From Bob Lamont, in the wake (sic) of our report yesterday on the Isle of Wight ferries fiasco – Two English ferry companies borrowed HALF A BILLION and still charged customers four times as much as CalMac so that they could pay shareholders and bonuses – https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2025/04/18/two-english-ferry-companies-borrowed-half-a-billion-and-still-charged-customers-four-times-as-much-as-calmac-so-that-they-could-pay-shareholders-and-bonuses/
Had listened to an interesting ‘conversation’ (part of the Scotonomics event on 22nd March in Dundee) between Andy Verity and Danny Dorling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm6k6DptTWM) and Danny had made a wonderful contrast between how the rich live in Sweden and the UK, which this article reminded me of – The Swedes have long regulated rigorously to ensure fairness in society, the ‘British’ opted to return to the wild west of the 1930s by tearing up red tape, Grenfell the most searing example with the murderers still walking free.
If you Google ‘ calmac macaroni Herald ‘ you will find the letters page from 2 days ago, the title to which was ” Is a nice meal on a CalMac ferry worth hundreds of millions? “, taken from the first letter on that page by Roy Pedersen, Inverness.
I’d encourage reading Roy Pedersen’s letter (link below) to get to the nub of the British problem, superbly summed up in:
“That is just one measure of the appalling productivity inherent in the CalMac system that is costing the Scottish public purse literally hundreds of millions that could better aid our health, education and other cash-strapped public services .”
Pederson would rather dispense with the livelihoods of what dozens of families rely on to pay the rent, simply because it is not privately owned – Were it a private enterprise, Roy’s expertise could be consulted to make even more filthy lucre offshore whilst those onshore add to the foodbank clientele.
Isn’t it odd to be relentlessly told ‘we need growth’, when the very foundation of it, society, is living day by day….
The Letter – https://archive.ph/byjPO
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
it’s just tiresome to be lectured by fukkwits telling us how crap the CalMac ferries are. I love CalMac and the service they provide. Follow the self aggrandising “wisdom” of big moths like Mr Pedersen at your peril islanders.
John Lawson
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Never mind the quality, feel the width.
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Good spot by Bob.
Liz S
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I posted this before am afraid I don’t know how to post letters from paper written by Alan Sutherland a frequent writer in P@J.
Speaking about Ferries in last post a certain very anti SNP letter writer person in the P@J says that now that the company below has taken D R Macleod should take on CalMac as well I hope he does not expect the SG to subsidize them and how large would the fares rise,no thought on that.
In April 2023, DFDS Logistics acquired the Highlands and Islands haulage business, D.R. Macleod how to post letters but it was written by Alan Sutherland in the P@J
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O/T Anyone with any knowledge/insight on the subject of Block Grant Transparency?
A Block Grant Transparency report was first devised and published by HMRC on behalf of the Westminster government in December 2017. This and subsequent documents in the series set out in detail how the block grants for the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive are calculated. These reports help ensure that the financial implications for the ‘block grants’ of key fiscal events in Westminster – Spending Reviews, annual Budget, other Financial Statements to the Westminster parliament and also end of financial year ‘Main Estimates’ – are documented in detail and made public.
This provision of this breakdown was established by the Tories as an annually updated and published account after the UK Government Budget: over time it became the intention to publish in June or July every year.
The sixth edition was published in July 2023. (See https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64b8012b2059dc000d5d2600/BGT_Explanatory_Note_July_2023_TO_PUBLISH.pdf )
Where is the seventh edition, where is the June/July 2024 report? And if that was too early for the newly elected Labour government, where is the delayed publication? Despite careful searching online and failing to find a 2024 edition, am I missing something? Can anyone help?
Since the sixth edition was published in July 2023, we have had:
November 22, 2023 – Autumn Statement (Tory)
March 6, 2024 – Spring Budget (Tory)
End Financial Year 2023/24 – ‘Main Estimates’
October 30, 2024 – Autumn Budget (Labour)
March 25, 2025 – Spring Statement (Labour)
End Financial Year 2024-25 – ‘Main Estimates’.
Time for the British Labour Party in government in Westminster to match the Tories for transparency? Or am I missing something?
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Look up the UK Gov whole accounts to see what Westminster wastes Scotland revenues on. Westminster borrows and spends £100Billion in the rest of the UK. (£10Billion) if Scotland got it. Scotland is not treated equally and cannot borrow to invest and grow the economy. Scotland has to pay £Billions back on monies borrowed and spent in the rest of the UK. Vat etc are guessed. Scotland is not credited accurately. Westminster claims not to be able to account for the differences. A click on a computer. They will not release the figures.
Look up the Scottish Gov accounts to see Scotland raises more proportionately, but ends up with less because of Westminster poor, bad policies. Only available since Devolution 2000. Before that Westminster did what it liked. Lied and cheated and Scotland was not treated equally. The terms if the Agreement of Union. Scotland was to have a separate Legal system. Usurped by Westminster. Equal estates in Scotland. The Crown, the nobles, the Church and the people equal. Sovereignty remained with the people. A joint Protestant monarchy. The Union could be dissolved with agreement.
Westminster took all the Oil and Gas revenues and supported London corrupt bankers. They fund the Tory Party. Canary Wharf was built. Thatcher funded the bankers who fund the Tory Party. Tilbury docks 26miles of container port. Ports around the UK lost out. Transport was centred through London. Total congestion. Another subsidised hub at Heathrow.
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Scotland loses £Billions to Brexit. Scotland did not vote for it. UK Gov whole accounts. Westminster spends £13Billion a year decommissioning nuclear. Ever increasing. Nowhere to put the the waste. Yet want to build more. Hinkley Point years late and over budget. A total waste of money. To improve rail journeys times in the UK it would be better to invest in the north and Scotland. Cut journey times. Instead of flights. HS2 a total waste of money.
Scotland in surplus in fuel and energy pays more. Yet is nearer the source. Scotland pays too much for the military. 180,000 military personnel. 10,000 based in Scotland. To add to the economy. Trident dumped in Scotland. A total waste of money. Redundant weaponry. Contracts not finished. Then another one commissioned.
Westminster borrow £100Billion to invest in the rest of the UK. (£10Billion if Scotland got it). Scotland has to make repayments on loans not borrowed or spent in Scotland. The Scottish Gov can mitigate Westminster. Scotland cannot borrow to invest and grow the Scottish economy.
Scotland loses from tax evasion. Foreign companies not paying tax. US tech companies not paying tax and breaking competition Laws. Whisky companies not paying tax. £Billions lost to Scotland. EU loans and grants for renewables. EU Cap payments for the farmers. Hill farmers in Scotland. Shared Defence cutting costs.
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There was protests in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh in support of Trans women and against the judgement made by the Supreme Court last week.
The BBC Website only saw fit to make a mention of these protests in the same written articles on their main Scottish page and their Scottish Politics page where it was their top story .
Headline of that article on these Scottish pages:
“Trans people will feel anxious over gender ruling – Swinney”
BBC UK page – nothing on this major protest in London yesterday.
BBC UK Politics page – in the 5th article they have the same story as on Scottish main page and Scottish Politics page that is:
“Trans people will feel anxious over gender ruling – Swinney”.
BBC Main England page – nothing on major protest in London yesterday
BBC London page – nothing on major protest in London yesterday.
Does anyone think the BBC is framing this as only a issue that will impact and so affect the Scottish government while actively protecting Labour and other parties too , who we know from past comments that they, as other political parties, as in both Labour & the Lib Dems, have supported the rights of Trans women in the context of them being considered ‘women’ , though Anas Sarwar is now distancing himself from that which he formerly voted for in 2022 and also whipped his MSP’s to vote for as well in the GRR Bill being passed by the Scottish parliament in 2022.
BTW saw this in respect to that BBC headline.
MSM Monitor tweeted on ‘X’
“What John Swinney actually said was that he *acknowledges* many in the trans community will feel anxious. That missing word is important as it adds a wholly different tone and meaning”
I think MSM Monitor knows by now that for the BBC ‘context means nothing’ when communicating anything about the SNP.
Omission is the ‘key’ to promote their style of propaganda and misinformation.
Surely we know by now that the remit of the BBC in Scotland is not to communicate ‘news where we are’ but to promote ‘propaganda on behalf of others elsewhere’.
Vote SNP in 2026 to eventually, one day, be rid of all BBC propaganda , the same BBC, who as the British Broadcasting Corporation , will one day , have absolutely no place in our country as a fake news provider , that is, when our country is finally an independent nation.
Liz S
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‘Does anyone think the BBC is framing this as only an issue that will impact and so affect the Scottish government while actively protecting Labour and other parties too , ….’
Perhaps and whilst on the same topic, it’s notable how amidst triumphalism over the Supreme Court ruling, those in Scotland who hold a so-called ‘gender critical’ view are claiming everything about this issue derives from the actions of an SNP government and its FM.
This may be a convenient tale for certain individuals holding grudges or jealousies but reading the text of the Westminster Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Hansard record of the debates in the Commons and Lords on the Bill gives a very different picture of the history, of the origins, regardless of what the SC concluded last week and regardless of where one stands on the core issues.
Extract from the legal text of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/contents )
‘Consequences of issue of gender recognition certificate etc.
9 General ‘(1) Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman). (with my emphasis)
In the House of Lords debate on the Gender Recognition Bill (January 19, 2004), the Tory Lord Tebbit asked Her Majesty’s Government: ‘Whether they attribute the same meaning to the word “sex” as to the word “gender”.
Lord Filkin, the relevant minister in the Blair government responded: ‘No. It is, however, a fundamental proposition of the Gender Recognition Bill that, following legal recognition in their acquired gender, a transsexual person will be regarded in UK law as being of the acquired gender for all purposes and that in law that acquired gender will be the same as any legal definition of their sex.
‘This means that, following legal recognition, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex in law becomes that of a man and if the person’s acquired gender is the female gender, the person’s sex in law becomes that of a woman. Where under any legislation it is necessary to decide the sex of a person who has an acquired gender, or to say whether that person is a man or a woman, or male or female, the question must be answered in accordance with the person’s acquired gender.’
Whatever one’s view, the ‘fundamental’ proposition within the Blair government’s Gender Recognition Act 2004 could hardly have been stated more clearly. No SNP Scottish Government FM was involved!
And no SNP Scottish Government FM was involved when a subsequent Westminster government failed to sort out what the SC has only now judged to be incompatible with more recent equalities legislation, namely the Labour government’s Equalities Act 2010.
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O/T long comment prompted by anger, frustration and to prove that resistance is not futile but imperative while we are still within this flawed and corrupt UK.
Who are Labour and what are they for ?
Well most of us in Scotland worked out the answers to those Q’s ages ago and now some in England are finally catching up to what we already knew.
I mean think about who once were MP’s in the Labour party and who still are Labour MP’s in the Labour party and then think about who are some of the supposed new faces that were elected as Labour MP’s last year in the UK GE. (new faces ? Douglas Alexander ? Johanna Baxter ?, Blair McDougall ?, Scott Arthur ?, Martin McClusky ?, Torcuil Crichton ? , Pamela Nash ?) .
Without doing a full bio of some of the former Labour MP’s who were blatant in how Tory they really were , we can see how, in the past, they did not deserve anyone’s vote as those supposdley representing the Labour party , given these following named MP’s condensed bios , which read like the excerpts from what could be referred to as the ‘Bad Bunch of Politics’.
Caroline Flint – lost her seat as Labour MP when she tried to out Tory the Tories in going full Brexiteer, her constituents then decided ‘let’s vote Tory instead of voting for our current and existing Labour MP to once again represent us at WM as she is now merely nothing more than a pound shop Tory’. She then lost her seat in the 2019 UK GE. I’m amazed she also never got a life peerage (from a Tory PM) as to listen to her now , as she does the rounds in various TV ‘News’ programmes, both mainstream & rogue, she could not be more Tory if she was wearing a blue rosette with the word ‘Tory’ written on it. She has now passed the point of being more extreme than many extremists. (Mind you the new Tory PM Sir Keir Starmer could still award her with a peerage for still being a good Tory).
Ian Austin – now a Baron , thanks to Boris Johnson awarding him a life peerage. Ian hated Corbyn and loved Tony Blair. Ian was a Tory who was elected as a Labour MP as his constituency was a Labour one, so that was as Labour as Ian could get. Ian eventually stood down as a Labour MP and became a Independent (Tory) MP as Corbyn, the then Labour leader was just too Labour for Ian, now Ian is in the HOL and he sits as a non affiliated (Tory) Peer.
John Mann – now also a Baron , thanks to another Tory PM, Theresa May , awarding him a Life Peerage, he has an almost carbon copy history to Ian Austin, as he too hated Corbyn as Labour leader, it was, I think, the ‘Labour’ part that irked him. Though he stated that his reason for leaving Labour was the anti Semitism within the party going ‘unchecked’ , he said, with the supposed lack of action from Corbyn , reality of course was that Corbyn was way too socialist as a Labour leader and politician and I think that was what Mann particularly disliked. In 2019 he, Mann, did not stand again as a ‘Labour’ MP instead he took up a role in the Tory government as their antisemitism advisor, he too was a non affiliated (Tory) Peer, however in May 2024 he was once again given the LABOUR whip. (as a Tory Ha Ha , because the new Labour party under Sir Keir Starmer are now more Tory than the actual Tories, thinks John Mann obviously, as do many of us in Scotland think so as well).
Kate Hoey – now a Baroness, thanks to Tory PM Boris Johnson, Kate was more pro Brexit than Nigel Farage and she was another one who made the , now proven to be, fake claims about Brexit, then she ran away and got a cushy number in the HOL. Check out her Wikipedia page to then ask ‘How the H did she become a Labour MP’ or were we all missing the obvious flaws (and Tories) within Labour via people like Kate and the others. Boris Johnson appointed her as the UK’s trade envoy to Ghana. She left the Labour party in 2020 and is now a non affiliated (Tory) Peer.
John Woodcock – now also a Baron, his bio is also similar to Mann’s and Austin’s in relation to his hostility to Corbyn as Labour leader. Woodcock resigned in 2018 as a Labour MP and became an independent (Tory) , Woodcock urged people to vote Tory in 2019 (as did Ian Austin) , he , like Austin, was then rewarded by Boris Johnson in them both being awarded their Life Peerages, Woodcock became the Tory government’s Independent Adviser on Political Violence and Disruption in 2020, he now also sits as a non affiliated (Tory) Peer.
Gisela Stuart – now a Baroness, also appointed as a Life Peer by Boris Johnson. She too supported Brexit. She left parliament in 2018 and she was given a role by the Tories as the Tory Chair of an executive agency of the UK Foreign Office dedicated to conflict resolution in international relations in October 2018. She was initially a non affilated (Tory) Peer but now sits as a cross Bencher (Tory) peer and in the 2019 UK GE she stated she was voting Tory but incredibly she remained a member of the Labour Party after the election . Of course she was voting Tory , after all if you are a Tory then that’s what you vote for in elections (while hiding in the Labour party as still being a member) . Duh.
So the above is not an extended bio of the above former ‘Labour’ MP’s now sitting comfortably in the HOL thanks to two Tory PM’s (May & Johnson, all of their real former party leaders in all but party name) and if you look carefully you will see way too the many uncanny similarities in their brief bio histories of part of their political careers, that kinda proves that they were either , when in the Labour party, the ‘enemies within’ or the real Labour (Tory) party that gave us Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and now Sir Keir Starmer.
BTW Ian Austin was a political advisor to Gordon Brown, when Brown was Labour Chancellor.
John Woodcock worked as an aide to Gordon Brown when he , Brown, was the Labour PM.
Just sayin !
Some current Labour MP’s and too some newly elected ones seem to also be fitting into the very same molds as the above lot comfortably fitted into, that is being and acting like Tories in all but party name.
Vote SNP in 2026 or we could have some kind of version of the Tory party ruling over Scotland for far too many years to be bearable for us.
Why does the above matter in relation to former Labour (INO) MP’s, well I think it matters because those types of MP’s still exist with the Labour party.
The career progression for many of them is to always go against the Left within the Labour party (who are in the minority) and so always support more the right wing part of Labour (aka the new Tory party).
Then if they, as Labour MP’s, do as their told and always support the party then eventually they may get some kind of government position, either as a Government Minister, a Junior Minister or Parliamentary Secretary to a government Minister and then they may even get to be party leader and then become the Labour PM.
Then they could eventually end up in the HOL which is a place where unelected bureaucrats get to make more decisions than some of those that we elect as SNP MP’s in Scotland ( or indeed as our Scottish government).
That’s why it matters now and in the future.
Liz S
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‘Who are Labour and what are they for?’
Myths about the political values of Labour arguably extends to the so-called ‘traditional Labour voters’ in England. From a btl post on TuS from January 20, 2025:
The tendency for the electorate in England to favour rightward political shifts seems well established in recent history. In short: ‘Traditional Labour voters’– what have they become?
From the BBC News website (April 29, 2019), headline: How many Labour supporters voted Leave?: ‘The widely respected British Election Study (BES) conducted a face-to-face survey of 2,194 people across the country. Its central estimate for the 2017 election was that 30% of Labour voters had voted Leave in the referendum. Labour received 12,877,918 votes in that election – 30% of that would be 3.9 million.’
‘The BES figure is somewhat higher than the estimate from Ipsos-Mori, external, which put it at 24%, or 3.1 million.’
From the Financial Times (December 14, 2019), headline: Boris Johnson promises to repay trust of voters who switched to Tories – Conservatives celebrate blasting through Labour’s once-solid red wall of northern seats.
‘Boris Johnson has promised to repay the trust of traditional Labour voters in the north-east of England who backed the Conservatives for the first time at Thursday’s general election, declaring they had “changed the political landscape”.
‘Mr Johnson’s visit to Sedgefield follows a general election victory which saw the Conservatives blast a gaping hole in Labour’s “red wall” of once-safe seats in northern England, helping him to a Commons majority of 80. Sedgefield, so long associated with Mr Blair, the former Labour leader, returned a Conservative MP on Thursday for the first time in 84 years.’
And then how many ‘traditional’ Labour supporters were complicit – silent – during the destruction of Corbyn and of the Left? And then complicit in the rise of the neoliberal Starmer and Reeves, notwithstanding Starmer’s deceptions that got him elected as party leader?
Arguably, ‘traditional Labour supporters’ – and the party’s elected members – over recent times have been complicit in the rightward shift of the Overton Window in the UK!
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