In the above: It is the story of politicians ideologically hostile to regulation. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s government swept away virtually all building regulation, promising instead, in the words of her minister Michael Heseltine, “maximum self-regulation” and “minimum government interference”. In plain English, leave companies to manage their own affairs. Even this did not go far enough for David Cameron, who in 2012 made a New Year pledge to “kill off the health and safety culture for good”, launching a new swath of regulation cuts, including to fire safety inspections. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/09/stark-vision-of-grenfell-reveals-so-much-about-elite-really-rules-us To be fair, thanks to Old Labour in Scotland and … Continue reading How Old Labour and the SNP saved us from collapse

You’d think with his origins in Northern Ireland and his fishy name, Sharkey would know better than to say ‘in this country’ for the Anglocentric Guardian. A quick factcheck tells us: The flows and levels in Scotland’s water environment are currently at good or better condition in 90% of rivers, lochs and groundwaters. This is up from 88% when we published the second RBMPs. https://www.environment.gov.scot/our-environment/water/scotland-s-freshwater/ Why is this the case? Does Scotland show there is an alternative to this system? Scottish Water is a wholly public entity directly accountable to the Scottish Parliament. It offers lower bills than any of … Continue reading 90% of all UK water and 90% of it clean!

My wife really does have a 92 year old mother-in-law in Dunfermline! No wonder I can never get parked! Continue reading Today’s outright propagandist twitter activity

Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar (Star Wars) are reputedly shouting ‘Scheisse!‘ to everyone who will listen as their recently re-named Neu Arbeit party fails to persuade the members (3) of the Airdrie & Shotts* group, to accept Frau Pamela Nasch as their candidate to fight the upcoming by-election. Nasch, Obergruppenführer of Schottland in der Union was considered to be the ideal partner for NL’s only other Scottish MP, Ian Murray, in their push for living space in Scotland. Airdrie & Shotts members are also reputedly furious that Starmer has told them to spell it ‘Schottz’ now and to stop calling … Continue reading Neu Arbeit leaders angered by failure of Airdrie and Schottz* to follow them to the right

Before I start proper, the US police have a lot to learn from Police Scotland* – only two cars? What, Trump wasn’t taken down to the station at 7.30am? Our lovely media have been making much of auditors, Johnston Carmichael, dumping the SNP ‘after’ their CEO was arrested and then subsequently not charged. They do have their standards to maintain or do they? Johnston Carmichael represented Trump in the public inquiry into his development plans for the Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire and signed off his apparent failure to make any profit and so not pay any tax, on his Turnberry … Continue reading Have SNP’s ’embarrassed’ auditors dumped Trump yet?

My suggestions of an improving trend for the SNP in the last four polls by different pollsters has been deemed wrong. It seems you can only consider a trend revealed by successive polls from the same pollster. I kind of get it, if you’re a bit anal, but the MSM do the same thing gaily if they think they’ve spotted a downward trend for the SNP. Anyhow, I had a look back at the last two full polls by Survation on 17 February and 3 April 2023, well before the peak of the SNP leadership media coverage and just after … Continue reading Two full polls: Why are only women sticking with the SNP?

‘Amid’ is one of those words which thick journos love but even in their own text, BBC Scotland noted: The BBC understands Johnston Carmichael resigned before Mr Murrell’s arrest. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65212357 And the missing context: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/companies-left-in-the-lurch-as-auditors-drop-clients-6vhwl02gb. This situation has gotten worse since Covid. Plus, there is a shortage of accountants and more regulations make it unprofitable to audit books unless clients are prepared to pay greatly increased prices. An FT story shows that many major organisations have been dropped by their accountants. https://www.ft.com/content/cc0579ba-b775-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea203 Also an SNP “insider” said that the accountants gave notice to quit last year and the SNP had … Continue reading SNP auditors quit ‘before’ the probe and not ‘amid’ it

Being called an ‘outright propagandist’ by James Kelly of Scot Goes Pop yesterday has reminded me to say something about him and the wee gang he has recently joined. What do Campbell of Wings, Kelly, Craig Murray and Robin McAlpine of Common Weal have in common? In 2014, I was a big fan of all as they played a significant part in the Yes campaign. Since then, many of their ideas have been ignored by the SNP in government and so they have all gone in the huff. Have a look at their social media today and compare it with … Continue reading The Huffragists

James Kelly (above), the independence movement’s best psephologist (bean counter) whom I’ve often praised, other than on his unwarranted gender reform anxieties, posted this yesterday: By the way, our anonymous troll informed me that I “must” have seen this poll because Professor John Robertson’s blog (which I have not read for several years) had covered it earlier today.  Having now checked Robertson’s piece, this helpfully gives me the opportunity to point out that it is factually inaccurate.  Robertson claims that the SNP lead over Labour has “surged to 12%”.  As you can see for yourself from the numbers above, the … Continue reading Talking-up Scotland’s leading academic accused of being outright propagandist