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Fantastic news, 2014 was genuinely great to be in Glasgow. And Glasgow has many venues ready to roll, so the reduction to 10 different disciplines makes lots of sense. I attended a fair bit of the rugby sevens, so hoping to see that again, but swimming, cycling, and athletics are all no brainers for Glasgow to host, as would badminton, indoor bowls, and curling potentially. Exciting times!
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Back Doune the Rabbit hole, the first iteration was very highly rated, but I do suspect Scotland has enough wee festivals, and with prices only ever increasing for attendees - will this one be able to break even? Find out next year! Anyone make it to a festival this year in Scotland?
www.theguardian.com
A literal monorail. I bet the council approves it and then Holyrood has to step in. Surely national parks need differing planning standards, this is madness!
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What a fuck up. The man in charge at the time, has now been rewarded with a Labour seat in Edinburgh. Labour: rewarding failure since time immemorial
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Poor Grangemouth, big blow to the area. Leaving Scotland without a refinery forcing us to rely on English production an obvious defenestration to independence ambitions too. Really tragic to see under a Labour government, combined with port Talbot - just what is Starmer doing???
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Well done Unite and GMB! Diageo have been extracting profit for decades now, they can pony up for staff
www.bbc.co.uk
Poor Midge and Oats. Sadly as we add more to the wild, more will die, but it's good to hear that some are doing well all the same
Not just the council. No confidence in the highland health board either
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Whatever happened to the midge burger?
www.bbc.co.uk
Good to hear, no women should be harassed for her choices
www.theguardian.com
Better to use the savings than any bigger cuts imo, and the cuts in this article affect the least they could I suspect. Well done on balancing the books! The Guardian failing to highlight that Starmer is doing yet more failed austerity the bigger problem imo. Sycophantic claptrap to have any criticism of the SNP without explaining why they have to make these cuts
www.bbc.co.uk
I don't object to a resort, but a monorail ffs? Scale it back and you'll get it through!
www.bbc.co.uk
Scotland leading the way back in the 10th century with its international outloom. Proving that brexit is still bullshit
Friday nicht an wha's awa oot? Sun's oot, last gallus weekend ae the summer upon us
www.thenational.scot
SUDDENLY, it’s winter. Not just because of the sodden weather, but also the snell winds louring over our political landscape. Autumn has happened gradually this month with the Scottish Government axing schemes. No free asylum bus passes for asylum seekers. A resumption of rail peak fares. No more Open Fund for artists, writers and musicians. £5 million removed from the nature restoration fund to finance pay settlements for local government. No Warsaw office to extend Scotland’s international office network. And of course, the means testing of Winter Fuel Payments in Scotland. There are also indirect cuts with axed teacher posts being planned by Glasgow and almost every political shade of Scottish council. Parent groups blame the councils. Many of them blame the SNP’s council tax freeze and others the austerity set in train by Labour’s new Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Yet more cuts lurk within the latest NHS waiting lists. Of course, more generous Scottish pay awards have reduced the economic and social cost of strike action should cut key worker reliance on top-up state benefits, help reverse demoralisation and the use of more expensive agency staff. But if there’s a Scottish recruitment freeze, then over-burdened doctors and nurses will still head for better-resourced lives elsewhere. It’s suddenly winter. The question is what to do and who’s to blame. According to the Scottish Fiscal Commission: “While UK Government policies contribute to the pressures on the Scottish budget, much of it comes from the Scottish Government’s own decisions. Higher than expected public sector pay deals, the renewed council tax freeze and welfare spending – matters within the SNP’s control – have all added to the difficulties of balancing the government’s budget.” Really? The council tax freeze is indeed hugely debatable. But when even Labour are agreeing pay rises with public sector workers instead of spending billions on long destructive disputes, could Scotland lag behind? The Brexit we didn’t vote for means fewer European workers, and since Labour won’t revisit Brexit or apply geographical policies (lest that acknowledge Scotland’s status as a nation) we must compete with the wealthier, better-resourced south of England for staff. Although Scotland has so much to offer, it’s not a fight this or any other northern country tends to win. Equally, UK-wide curbs on the Winter Fuel Payment look equal but will obviously hit Scotland worse, and energy-rich but fuel-poverty-stricken parts of the Highlands and Islands worse again. Geography matters – but that’s off the Westminster table. So, should a Scottish Government really not be trying to mitigate that? Indeed, is anyone but the Tories really saying that Scotland could afford NOT to agree pay deals that give our public services a better chance of recruitment and retention? And as for welfare spending, should we just enable the bedroom tax like Tory/Labour England when we know, 75% of those affected are disabled folk who need a spare bedroom for equipment or for a partner to sleep in? Perhaps though, the commission is eyeing larger budget items – like free prescriptions and free university tuition. According to a recent Scotsman leader: “Means-testing prescription charges, with provisions for the most expensive drugs, would ensure no one would be denied treatment on the basis of cost and free up extra funding for life-saving frontline services that are bordering on collapse… it seems Scottish exceptionalism comes at a price we cannot afford.” A poll sponsored by Gordon Brown’s Our Scottish Future last October found 54% of Scots believe universal free prescriptions should end so the NHS can be improved. Alex Salmond’s SNP government abolished prescription charges in 2011. By 2020/21 the annual bill had reached £1.4 billion – though that covers both the cost of items dispensed and of providing the service. MEANWHILE, in a Labour-led Commons debate calling for free prescriptions in England earlier this year (!) Andrea Leadsom said: “In 2022-23, those contributions gave about £670m in revenue to England’s NHS – a sum equivalent to 12,500 full-time nurses and health visitors for a year.” Now, I’m no health economist. But the likely income from paid prescriptions in Scotland is likely to be about an eighth of that English sum. It’s not nothing. But it doesn’t come anywhere near offsetting the overall prescriptions bill or transforming hospital waiting lists – as England has already found. BMA Scotland has already stated its support for free prescriptions pointing out they particularly benefit folk with complex, long-term conditions: “Any reversal of that threatens to be costly and have a negative impact on population health, building up further costs and pressure on our NHS in the long term.” Well quite. And of course, many Yessers will discount means testing as an essentially Unionist position. Yet, the argument is already falling on fertile ground. At a recent conference, working-class community leaders were talking about means-testing, prescriptions and even folk on state pensions felt they were in a position to pay, scoffing at the old argument that means-testing costs almost as much to administer as it ever saves. Perhaps the Scottish Government’s reluctant decision to rubber stamp Westminster’s means testing of Winter Fuel Payments means a Rubicon has been crossed. Now it will get harder and harder to resist the erosion of the universality that characterises progressive Scotland and is so admired by public health experts in other parts of the UK and abroad. And with the loss of that stance, Scotland’s national distinctiveness will also wither, unless there is resistance or a better, well-explained, front-footed strategy. This is a very high-stakes game, yet so far there has not been an effective, alternative narrative-creating response from the SNP/Scottish Government, save a few cagey interviews on Radio Scotland and “I told you so” tweets from Stephen Flynn. Now, the SNP’s Westminster leader certainly did tell everyone the £20bn black hole in UK Government spending would force cuts or higher taxes from the new Labour government during the recent General Election campaign. Labour speakers chose their words carefully, but basically lied through their collective teeth – especially about energy costs, which will once again soar this winter. But we’re here now. And simply pointing out Labour lied and could currently choose otherwise, isn’t enough. How will the SNP leadership respond? If the SNP won’t point out that independence gives us the chance to handle our whole public finances differently, then when? If the SNP insists Labour should have the courage/decency to stop keeking endlessly o’er their collective shoulder for accusations of being spendthrift closet-Corbyns, will they boldly go where Labour fears to tread and raise taxes? Will the SNP be honest and pro-active, setting out spending and constitutional options in this austere, winter-like new normal or will they just try to cut quietly and weather the storms of public discontent? And how will the SNP conference tackle this spending crisis, bubbling up as it has since motions were submitted and the agenda created? A FEW motions could produce more cash for the Scottish Exchequer – but given past resistance to a land tax, the SNP leadership will likely oppose or just ignore that proposal if passed. Will there be calls to raise the Scottish income tax to protect services? And above all, will John Swinney produce a strategy or let cuts keep raining down mixter maxter, meaning few in the public or third sectors will be able to plan ahead because they fear their service will be next? Of course, as Craig Dalzell and Richard Murphy have eloquently argued in this paper – with agreement from the far from radical Institute for Fiscal Studies – Reeves could and should borrow more money rather than imposing cuts. What’s happening is indeed the product of a political choice by the new Labour government using the weary metaphor of belt-tightening deployed by Thatcher, Osborne et al. Except that metaphor works. No matter how many well-argued pieces demonstrate that cuts to folk who actually spend just damage them and shrink the economy, the enduring meanness of the British public realm compared to any other north European democracy has produced a public resigned to losing “benefits” instead of asking where their taxes have actually gone. And sadly, that includes Scots. So, we can become boiled frogs with a Scottish Government drip feeding cuts in the hope no-one will notice – randomly administered to new programmes or anything due for renewal. Or we can have a brave debate about all of this. Which will it be?
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Great to hear something being secured for education and children, as lots of talks from councils of cuts, cuts, cuts sadly. This scheme has seen immense success having started out in the Raploch and TIL it's all over Scotland!
www.theguardian.com
Little over 6m til Holyrood elections. The SNP period looking to be well and truly over. Not a surprise given that the budget for the SG is so tight, we can't pay bin men even. But any party that has been in this long, for a period of such sustained squeezing would feel it. And Libby here quite correvt with no feasible route for the SNP. Far too little at the last manifesto in WM to allow Holyrood to run a vote. Literally no point in voting for the SNP at holyrood at the moment. Unless of course you want to keep Labour, the Tories, and the LibDems out - as these pricks are going to be even more useless, and an assault on free prescriptions, busses for the elderly and young, and Scottish water will all also be on the cards. And wait then for the NHS to start going out in tender for parts. Then wait for more public private partnerships where you and me pay over the odds for everything, and still have to pay to park in Edinburgh Royal for the shame. It's not looking good people unless you have 100K stashed away to invest in these robbers
www.theguardian.com
Yup, Scotland has an embarrassment of power. HVDC lines springing up all over the sea will see it transported to the UK population centers. And the King through the crown estate has already reaped millions, with a recurring revenue of millions more projected. We're going to see hydrogen in a growing way in the coming decade. We're going to see salt batteries installed, and they'll be huge. We're going to see nuclear likely repowering existing sites in Scotland (the SNP left a loop whole - no NEW nuclear power in Scotland). We're going to see more pumped storage finally built. And decarbonise, not because we must (although we must!), but because these techs all stand to make a lot of money. Oil and coal can't stand up to the no running costs of these techs and the installation costs are dropping like stones for them all. What does this mean for the union? The Guardian won't tell you, but Scotland is the biggest cash cow for investors again. Forget the Mccrone report, that will look chump change by 2060. These assets are cash printers - and are you going to benefit? Will the SG?
www.bbc.co.uk
Having been to Eigg, seems I'll have to pop over to Rùm some time
Foos yer doos loons an quines? How's it going folks? How are we peoples? Ciamar a tha sibh?
www.bbc.co.uk
Highland council should take note too
www.thenational.scot
In Dalgety Bay, The Kingdom of Fife no less. Not just CAMRA either, tripadvisor giving it a 4.5/5 too - who knew fife has something worth visiting?
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Good news story for us today, who doesn't like seeing a bushy tailed red?
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SNP c+s lead council, NOC. A real shame on the people who live there, 180k people now have to have some service curtailed to pay for this botched job. https://renfrewshire.cmis.uk.com/renfrewshire/Councillors/tabid/63/ctl/ViewCMIS_Person/mid/383/id/1177/Default.aspx - here's the convenor, a Jim Paterson, Renfrewshire making it easy to find his interests and he looks pretty clean essentially. Out of his depth most likely
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Bets on him coming out full Trump? London can't figure out if going full nutter will do then any good, but this walloper looks to be starting that way. Holyrood has a decency problem indeed, list MSPs who don't have the decency to dissappear after two terms. See Labour and Conservative benches for the best examples
Found this oan Imgur, absolutely bang on
www.bbc.co.uk
An amazing find, really highlighting how little surveyed our waters are. Hard to imagine having picked up the post a few hours earlier to then going bang without ceremony
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Holyrood shirking responsibility here, or democratising?
www.theguardian.com
Would prefer to see Nodal Pricing occuring in the UK to be announced. Off the back of Scotwind, this was always a certain to get rubber stamped too
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Bring back the bridge! Campervan numbers are just too high to be sustainable for our roads. It needs a cap, nevermind more taxes. And there's a far easier way to enforce it: if caught overnight in a layby or carpark face £200/night fines. Buy a site and hookup or don't come. Instead book a bus tour, or get a hotel - or even a hostel! Or consider camping, or a B&B, or a day trip
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Can someone tell the dumbasses at STV thats the Union Canal and not the fourth and Clyde.
www.bbc.co.uk
As we have less non-white people basically. And Glaswegian's are too obsessed with sectarianism to bother about racism. Not one mention of our genuinely welcoming hospitality, and collective consciousness to show Scotland in a good light of course
news.stv.tv
Tatties, tatties, tatties. Boil em, mash em, cover em with ragu - I was hearing the Maris Piper's days may be numbered!
www.bbc.co.uk
A nice antidote to the other major UK stories currently. 'mon in folks