Today’s SNP narrative is about a few senior civil servants spending on yoga classes and platforming the above claim by the Scottish branch of the Labour Party.

An extract:

What were the more unusual items bought?

• a driving theory test for member of staff
• china crockery for a meeting room
• nail polish
• a yoga class
• a £1.59 leaving card
• a £27 “homedisco” from eBay
• and £272 on “wellington boots for inspections”

Among the books purchased by civil servants were six copies of “Women hold up half the sky” – a book of speeches by Ms Sturgeon, and a printed copy of the Scottish government’s own 2014 independence White Paper.

A book about Marxism and 21 copies of “How to run a government so that citizens benefit and taxpayers don’t go crazy” were also purchased.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66434333

No moat-cleaning but certainly a bit odd.

However, not in the same league as Labour:

Over its two Holyrood administrations from 1999, Labour had managed to under-spend the Scottish block grant to the collective tune of £1.5bn – money which was returned to the Treasury at Westminster because, incredibly, Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell just couldn’t think of anything to spend it on.

(£1.5bn would have been enough in 2006 to build the Glasgow [£210m] and Edinburgh [£500m] Airport Rail Links and upgrade the entire A9 to dual-carriageway [£600m], spreading the benefits around the country and with £190m still left over.)

On taking control of the Parliament in 2007, the SNP minority government was able to reach an agreement to recover the money for Scotland over the four years of its first term (see paragraph 19 on page 9 here), so at least this huge sum wasn’t completely lost – although of course, a third of it has in essence been uselessly swallowed up in paying off the PFI debt for this one project alone. But nevertheless, the information leads to a mind-boggling and horrifying conclusion:

A Labour council, operating under a Labour Scottish Executive and a Labour government at Westminster, needed to spend £150m on its schools, but rather than use a small fraction of the effectively free money that was sitting around unspent in the Executive’s coffers, signed off on a PFI contract that would cost Scottish taxpayers £729m to do the exact same job.

Bumbling incompetence is one thing. But if we were the current Scottish Government we’d have police crawling all over North Lanarkshire trying to find out how anything so self-evidently insane, and such an utterly criminal waste of taxpayers’ money, was ever allowed to happen. And when we found out, we’d want to see some bodies hanging from Motherwell lamp-posts before the sun went down.

https://wingsoverscotland.com/probably-a-robbery/

Even more ‘entertaining’ though about Labour party, not public, money:

Jack McConnell, Scotland’s first minister in waiting, has become embroiled in a fresh controversy over claims that he asked MPs for cash to keep his lover in her job as a press officer for the party.

Mr McConnell admitted this week that he had an affair with the woman – later named as press aide Maureen Smith – seven years ago.

It has now been reported that, in 1994, while he was general secretary of the Scottish Labour party, Mr McConnell appealed to MPs to contribute £100 each so that Ms Smith could remain as a party press officer. The MPs were said to be unaware that Mr McConnell was having a relationship with Ms Smith.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/nov/16/scotland.devolution

I feel sick.

Jack McConnell having sex!

Let me out of here!