By the Rev Alasdair Galloway: Stephen Noon enjoys a somewhat legendary status in the SNP. Previously a policy adviser to Alex Salmond, then strategist for the 2014 campaign and credited for much of its positive development, including the 2015 virtual wipeout, he left to become Director of the London Jesuit Centre for seven years. Now he is part of the Public Affairs team for Weber Shandwick in Scotland, as well as a Research Associate at the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Glasgow. This Sunday (8/10) he was interviewed by Martin Geissler on BBC’s “The Sunday Shown and … Continue reading Noon, Troughers, go for it, and the future

When I saw the above, I didn’t at first recognise the above SNP potential candidate for Central Ayrshire to replace the retiring ‘Mighty’ Philippa Whitford. I was shocked, on two counts. First, last time I saw him, he looked like this: A bit of harmless reinvention going on there but second and more concerning is a risk to the candidate selection process designed to ensure credible, authentic, as opposed to celebrity, candidates. Needless to say, the National article does not mention this from only 8 years ago: Less well-known was Walker’s refusal to even mention my research in 2014 which … Continue reading SNP candidates need to be genuine

From the NZ Herald yesterday: The on-time performance and reliability of Interislander’s ferries have improved in the past financial year but still fall short of KiwiRail targets. The improvement comes after what was described as a “horror run” in the previous financial year that was by far the worst for Interislander services in recent times. KiwiRail has published the ferries’ latest performance results in its 2023 annual report. On-time performance has improved to 83 per cent of ferries arriving within 15 minutes of their scheduled time. This is a 10 per cent increase compared to the previous year, although still short of the … Continue reading CalMac operating between 14% and 30% more reliably than ‘horror run’ in affluent New Zealand

The Daily Mail’s unconvincing Scottish edition has been making much of how quickly a Turkish shipyard can build ferries while making little of the deaths in their yards, the massive subsidies and considering how reliable they will be longer-term. We can already see that the cheap Pentland Ferries boats, built in Vietnam, are breaking down only a few years after coming in to service. TuS regular Bob Lamont has perceptively noted: Well they would hardly go with “Oi Rishi! How did Turkey manage to build and begin operating 628 miles of double track high speed rail in less time than … Continue reading Oi Rishi! How did impoverished Turkey build 628 miles of high speed rail before you could build less than half of that and plan 6 200 miles by the end of this year?

Today the Daily Mirror has from Keir Starmer: My Labour government will clear the waiting list backlog once and for all. Now there’s been a Labour Government in Wales for years and health is devolved. How well are they doing? On cancer waiting times, above, NHS Scotland under SNP is 31% better! On A&E, in May 2023, NHS Wales saw 62% of 70 310 patients within 4 hours, NHS Scotland saw 70.8% of 138 467 within 4 hours. For all waiting times, 29% of respondents in Wales said they were currently waiting for a hospital appointment, test or treatment through … Continue reading Labour do badly in running health services – should Humza offer to help Sir Keir?

The Daily Mail today has: Ahoy Humza! How did Turkish yard build Scots ferry SEVEN years quicker than you could?Turkish ferry project on time … and on budget  There’s no mention of this kind of thing: 18 February 2009: Cemil Akgül (29), working for Elta Shipping, died of electric shock 8 February 2009: Selim Sevgili (30), working for the Dentaş subcontractor, died when a storage lid was dropped on him. 13 December 2008: Erdal İnceyol, working for Anadolu Sea Construction Cradles, died in an explosion 19 December 2008: Hızır Akbulut, injured in the same explosion, died in hospital. 20 December 2008: Aydın Kaplan (31) fell from a great … Continue reading ‘The long tragic chain of deaths’ in Turkish shipyards

Yesterday CalMac was down to 91.2% on time. Islanders are furious and have called for the First Minister to go. Ankeir Starmwar has promised them all a new lithium battery powered replacement after an offer from the Danish Labour Party of 25 new ferries that Danes now refuse to travel on after one burst into flames and took four days to put out. OK, I made up some of the last bit but this, from media reports in the last 24 hours, is true. Condor Ferries has delayed the first planned sailing of its new boat to Guernsey and Jersey. … Continue reading Ferries in crisis in the Channel Isles, in Cornwall, on Shetland, in Canada and across the Mersey – are they just difficult to operate?

By stewartb On 13 July 2021, the BBC News website had the headline: ‘Police launch investigation over SNP donations’. The article also had this: ‘Police Scotland had previously been assessing complaints made by a member of the public. The force says that a full inquiry has now been launched.’ So an investigation had, at some level, been going on EVEN before 13 July 2021. In October 2023, c.26 months later, the PM of the UK October is able to state: “Nicola Sturgeon wanted to go down in the history books as the woman who broke up our country. Now it … Continue reading SNP ‘fraud’ embers still smoking 26 months later?

By Not-My-Real-Name I remember once I was in a supermarket during the time when the former FM, prior to NS , as in AS who is now the Alba party leader, was all over the media during his trial. I was standing looking at the papers next to an old guy who said ” There’s no smoke without fire”…..when he was looking at a picture of AS and a front page headline about him in the Daily Express. I asked him “What has he actually been accused of “? (knowing full well what the charges were but wanted to hear … Continue reading “It’s all over the news so he must be guilty of something”

Nicola Sturgeon was arrested and then released on 11 June 2023. Two months later, despite forensic analysis of her hairbrushes, there have been no further developments, but that’s a different story. In the 5 opinion polls before the arrest, for Holyrood voting intentions, in April and May/June, the SNP had an average lead over Labour of just over 8%. In the next 5 polls, in June and July as the media frenzy peaked, that dropped to just over 5%. In the most recent 5, polls the lead over Labour averages nearly 10%. Patience. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election Continue reading SNP recovering from Sturgeon arrest impact