Yesterday in the Guardian, Anas Sarwar is quoted as:
having accused the Scottish government of “weakening every institution in Scotland“, and causing Scotland “to be stuck in a rut where Scots have to wait too long for healthcare, feel insecure both economically and often in their communities, and fear for the future opportunities of their children.”
If feel sure you don’t need to be told just how inaccurate all of that rant is. I don’t doubt he too knows it’s not true. None of that matters in his drive for power.
He has learned:
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
The words of Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, referring not to himself but to English politicians, in the 1930s.
The recent Labour Party campaign, based just on the one word ‘Change’, is a classic of the method.
Needless to say, the Guardian’s Libby Brookes and Severin Carrell, make no effort to provide sources that show he is either correct or wrong. I won’t either, because you can find them easily, here or in the published statistics.
Suffice to say, by contrast, sometimes stark, with England after decades of Tory/Labour rule and Wales after decades of Labour rule, Scotland has:
- Shorter hospital waiting times, for all treatments, especially for 18-weeks, cancer, alcohol and drug treatment, IVF and A&E.
- Far more doctors, nurses, midwives, home visitors and beds.
- Far better patient protection schemes.
- Free prescriptions to enable, for example, all asthmatics to access medication, unlike the many in England who died from Covid for this reason.
- Far more transparent data for the above.
- By both police reporting and popular impression (U of Edinburgh) crime down more than 50% in 17 years and far lower crime, including homicide.
- Far more police officers and better clear-up figures.
- Lower violent deaths and drug deaths among the young.
- No county lines drug gangs or child ‘grooming’ gangs resident in Scotland.
- More affordable housing and lower council tax.
- Free bus travel for the elderly and the young, students and apprentices.
- Free HE tuition and university campus areas with lower crime levels than in all other parts of UK.
- One of the best rail services in the UK.
- Narrowing school attainment figures, increasing pass levels among the deprived and wider, lower cost-of-living, access due to articulation between local colleges and universities.
- The world’s best ferry service.
- Easier, cheaper, access to the mountains, lochs and rivers!
With time, I could think of more.
Ah, drug deaths! Falling but stalling, despite target beating treatment programmes, because of a recent surge of cheap, powerful, new drugs into towns and villages from English County Lines gangs.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Sarwar ” Read my lips – but don’t believe a word of it !”
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Never has someone so feckless been so fêted.
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Goebbels’ would be SO proud of his British nationalist propagandist “journalists”, operating in the colonial media.
But hey, in Scotland we must concentrate on “small boats”, “grooming gangs” and “ferries”. Ignore HS2, Ajax military vehicles, the aircraft carriers/frigates that continually break down, the HMS Vanguard refit that took twice as long as estimated and cost more than two and a half times in money.
But not, never, on the well-being of our country. Not on frozen pensioners. Not on impoverished families. Not on the disgraceful return for our licence fee moneys, that BBC Hootsmon represents. Especially not on our colonial media.
Get this. Labour refuse to abolish to two-child rule in the UK, but brass-neck Sarwar insists he would support the Scottish budget if the SNP government abolishes it on April 1st…Hunt the Gawk.
gavinochiltree.
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Do you mean Gowk?
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O/T In the BBC News website today, there is this headline ‘Sarwar hopes to pull rug from SNP with Budget call’. In th article, is the BBC Scotland political editor, Glenn Campbell trying to make out that the British Labour Party’s leading man in Scotland, Anas Sarwar is a smart political tactician?
The context is Sarwar’s announcement that his party will abstain in the upcoming Holyrood vote of the 2025-26 Scottish Government budget.
Campbell writes: ’Labour’s move also makes me wonder whether it is worth Swinney proceeding with a series of planned events to hammer home the case for his budget being backed’ and adds ‘Labour seems to have pulled the rug from under that plan and turned some political pressure back on the SNP’.
From doubt about getting its budget passed to having near certainty – if Sarwar is to be believed – that it will get its budget passed: this is putting ‘political pressure back’ on the SNP?
He has to try hard because elsewhere in the article even Campbell can’t avoid reporting this British Labour Party’s charade. We’re told: ‘Sarwar has actually offered to vote for the Budget (whatever he perceives as its deficiencies) if the Scottish government speeds up its plans to end the two-child cap on access to benefits in Scotland.’
But on ‘ending the cap’, Campbell acknowledges but without any accompanying (surely deserved) critical remark: ‘That’s a position Scottish Labour favours, despite the UK Labour government deciding it is unaffordable and Scottish Labour MPs going along with that.’
I suppose it’s possible when so wedded to protecting Unionist politicians in Scotland that BBC journalists can become disorientated among the smoke and mirrors.
So have I got this right: ending the cap is deemed unaffordable by Labour in Westminster, a judgement supported by Labour MPs for Scottish constituencies i.e. ending the ‘cap’ can’t be afforded by the government with few if any funding constraints. But ‘ending the cap’ is affordable for Scotland, AND in the very next financial year, notwithstanding its severely constrained fiscal and zero monetary power, according to the same party’s leader in Scotland?
And on the matter of revenue raising in Scotland, the BBC article has this: ‘On Monday, Labour called for a different direction in Scotland and seemed to question “tax rises and handouts” under the SNP.’
Labour will tend to make much of Westminster’s largesse in its October 2024 budget. Before swallowing this line, a recent assessment by the Scottish Fiscal Commission is worth noting.
From Scottish Fiscal Commission (December 12, 2024) Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts
Para 1: ‘The Scottish Government has seen some large increases in funding as a result of the UK Autumn Budget 2024, in particular there is more capital funding in real terms in 2025-26 than in previous years. However, after accounting for the working of the fiscal framework the increase is more modest for day-to-day (resource) spending which is the majority of the budget.’ (my emphasis)
This is referring to the operation of the Block Grant Adjustment procedure.
Para 8 ‘Resource funding is forecast to be £51,429 million in 2025-26. Figure 1 shows that this is a 3.2 per cent increase on 2024-25 in nominal terms, but in real terms this increase is 0.8 per cent.’
Source:
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As the British Labour Party in opposition in Scotland demands mitigation in FY 2024-25 of the ‘two-child cap’ that the British Labour Party in government in Westminster – with the support of British Labour Party MPs from Scotland – claims in can’t afford to end, this from the Scottish Fiscal Commission (just published) provides more useful context:
From https://fiscalcommission.scot/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Mitigating-the-two-child-limit-and-the-Scottish-Budget-January-2025-1.pdf
Para 15: ‘The Scottish Government is seeking the co-operation of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in implementing the mitigation policy. We assume that there will be sufficient data sharing established to allow for identification of families eligible for a mitigation payment, and that relevant UK legislative steps will be taken to ensure that these payments are not treated as income in the reserved social security system. In particular, we assume mitigation payments will not be included in the assessment of whether a family is subject to the overall Benefit Cap.’ (my emphasis)
Para 16 ‘We assume that the Scottish Government will be able to implement mitigation in a way that reaches all the affected families who are in receipt of Universal Credit. Almost all the affected families will be eligible for Scottish Child Payment (SCP), which we expect to have a take-up rate of over 95 per cent, so we do not expect that there will be significant barriers to achieving very high coverage, assuming that the relevant data sharing arrangements with DWP are put in place.’
Para 46 ‘The Scottish Government will not receive any additional BGA (Block Grant Adjustment) funding for the mitigation of the two-child limit, so the total costs contribute to the net effect of social security on the Scottish Budget.’
To repeat from my earlier btl post: from Scottish Fiscal Commission (December 12, 2024) Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts:
Para 1: ‘The Scottish Government has seen some large increases in funding as a result of the UK Autumn Budget 2024, in particular there is more capital funding in real terms in 2025-26 than in previous years. However, after accounting for the working of the fiscal framework the increase is more modest for day-to-day (resource) spending which is the majority of the budget.
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Correction to my btl post: ‘demands mitigation in FY 2024-25’ should read ‘in FY 2025-6’.
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