservatives (2,480). Scottish Green MSPs reported 1,440 abusive posts, the Liberal Democrats 843 and independents 52. Of these, 718 were deemed to potentially breach criminal thresholds and were referred to Police Scotland. In one case, it led to court action and a prosecution. The report states that another prosecution is in progress. 'Sobering' results The monitoring period includes a pilot project of the SPCB's online threat managing service for MSPs, which started in June 2023 and produced 'sobering' results, according to Lynsey Hamill, director of operations and digital at the Scottish Parliament. The service continues to deliver early warning of potential online threats for 69 MSPs – 33 of whom are female – who are currently signed up. The data also show that gender-based abusive posts went from seven in 2023-24 to 886 in 2024-25. However, the significant rise is claimed to be due to the improved recognition of misogynistic content directed at female members. Ms Hamill added: 'We can see the scale of online abuse of MSPs is now readily apparent and growing. This chimes with feedback we have had from members for some time now.' The SPCB initiated a review of personal security provision for MSPs and staff following the death of David Amess, the former MP for Southend West who was stabbed multiple times at a constituency surgery at a church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 2021. 'Rising threat level' The review led to more than 250 portable alarms issued to MSPs and their staff, £125,000 committed to make permanent the online threat managing service for up to 80 MSPs and 108 local offices being surveyed by Police Scotland. Security improvements were implemented on their recommendations and all MSPs were offered home residence surveys by Police Scotland. A Scottish Parliament spokesman said: 'The SPCB is acutely aware of the rising level of threat against elected representatives. Last year, the SPCB invested £125,000 to make permanent its online threat managing service. 'Under the service, potentially criminal threats are identified by the Parliament's security team and escalated to Police Scotland for its action.'
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Back to school...now MSPs to be taught 'fiscal literacy' in bid to improve decisions
For those getting into politics, one would think it a basic requirement. But calls have been made to teach new MSPs about 'fiscal literacy' in a bid to improve decisions around tax and public spending. The Scottish Parliament's finance committee has released a new report which demands greater transparency from SNP ministers about budgets. It also calls for action to improve the ability of MSPs to make decisions and scrutinise them. It comes amid concerns about the damaging impact of the SNP's tax policies on the economy. The report, published today (FRI), highlighted that some witnesses told the committee that 'fiscal literacy' should be encouraged amongst all MSPs so that there can be a more 'mature' approach. It said: 'The committee agrees with witnesses that enhancing the fiscal literacy of all MSPs would help to support more effective scrutiny of budgetary matters and potentially encourage a more mature wider debate around the spending and tax decisions taken by Government. 'We therefore intend to write to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body to ask that a comprehensive fiscal literacy training programme be put in place through the induction of new MSPs elected at the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections, and through continuous development for all members throughout the five-year cycle.' The committee also concluded that improvements are required in the strategic financial planning by the Scottish Government, and that significant, long-term fiscal pressures in Scotland can no longer be avoided. Finance committee convenor Kenneth Gibson said: 'We believe the Scottish budget process, and its building blocks, remain fit-for-purpose. However, the way in which it has operated in practice this session has been far from ideal, and improvements are now needed. 'Our recommendations in this report are therefore intended to ensure that the objectives of the budget process - including improved transparency and awareness, responsiveness to emerging fiscal and policy challenges, greater influence and better outcomes - can now be fully met. 'Our view remains that improvements are also required in the Scottish Government's strategic, financial planning. This should be supported by an improved quality of data and key documentation published by the government, within the timescales expected by Parliament.' Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Craig Hoy said: 'This damning report from the committee needs to be an urgent wake-up call for SNP ministers.'
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
JOHN MACLEOD: An order of a burger and fries in the heart of the Highlands and proof the Gaelic tongue is in trouble...
Whenever I nip south for time with my mother and memory-lane rambles around G13, there is one enjoyable ritual: I always pause at Fort William for a scoff at McDonald's. Though not for several years have I been able to make my manly stride to the till and order three cheeseburgers, a large fries and a large Coke. These days you have to jab at faintly ridiculous touchscreens, pay by card, note your order number, and then loiter hungrily till some tray-brandishing teenager hollers it out. But, on May 22, something caught my eye. Here in the heart of the Highlands – in a landscape where every bump on every mountain still has a Gaelic monicker; in a community where someone once observed to my father, a local minister, and without a hint of humour that a certain family had been at the root of all the trouble thereabouts since the '45 – this Stateside fast-food touchscreen generously offered me the option to order in Welsh. Indeed, I was short-changed; in many corners of this realm, I am reliably informed, you also have the opportunity to order your Big Mac in Polish. I recalled this wryly the other day when MSPs solemnly passed the Scottish Languages Bill into law – with the accompanying spin that this now makes Gaelic and Scots official languages of the land. Actually, it does no such thing. Indeed, it is difficult to spot any clause in the Act that allows you to do anything you could not do already. Parents have been able to lobby for a local Gaelic-medium school for 40 years now; cosy little quangos like Bòrd na Gàidhlig have never wanted for public wonga and the Kirk was able to dub a given pastoral charge 'Gaelic Essential' long before the new, devolved Scotland. But you still cannot fill out your tax-return in Gaelic. Nor testify in court in Gaelic (with the right to an interpreter). And – if only to underline that, fundamentally, this new law amounts to no more than the square root of hee-haw – newly elected MSPs next May will still have to take the Oath of Allegiance in English. Some do, for a social media moment, take it again in Gaelic, French, Irish, Catalan and, for all I know, Serbo-Croat, but in law Geraldine Dreadful, MSP for Kilhammer and Sickle East, must swear (or affirm) in English. As for Kate Forbes's extra £5.7million 'to promote Scots and Gaelic', that – in terms of public spending – is chickenfeed. Just enough to build 46 yards of motorway. That is before I even get started on Scots. Despite the best efforts of Alistair Heather in a 2020 BBC Scotland documentary, Scots is not a language. Even if, as Heather did, you try to drag everything under its umbrella from ra patter o' Glesga to the 'Jings! Crivvens! Helpmaboab!' of Oor Wullie's Dundee. It would be inaccurate to describe the Doric as a dialect of English, but it is certainly a cognate of it – a cousin, sharing near-descent from the tongue of St Margaret and the Venerable Bede – as Gaelic is a cognate of Irish and Manx, and Welsh a cognate of Cornish and Breton. Scots has the same grammar as English, a vast vocabulary in common with English, and even rather a lot of loanwords from Gaelic. (English has sadly few: I'd struggle to get much beyond 'galore' and, in the complimentary sense, 'smashing'. Respectively, gu leor and 's math sin.) And behind this, of course, is a deeper tension. The Highlander's historic foe has never been the Englishman: since at least the Battle of Harlaw, it has been the Lowland Scot. From the Edinburgh factors who directed the Clearances to the sort of honk-honk Glasgow cabbie who cackles that Gaelic was never spoken here – this in the city of Yoker, Balshagray, Bellahouston and Auchenshuggle and many more incontestably Gaelic placenames. As for the Morningside Drive wits who chortle at Hebrideans treating their children to piotsa before a night in front of an telebhisean, we may but coyly ask what is the English for bandana, bangle, bungalow, jungle, loot, chutney and pyjamas, shampoo and thug and veranda. All, my child, loanwords from Hindi. But there is desperation beyond my scorn. At the edge of living memory, Gaelic was still spoken on the banks of Loch Lomond. When I was born, six decades ago, there were still Gaelic speakers in Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, Arran and well east of Inverness. As late as 1970, the reluctant Free Presbyterian minister of Applecross stood for and won election to the county council, because no other local had confident command of written and spoken English; and Galloway's last native Gaelic speaker died only around 1760. For that matter, there are more Gaelic placenames in Fife than there are on Lewis. Yet this is now a tongue in desperate trouble. It is no longer a community language anywhere in the Scottish mainland. It survives, perhaps, in bits of Islay and some extremities of Skye. Even here in the Outer Hebrides, according to the 2022 Census, only in two parishes – South Uist and Barvas – is it still spoken by a majority of residents. And when, as Irish experience attests, those locally fluent fall below the tipping-point of 66 per cent and you must perforce daily use English to communicate, the position tends to be irretrievable. You end up not with a community language of hearth and home, but a 'network' language, largely used by those who make money out of it – educationists, broadcasters and so on. Like Esperanto, or Klingon. Less a mother tongue than a quaint hobby. Gaelic is all but beyond intensive care. It lies on the slab, is being readied for arterial embalming, and nothing in the involved and windy Scottish Languages Act amounts to a hill of beans in that regard. Labour MSP Michael Marra hit the nail on the head on Tuesday: 'This Bill does nowhere near enough to protect the Gaelic language. 'Without economic development in the heartlands, we know that the prospects for Scotland's ancient language are bleak. 'In the face of a Gaelic crisis, the SNP chose to bring a Bill of limited scope that will, at best, make modest improvements.' There are obvious villains. The imposition of compulsory, English-medium schooling from 1872. The catastrophic impact on Gaeldom of the Great War; the awful, flattening cultural force of television. But there were also the landlords who cleared the glens, the East Coast trawlers who laid waste our fishing, the emptying of Harris and Assynt, Uig and South Lochs and the accelerating inrush of settlers from the South, some of whom are not ten minutes in a given Hebridean community when – take the traditional Sabbath – they are shrieking to overturn its way of life. It is like watching a great barn pitiably ablaze, flames shooting high in the sky, roof-timbers already tumbling – helplessly beholding the collapse of your culture.
Business Wire
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Vicarius and Atera Partner to Provide Instant Vulnerability Remediation to Managed Service Providers
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Vicarius, a Vulnerability Remediation company, and Atera, an IT Management platform, today announced a strategic partnership to provide Atera customers with seamless access to vRx by Vicarius, the industry's first autonomous end-to-end vulnerability remediation platform. 'There's been a massive and much-needed shift in the industry from simply detecting vulnerabilities to actually resolving integration will help MSPs scale their remediation offerings while also boosting business efficiency.' - Tanya Alfonso 'There's been a massive and much-needed shift in the industry from simply detecting vulnerabilities to actually resolving them. Our partnership with Atera brings together two powerful platforms to help MSPs not only identify risks but fix them fast, with minimal manual effort. This integration will help Managed Service Providers (MSPs) scale their remediation offerings while also boosting business efficiency.' - Tanya Alfonso, VP Channel Sales The addition of vRx to Atera's App Center marketplace creates new opportunities for Atera customers, allowing them to access and deploy the industry's most advanced vulnerability remediation platform. Powered by native patching, custom scripting, automation, and patchless protection, vRx enables streamlined CVE risk elimination across more than 2,000 applications and operating systems, while protecting over 10,000 third-party applications and devices. 'We're excited to welcome Vicarius to the Atera App Center. This partnership enhances our platform with advanced vulnerability management—enabling MSPs to expand their security offerings and helping corporate IT teams add a critical layer of protection' - Mayan Mandel, VP Marketplace, Atera With a few clicks, MSPs can deploy vRx's full-stack remediation suite through the Atera platform and access: A range of remediation options from patch deployment and scripts to its proprietary Patchless Protection, which creates a secure barrier around vulnerable apps, maintaining functionality while significantly reducing risk until a validated patch is ready for deployment Automated remediation workflows and scheduled deployments The ability to manage their account, add team members, and manage billing directly within Atera vRx's fully featured dashboard, providing complete visibility and control over vulnerabilities prioritized by business context Learn more about leveraging the joint power of Vicarius and Atera's remediation management solutions today: About Vicarius Vicarius' mission is to revolutionize vulnerability management from problem detection to proactive problem resolution. With a remediation first approach, Vicarius develops advanced technologies to streamline and simplify the way CVE-related risk is mitigated. Through real-time patching, robust scripting, and patchless protection, Vicarius believes in equipping security practitioners with friction-free solutions.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
At 79, my wife and I get $2K/month in Social Security, have $50K savings. We're scared of running out of cash
The average annual spending for U.S. households of those 75 years and older was $53,481 in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With a modest $2,000 monthly income from Social Security and $50,000 in savings, it's natural to be worried about outliving your savings and looking for some guidance. Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don't have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here's how I'm 49 years old and have nothing saved for retirement — what should I do? Don't panic. Here are 6 of the easiest ways you can catch up (and fast) Nervous about the stock market in 2025? Find out how you can access this $1B private real estate fund (with as little as $10) The average life expectancy for 79-year-olds is around nine years, according to Social Security. Using a Fidelity retirement calculator, we can see that if your savings are invested and earn an average annual rate of return of 5%, you can afford to make nine yearly withdrawals of around $6,700. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), the estimated average monthly retirement benefit for January 2025 was $1,976. This would translate to almost $4,000 for a couple. But many seniors receive less, which makes budgeting and planning critical. Let's walk through steps you can take to navigate this financial situation. While owning a home outright is a huge advantage, maintaining it can be costly. You can consider downsizing. Moving to a smaller, lower-maintenance home or a senior-friendly community can reduce property taxes, utilities, and upkeep. Downsizing can free up capital and reduce monthly costs significantly. Renting out a spare room or partnering with another senior through vetted home-sharing programs can also help with supplementing income and provide companionship and added security. Programs like the National Shared Housing Resource Center offer resources for income-generating home-sharing options. Medicare provides essential coverage, but supplemental insurance can be pricy. Seniors with limited income should check eligibility for Medicare Savings Programs (MSPs). These state-administered programs help pay Medicare premiums, deductibles, and co-pays for low-income seniors. Also, learn about the 'Extra Help' program for prescription drugs. The SSA offers assistance to reduce Part D prescription costs based on income and resources. Staying on top of these programs through resources like can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars every year. Read more: Want an extra $1,300,000 when you retire? Dave Ramsey says — and that 'anyone' can do it Stretching $2,000 a month requires some discipline, but living a frugal lifestyle while still enjoying quality of life is key. Make sure you create a monthly budget and try to cut discretionary spending. Track all expenses and categorize needs vs. wants. You can consider using free budgeting tools if you're tech-savvy. Limit dining out, subscriptions, and non-essential purchases. Buy in bulk, shop sales, and utilize food assistance programs if eligible. Local senior centers, food banks, and utility assistance programs can help reduce expenses. Unexpected health expenses, home repairs or other emergencies can quickly throw you off a tight budget. Usually people are advised to keep at least 3-6 months worth of expenses in a highly liquid account, such as a dedicated high-yield savings account. This means that if you need to access funds right away, you won't have to tap your investments or take on debt. It may be tricky to do in your current situation, but retirees are generally advised to build larger emergency funds. Consult a trusted financial advisor about this if you can. Abid Salahi, finance expert and co-founder of FinlyWealth, told GOBankingRates retirees should aim to keep 12 to 18 months of living expenses in their emergency fund. If you're a senior living on a tight Social Security income, it's important to be proactive about emergency savings, optimize your home and healthcare costs, and have control over daily expenses. By taking these steps, you can avoid running out of money and feel more secure in your retirement. Rich, young Americans are ditching the stormy stock market — here are the alternative assets they're banking on instead Robert Kiyosaki warns of a 'Greater Depression' coming to the US — with millions of Americans going poor. But he says these 2 'easy-money' assets will bring in 'great wealth'. How to get in now This tiny hot Costco item has skyrocketed 74% in price in under 2 years — but now the retail giant is restricting purchases. Here's how to buy the coveted asset in bulk Here are 5 'must have' items that Americans (almost) always overpay for — and very quickly regret. How many are hurting you? Like what you read? Join 200,000+ readers and get the best of Moneywise straight to your inbox every week. This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
