Today in the Express:
Outrage as Labour councillor calls for boycott of Scottish farms amid budget backlash. A Labour councillor has been branded “arrogant” after suggesting Scots farms should be boycotted amid growing anger at Rachel Reeves’ budget within the sector. Brian McGinley, who sits on South Ayrshire Council, made the call in response to suggestions of a farmers’ strike.
Only two weeks ago they were using their grizzled media attack dog, John McTernan, to undermine farmers with similar threats.
Scottish farmers are known to be Tory voters. Even the Depute First Ministers husband is a keen one.
This support is illogical given the effects of the Tory Brexit on their businesses.
Put politely and professionally:
Scottish farming stands on the cusp of the most significant change in generations. As the Brexit Transition Period ends, there will be significant changes to Scotland’s trading relationship with the EU (and NI). These can be minimised via an FTA and an alignment on standards between the UK and the EU, which is by far the largest overseas market for British produce. If there is No Trade Deal, some sectors might benefit but such gains are highly uncertain, and likely to be eroded by future trade deals and divergences in standards between the UK and the EU as well as within the UK internal market. Given the negative impacts in sheep and barley, which are of much importance in Scotland, the viability of many Scottish farm businesses, and several rural regions, will be jeopardised under a No Deal.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/analysis-brexit-scenario-impacts-scottish-agricultural-sectors/
Put more plainly:
Brexit has “robbed rural Scotland” says Aberdeenshire East MSP. Aberdeenshire’s growers produce some of the highest quality seed potatoes in the world, which the European market relied on pre-Brexit as Scottish producers provided 20,000 tonnes annually. That trade has now collapsed.
Agricultural businesses are suffering major staff shortages because of Brexit, which has hampered efforts to recruit seasonal workers from the EU. NFU Scotland has highlighted severe difficulties replacing EU workers with UK staff, with horticulture chair Ian Brown stating, “we need migrants to get the food that is grown on our farms onto our plates, and not rotting in our fields.”
Put numerically:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Can anyone explain to me how the EU can be ‘by far’ the UKs biggest export market and yet ruk is supposed to outstrip the EU for Scottish exports. That has never made sense to me and yet the Scottish Government doesn’t refute it.
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Good question! I’m not sure either.
Although I do wonder if the figures would change if Scotland had a large port capable of exporting Scottish goods direct, rather than sending them down to, eg, Dover.
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This UK internal market malarkey seems to be a huge prohibitor to Scotland doing anything without the permission of the UK government.
Didn’t Cameron say in 2014 “Lead us don’t leave us”
So with this UK internal market malarkey , is that not them still trying to lead us hence why many of us still want to leave the UK ?
As to the Scottish Labour councillor promoting a “boycott of Scottish farms” well the way some Scots (and others who live in Scotland) voted in the last UK GE, that should actually gain Labour some additional or retained votes in 2026.
As the voting pattern for some in Scotland seems to be voting against Scotland and not with or for it.
As to John McTernan well come on , think Scotland 2015, think Jim Murphy, think of McTernan’s role back then as Murphy’s Chief of staff and then think how the H is anyone in the so called media still listening to this loser when it comes to anything to do with politics in Scotland.
How indeed, well I think the only political pedigree he has for the media in respect to Scottish politics is that of his very much predictable and constant message i.e. #SNPBAD and NAW to independence on a loop.
Being a right wing supporter of the Labour party McTernan would always put a pro Blair like Labour party well before Scotland.
As he, McTernan, may have been brought up in Scotland but he sure as H is doing his best to distance himself from that fact , perhaps because he was actually born in London ( so “maybe it’s because he’s a Londoner that he loves London so” , as you can take the boy out of London but you obviously in his case cannot take London out of the Man , Ha Ha)
There is a reason that John McTernan is a favourite guest of GB News (he’s never off it) as not so great minds obviously think alike.
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O/T A notable statement has been published today from the National Audit Office. The NAO performs a similar role to Audit Scotland but has a quite different public profile: whereas BBC Scotland and others in the mainstream media crawl through every line of every report published by Audit Scotland searching for ‘juicy’ negatives, the NAO’s output gets little mainstream news coverage in England or UK-wide, even when reporting significant negative findings.
Today’s NAO report is clearly a major ‘negative’ – and the first of its kind ever – but at the time of writing this comment, there is nothing about it on the BBC News website.
Source: National Audit Office (November 26 , 2024) Whole of Government Accounts 2022-23. Report- financial audit (https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/whole-of-government-accounts-2022-23/)
What are these accounts? ‘According to the NAO: The Whole of Government Accounts consolidates the accounts of over 10,000 public sector bodies, including central and local government and public corporations such as the Bank of England, to provide the most complete and accurate picture of the UK’s public finances.’
So they are important! But from the NAO’s press statement: ‘The disclaimed audit opinion from the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), Gareth Davies, on the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) 2022-23 is the first ever.
The NAO explains: ‘The cause is the severe backlogs in English local authority audits, with the consequence that there is inadequate assurance over material amounts throughout the WGA.’
‘Within his audit report, the NAO’s head, Gareth Davies, said he had been “unable to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence upon which to form an opinion”.’
‘Just over 10% (43) of England’s 426 local authorities submitted reliable data to the WGA. Of the near 90% of local authorities that failed to submit reliable data, 46% (196) submitted information that hasn’t been audited, and 44% (187) did not submit any data at all.’
The NAO statement adds this: ‘The disclaiming of the WGA is in relation to local authority audit omissions and unaudited returns. The impact of this impact (sic) is so large and pervasive that the Comptroller and Auditor General is unable to give any opinion on the WGA at all.’ Image the reaction to such a statement from opposition politicians – aggregated and amplified by BBC Scotland et al – if it concerned the Scottish Government’s accounts!
It is crystal clear that ultimate responsibility for local government in England lies in Westminster and Whitehall.
On November 20, 2024, the BBC News website in its Scotland section covered a new report by Scotland’s Auditor General (from Audit Scotland) majoring on perceived lack of ’transparency’ from the Scottish Government. (This topic has been addressed previously in TuS: see ‘Will Audit Scotland ever get real and fully acknowledge the UK context in which Scotland is governed?’ – blog post dated November 23, 2024.)
BBC Scotland covered the publication. In its article on the BBBC News website we have this from Scottish Conservative finance spokesman, Craig Hoy who accuses the SNP of “gross financial incompetence”. And this from Scottish (sic) Labour finance spokesman, Michael Marra : “The SNP has created a blackhole at the heart of public finances but has refused to be honest about how it happened or what it means.”
It’s evident that the NAO has just published what is a truly damning report on the financial competence of Westminster government. ‘Damning’ was the framing BBC Scotland presented in its coverage of Scotland’s Auditor General’s report where opposition politicians sought to exploit what were relatively subjective judgements.
How might the BBC frame this latest report from the NAO – the one that states (let’s recall): ‘there is inadequate assurance over material amounts throughout the WGA’ and “unable to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence upon which to form an opinion”? We may never know. Will the NAO’s statement prove to be sufficiently ‘newsworthy’ for the BBC – anyone seen or heard anything yet? The BBC truly does seem to reserve special treatment for government in Scotland!
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Am I the only one not already boycotting Scottish produce if it has that dirty stinking foreign enemy state maggot bastard union flag on the package?
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No!
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i dont buy any products with the union flag be they Scottish or otherwise.To be honest i do not really care about farmers , they as you say nearly all vote Tory so why should we care about them they dont care about the majority of people in Scotland , they are self obsessed and you cannot trust what they say as you are seeing in their current campaign about taxation , they dont want to pay tax and come up with all sorts of self satisfying reasons why they should be treated differently from the rest of us.Our country is saturated by these people who now set up air bnb and hut accomodation all over our land , they pollute our rivers and land they kill the wildlife and call themselves custodians of the countryside , what a cheek .If they go out of business let them , be done with them , it was they and their ilk elsewhere in uk that campaigned and voted FOR BREXIT , it was they across Scotland that campaigned and voted against Scottish independence let them wither and fall.
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The farmers don’t suffer from leaving the uj festooned products on the shelves because, I would imagine, the have already been paid by the supermarket.
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