The SNP has become the Sorrow of Scotland: an incompetent cabal driven by a divisive and malign Nationalist Socialist ideology, implementing destructive policies that have seen vital areas like the economy, education, health and justice wrecked. It is doing real harm to tens of thousands of Scots, but the callous SNP sees that as a price worth paying to tear apart the Union.
The SNP's ever-growing list of failures in government, and its all-consuming obsession with separation and the destruction of the Union, need to be exposed for what they are: the on-going betrayal of the people of Scotland by a destructive SNP cabal incapable of making good decisions or exercising good governance.
Make no mistake: these are deliberate political decisions, driven by a toxic ideology that does not care what harm the SNP does to Scotland and its people.
The COVID-19 pandemic has, sadly, highlighted just how incompetent key SNP ministers have been, not least First Failure Sturgeon, both in preparing for and then coping with such an emergency.
The SNP's default secrecy, cover-up and blame-avoidance mentality has come to the fore, and - as ever - it is the most vulnerable in Scotland that are paying the price of repeated SNP failure.
The SNP failed to prepare, and then it tried the Edinburgh conference cover-up.
Incompetent Freeman oversaw a shambles in which thousands of people were sent incorrect information about shielding, with wrong dates, and many people incorrectly told to shield, and, much much worse, incorrectly told not to shield.
Cancer scans and treatments that could have been restarted in April or May were still on hold into the autumn, and people are dying as a result.
The SNP failed on care homes, sending thousands into care homes from hospital with no testing, and then lied about the numbers.
The SNP failed on testing, especially in care homes, and continues to fail with only a fraction of the testing required actually being done for front-line workers.
For months the SNP failed to pass on the UK Government emergency funds to councils and is still holding back vast sums from businesses.
It has repeatedly lied about the total amounts coming to Scotland, pretending that only funds spent via the Scottish Government count, rather than the additional billions going direct to people and companies through furlough and the may other routes.
Senior SNP figures have made grossly irresponsible statements that have encouraged nationalist thugs and racists to "demonstrate" at the border and elsewhere, and those same SNP figures have been slow to condemn that thuggery. An SNP MP decided it was ok just to ignore the rules and travel form London to Scotland when she knew she was COVID positive - but she remains a member of the SNP because Sturgeon is too spineless to kick her out.
Hopeless Swinney has been forced into one u-turn after another as his shambolic plan for a return to schools in August kept coming apart at the seams under pressure from parents and the Scottish Conservatives, and now his half-baked plans for the 2021 assessments are already unravelling.
Swinney should have been sacked for the results shambles - but cowardly Sturgeon kept her useless deputy First Failure in place to deflect blame form her own failures.
At every turn Sturgeon and her failed cabal have made huge errors, and then sought to derive political advantage from a national tragedy.
They have deliberately stoked the false grievances and division that sit at the heart of the toxic Nationalist Socialist ideology.
They have betrayed our fishing industry in a bid to curry favour with the unelected EU bureaucrats.
Sturgeon would have you believe her "government" has done well during the COVID-19 emergency, but the reality is very different.
It has failed, and failed badly. It has lied, and lied frequently. It has repeatedly demonstrated that it is unfit to govern.
On this page you will find a selection of the great swathe of SNP failures, reminders of how the tired and increasingly incoherent SNP government continues to pile catastrophe on chaos, wrecking the lives of Scots on a daily basis as it does so. The SNP continues to pursue its destructive obsession with separation - despite the clear and once in a generation democratic decision of you, the Scottish People, to back the Union and reject the core Nationalist policy of separation and division.
Occasionally we will also include examples of why Labour - an increasingly irrelevant fringe party in Scotland, one also rejected across the UK in 2019, which still has to properly expunge the foul stain of anti-Semitism - is not to be trusted with anything, and certainly not anything as important as Scotland.
23 October 2020
SNP mishandling of COVID-19 sparks furious Hospitality industry backlash.
Five hospitality industry bodies are launching legal action against the SNP Government.
The hospitality sector is facing a crisis with thousands of jobs at risk. If the arrogant SNP had engaged with businesses properly before imposing draconian restrictions then this situation could have been avoided.
But the SNP has continued to stall over financial support as more and more harsher and damaging restrictions have been put in place. The SNP must step up and provide that support to hospitality businesses now.
The economy is never the priority for the socialist, anti-business and anti-prosperity SNP. The Scottish Conservatives will always put jobs first.
The UK Government is delivering a broadband boost for Scotland to address SNP failures.
The SNP Government’s glacially slow broadband rollout has so far prevented rural communities from having the flexibility they need to develop thriving digital economies.
But thanks to the UK Government’s new Gigabit Voucher Scheme, thousands of rural homes and businesses across Scotland have been given access to more financial help to get top-of-the-range broadband speeds.
The elitist urbanite SNP has ignored and abandoned rural Scotland. We believe no community in Scotland should be left behind.
Mike Russell’s comments prove that the SNP will stop at nothing to force through indyref2 in 2021.
It is staggering that the SNP would even contemplate holding a referendum and wasting tens if not hundreds of £millions when the immediate priority of people across Scotland is fighting this pandemic and saving jobs.
With around 100,000 jobs still at risk, this single-issue SNP Government needs to park its constitutional obsession and focus on the real challenges Scotland is facing.
The SNP has failed catastrophically in government and tries to excuse that disaster by lying about what independence would mean. We believe we can take action to rebuild Scotland now.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-independence-referendum-could-happen-22887688
22 October 2020
As coronavirus restrictions are extended, the anti-business SNP Government must stop stalling and start delivering funding to protect jobs.
Businesses that were gearing up to reopen and welcome customers back will now have to keep their doors shut.
The Scottish Government’s own advisers say that 100,000 Scottish livelihoods are at risk.
If the incompetent SNP keeps stalling on funding, those jobs will be lost. Promises of support in the future won’t protect jobs today.
The economy is never the priority for the failed 'one-trick' SNP. We will always put Scottish jobs first, so that people can provide for themselves and their family.
The SNP has been caught lying about private outsourcing of contact tracing.
Sturgeon claimed that no private firms would be involved in contact tracing: then behind closed doors the SNP government brought private companies in to help.
When asked about this, Sturgeon tried to deny it was happening at all, and refused to admit that she had failed to hire 2,000 contact tracers by June as promised.
It’s a ridiculous situation when we’re being asked to believe that apparently it’s not outsourcing if the SNP is doing the outsourcing.
It’s time the habitually dishonest and ever-evasive SNP stopped taking the Scottish public for fools.
21 October 2020
The SNP must stop dithering and get on with supporting Scottish jobs.
The hospitality sector has said the SNP government’s current support package is ‘derisory’ and called for more engagement with businesses before new restrictions are announced.
Despite receiving an extra £700 million from the UK Government, the SNP has hoarded the lot: that’s right – it has not paid out a single penny. And the SNP also has deprived Scottish businesses of another £270 million by refusing to us available Growth Scheme and Digital Fund money.
In contrast to the SNP’s anti-business approach, Douglas Ross has outlined how we would back business with automatic grants and a hardship fund.
Jobs and businesses are never the priority for the SNP. We will always put Scottish livelihoods first.
Yesterday, we forced the incompetent SNP to delay legislation on interlinked smoke alarms, so that more people have time to comply.
Homeowners now have until 2022 to install the alarms at a cost of between £200 and £300, or risk breaking the law.
There was an almost total lack of publicity over the change from the SNP Government. We also raised concerns about tradespeople coming into others homes at a time when the guidance is to reduce this as much as possible.
Safety is absolutely vital - but during a pandemic, when money is tight this was an unrealistic target set by the out-of-touch and bungling SNP.
The SNP refused to help struggling pupils during their exam grades fiasco.
Emails released under freedom of information revealed that John Swinney refused to give a ‘fall back’ National 4 award to pupils that failed National 5 exams.
Instead of supporting Scotland’s pupils, spineless Swinney sided with the SQA and said that the idea would pose ‘operational risks.’
The SNP is content with an underperforming education system, the failing system they created when their catastrophic “reforms” wrecked the previously world-leading one.
The SNP must work with the UK Government on cross-border travel upgrades.
Graham Simpson wrote to Michael Matheson and urged him to ditch ideology and allow Transport Scotland to take part in the UK-wide connectivity review that could create a major stimulus for the economy after COVID-19.
The SNP needs to realise that any additional investment from the UK Government can only be a good thing for Scottish jobs and businesses.
But Sturgeon and her incompetent lackeys would rather bleat about false grievances than actually work on making things better for the people of Scotland.
We must seize every opportunity to support jobs and rebuild Scotland now.
20 October 2020
Shutting schools must be a last resort for the chaotic SNP Government.
Despite knowing the huge damage that so-called “blended learning” will do to our children’s education, Sturgeon has refused to rule out part-time schooling as part of new coronavirus restrictions.
Another attempt to introduce part-time learning for our young people will ring serious alarm bells for parents - and disproportionately harm the poorest pupils, those already suffering digital exclusion and rural broadband problems.
The SNP must not just inflict the consequences of their failings on our pupils and our Schools. They must exhaust every other avenue first before closing schools again.
We want to restore excellence in Scottish schools. That starts with making sure this generation of children aren’t left behind by failed SNP ministers and failed SNP policies.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-repeats-blended-learning-22868881
Yesterday, we called on the SNP to come to Parliament with a solution to the flu vaccine chaos it has created, so the public can get the assurances they desperately need.
Right across Scotland, people trying to access flu vaccines are being left on hold, being turned away at the surgery door because of low stocks, or finding they’ve missed an appointment through no fault of their own.
We have written to the Health Secretary and lodged parliamentary questions demanding further information.
Our most vulnerable have been let down already by the SNP’s shambolic response to coronavirus. They’re being let down again by the flu vaccine rollout.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-54598603
The SNP must consider delaying legislation on interlinked smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, so that more people have time to comply.
Homeowners have been given less than four months to install the alarms at a cost of between £200 and £300, or risk breaking the law.
There has been a lack of publicity over the change from the SNP Government, and it also raises concerns about tradespeople coming into others homes at a time when the guidance is to reduce this as much as possible.
Safety is absolutely vital but during a pandemic when money is tight this is an unrealistic target.
19 October 2020
The SNP’s incompetent handling of the flu vaccine rollout is a shameful shambles.
First Failure Sturgeon promised that everyone who was eligible for a flu vaccination would receive an appointment after the programme started on 1 October.
However, many patients are struggling to access the vaccine: letters “delayed”, the youngest patients being invited first, problems with the phone line, and hundreds of vulnerable patients being sent home in Aberdeenshire unvaccinated due to “lack of stock”.
Our most vulnerable have been let down already by Sturgeon’s chaotic and failed response to coronavirus. They’re being let down again by the flu vaccine rollout.
Violent crime has soared under the complacent SNP.
Thanks to the SNP’s soft touch, pro-offender approach to justice, violent crime offences have soared by almost 50% in six years.
The latest figures revealed that non-sexual violent crime is at the highest level since 2011-12, and it has increased in every one of the last five years.
Victims have been let down repeatedly by Sturgeon’s failed policies.
The police are not receiving the backing and resources they need from this SNP government.
The SNP is soft on crime. The Scottish Conservatives will put victims and public safety first.
The SNP’s hate crime bill breaches human rights.
Judicial think-tank Justitia has said that the ‘stirring up of hatred offences’ in the hate crime Bill breaches human rights.
This was after lawyers, actors, the police and churches have spoken out against the Bill’s threat to free speech.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this badly thought through and incompetently-constructed law goes too far.
Our fundamental right to freedom of speech is under threat from the extremist, bullying SNP.
https://twitter.com/_freetodisagree/status/1318093182639443968
16 October 2020
Why is Sturgeon once again holding back from supporting Scottish jobs?
We have identified nearly £1 billion of funding in total that the SNP has held back from delivering to Scottish businesses.
Despite receiving an extra £700 million from the UK Government, the SNP still hasn’t paid out a single penny. And the SNP has held on to another £270 million from the Growth Scheme and Digital Fund.
Douglas Ross has outlined how the Scottish Conservatives would back business with automatic grants and a Hardship Fund. But jobs and businesses are never the priority for the anti-enterprise SNP.
We will always put Scottish livelihoods first. Sturgeon will always put SNP interests first.
https://dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2020/10/hospitality-firms-say-40m-fund-not-enough/amp/
In an unbelievably petty piece of juvenile gutter politics, a senior SNP Government adviser was complaining about flags on food packaging - in the middle of a pandemic.
One of First Failure Sturgeon’s right-hand women pushed civil servants to investigate whether Scotch beef was being marked as British, claiming that if it was true then ‘we have a problem.’
Her crass, idiotic and petty intervention came on the same day that Sturgeon warned that her health policies were failing with COVID-19 ‘accelerating’ across the country.
In the middle of a pandemic, it’s jaw-dropping that the SNP Government was furiously investigating how the Union flag ended up on a packet of meat.
We would focus on the pandemic and protecting jobs. The SNP is clearly only interested in nationalist grievance-mongering. Pathetic.
The dithering, cowardly SNP must expel MP Margaret Ferrier from the party.
The Metropolitan Police has said it will take no further action against Ferrier, who repeatedly broke self-isolation rules.
People will rightly be furious that Ferrier might get off with this appalling and deeply hypocritical behaviour scot free.
The SNP must stop trying to find ways to hide behind process - and send that clear message by expelling Ferrier from the party, today.
The Scottish people have made sacrifices and followed the rules.
They deserve better than this craven, cowardly and hypocritical SNP behaviour.
15 October 2020
The SNP must get a grip on the flu vaccine rollout, which Scottish Care described yesterday as ‘poorly managed and patchy’.
Some health boards have been using an IT system designed for childhood vaccinations, meaning younger patients are being prioritised rather than the oldest and most vulnerable.
It's a disgrace that we're heading towards winter and the people across Scotland who need it most can't get easy access to the flu jab.
It’s also reported today that a number of patients at the QEUH in Glasgow have died after contracting coronavirus on hospital wards.
Our most vulnerable have been let down by the response to the coronavirus crisis. They cannot be let down again in a possible winter flu crisis.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54537729
14 October 2020
The dithering SNP must act now to protect jobs, as the latest figures show the jobless claimant count has doubled in 12 months.
Under the socialist SNP, business has been denigrated, ignored and sidelined. Too often, economically-illiterate SNP ministers treat business as the enemy, a burden, or an afterthought. That Nationalist stupidity must change.
We have called for the SNP to back business with a new standard Scottish Business Restrictions Grant, a business advisory council, and minimum adaptation period before new restrictions come in. These measures will involve businesses in decision-making and prevent them being left out in the cold.
We have also set out practical proposals to protect and create jobs in Scotland which we’re calling on the SNP to implement without delay.
The SNP has been deliberately ignoring businesses and workers throughout this crisis. The Scottish Conservatives will stand up for them to get the support that they need to keep Scotland in business.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18791025.gg/
Sturgeon must reveal who reminded her about the secret meeting with Alex Salmond’s former chief of staff.
Secretive Sturgeon and her dishonest SNP government continued to cover up this secret meeting for more than a year after Sturgeon claimed to have been reminded about it.
This drip feed of new revelations only leaves us asking what more is being hidden and why Sturgeon is so reluctant to reveal the truth.
The Scottish public deserve the truth, not more SNP lies, SNP sleaze and SNP secrecy.
The SNP must apologise for using the Scouts in its political broadcasts.
The Scouts said the SNP ignored requests to remove footage of a woman in her Scout uniform from the advert - stating that it breaks Scouts impartiality rules.
A report was made to the charity regulator in February after talks between Scouts Scotland and the SNP about the advert.
It’s astounding that the SNP is ignoring pleas from the Scouts to stop using this dishonest footage.
The SNP needs to apologise for misleading the public, and explain who was responsible for approving this appalling and dishonest nationalist socialist propaganda.
13 October 2020
The SNP has - once again - completely failed to back Scottish businesses.
Yesterday, speaking to businesses and representative organisations, Douglas Ross called for the SNP to take action: to help companies survive the current crisis, and to involve businesses in decisions about new coronavirus restrictions.
Under the economically-illiterate SNP, business has been ignored, sidelined, even denigrated. Too often, SNP ministers treat business as a burden and as an afterthought – typical left wing thinking that always leads to economic disaster.
That socialist mind-set damaging Scotland must change. That’s why we have called for the SNP to back business with a new standard Scottish Business Restrictions Grant, a business advisory council, and minimum adaptation period before new restrictions come in. These measures will involve business in decision making and prevent them being left out in the cold.
We don’t have to choose between backing business and protecting public health: unlike the tired, failed, incompetent SNP, the Scottish Conservatives can and will do both.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18787905.douglas-ross-wants-adaptation-period-closed-businesses/
Sturgeon must give details of when and how Salmond asked her to ‘collude’ with him to cover up misconduct claims.
She previously insisted she wasn’t under pressure to intervene. Now she’s suddenly claiming Alex Salmond wanted her to ‘collude’ and cover up allegations. Both cannot be true, so which is it? Which is the lie, and which is the truth?
Slippery Sturgeon just can’t get her story straight. The drip feed of new revelations only leaves us asking what more is being hidden – and we know that whenever the SNP has something really sleazy to hide, it does everything possible to bury the truth.
But the Scottish public deserve the truth, and we are going to keep digging until it is unearthed.
The cowardly duplicitous SNP must remove Margaret Ferrier’s party membership.
Disgraced SNP MP Ferrier put people at risk and undermined the vital public health message – just when cases are rising and more people are dying from this awful virus.
And now she has said that the SNP tried to contain the scandal and promised to readmit her to the party. Being in charge of sleaze management must be a full-time job in the SNP: no wonder Sturgeon and her cronies seem unable to cope with anything else.
Margaret Ferrier’s excuses are mortifying and shameless. She has to resign – but the SNP must expel her too.
The Scottish people have made sacrifices and followed the rules. They deserve better than this shameful SNP sleaze-fest.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/12/disgraced-mp-ferrier-told-door-open-snp-return/
A group of over 11,000 parents are warning that S4 pupils will be put at a ‘clear disadvantage’ if they do not sit National 5 exams next year.
Serious questions remain over how the SNP “government” will award National 5 grades, and what contingency plans will be in place for Highers and Advanced Highers if exams cannot proceed.
Parents, pupils and teachers must be assured there will not be a repeat of swithering Swinney’s August’s results fiasco – but all the evidence points to him being incapable of learning any lessons.
A whole generation of pupils risk being left behind by the failed, incompetent SNP.
12 Oct 2020
Evasive Sturgeon must give details of when and how Salmond asked her to ‘collude’ with him to cover up misconduct claims.
It was also claimed over the weekend that she failed to hand over WhatsApp messages between herself and Salmond to the committee last week.
And SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell has been accused of ignoring bullying complaints from women in the SNP.
The deeply toxic drip feed of new revelations only leaves us asking what more is being hidden.
The SNP’s lack of transparency is shattering and new scandals are emerging at every turn. The Scottish public deserve the truth, not more SNP lies.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18786093.peter-murrell-ignored-bullying-complaints-snp-msp/
It is unacceptable that the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier has not resigned as an MP or been expelled from the SNP.
There is no defence for her actions. She put people at risk and undermined the vital public health message when cases are rising and more people are dying from this awful virus.
Ferrier’s pathetic excuses are mortifying and shameless - she clearly values her own salary more than doing the right thing.
The Scottish people have made sacrifices and followed the rules. They deserve better than SNP arrogance.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54496759
The SNP must start publishing weekly Test and Protect data.
Test and Protect is only contacting 77.6% of infected people within 24 hours, a drop of 11 percentage points over the past 6 weeks.
Cases are rising across the country and contact tracing is vital to stopping the spread of this virus.
This system needs to be working effectively so that we can all get that bit closer to our normal way of lives.
9 Oct 2020
The SNP must clear up its confusion over cafes.
The SNP first said cafes with an alcohol licence must close. Now the guidance says they can open but not sell alcohol, creating further confusion over the definition of a cafe.
Once again, as usual with the shambolic SNP, it’s clear as mud. This confusion must be cleared up now.
We also need to see the SNP urgently outline what financial support is available to keep businesses afloat and save jobs in this pandemic.
The SNP never put businesses first. The Scottish Conservatives will prioritise jobs and livelihoods.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-confirms-cafes-central-22813559
Sturgeon repeatedly misled Parliament over the Alex Salmond allegations.
After Ruth questioned Sturgeon about ‘forgetting’ a meeting, Sturgeon admitted she understood why people ‘would raise an eyebrow’ about her claim.
New evidence shows that she was told about allegations against Salmond in a meeting with Geoff Aberdein which she claims to have previously forgotten.
And SNP chief executive Peter Murrell confirmed that the SNP had been contacted about allegations regarding Salmond’s behaviour, despite previously claiming that he wasn’t aware of concerns.
This SNP scandal is appalling: the Scottish public do not want more secrecy and lies.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/ruth-davidson-calls-judicial-inquiry-22812959.amp
8 Oct 2020
The SNP must do more to support the hospitality industry.
After the new restrictions announced yesterday, the SNP must stop dithering and outline specific details of what financial support is available to protect the jobs and businesses affected.
We have a bold plan for jobs – the SNP must start matching our ambition.
The people of Scotland need urgent action so they can continue to provide for themselves and their family. They cannot wait for Sturgeon’s creaking sleaze-mired administration to make a decision.
Sturgeon Is not going to get away with misleading parliament.
First Failure Sturgeon previously insisted that she found out about Alex Salmond’s alleged behaviour from him in April 2018.
But new evidence shows that she was told in November 2017 about Sky News enquiries into his behaviour, and in a meeting with Geoff Aberdein she claims to have previously forgotten.
The overwhelming stench of sleaze is smothering the toxic SNP.
The SNP has thrown in the towel on exams.
Yesterday’s statement gave some clarity but, months into the academic year, it was far too late in coming for our teachers and young people.
Serious questions remain on how National 5 grades will be awarded and what contingency plans will be in place for Highers and Advanced Highers if exams cannot proceed.
Parents, pupils and teachers must be assured there will not be a repeat of August’s results fiasco.
A whole generation of pupils risk being left behind. Useless Swinney is just not up to the job.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18777236.coronavirus-scotland-national-5-exams-cancelled-2021/
The SNP should work with the UK Government to improve Scotland’s transport links, not play politics with vital improvements.
Transport Scotland has been advised not to engage with the UK Government on the Union Connectivity Review.
This forward-thinking review is a huge opportunity for major investment to improve transport infrastructure in Scotland.
The childish SNP must stop playing politics and recognise that this review can bring significant benefit to Scotland’s road and rail network.
It’s time to leave the old divisions behind us and work together to rebuild Scotland now.
7 Oct 2020
As more coronavirus restrictions are set to be announced today, the SNP must stop its endless dithering and do more to protect Scottish jobs.
The money is there for the SNP to act – but only half of the £500 million promised from the Growth Scheme has been used. These missing millions should be delivered to businesses now, this week, before it’s too late.
We have a bold plan for jobs – the SNP must start matching our ambition.
The people of Scotland need urgent action so they can continue to provide for themselves and their family.
Sturgeon must sack the SNP Chief Executive.
Peter Murrell has admitted sending messages calling for the police to be pressured into action against their former boss, Alex Salmond.
Sturgeon has to take responsibility. This is her government, her party, and it’s up to her to do the right thing and act immediately.
The Scottish public do not want more secrecy and lies. Murrell must go.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-urged-act-over-alex-salmond-messages-2994494
6 Oct 2020
The SNP continues to treat the public like fools over Margaret Ferrier’s actions.
It is unacceptable that Ferrier is still an SNP member.
There is nothing stopping the SNP from expelling her from the party, but they’re still dragging their heels on this issue. What does she know that Sturgeon is afraid of?
The Scottish people have made sacrifices and followed the rules. They deserve better.
After Ruth wrote to him directly, the evasive Chief Executive of the SNP has been forced into admitting sending WhatsApp messages calling for pressure to be piled on Alex Salmond.
The SNP and the “government” slippery Sturgeon leads must now co-operate fully with the Scottish Parliament inquiry committee so that further questions can be answered.
The Scottish public will not accept a whitewash. They deserve the truth.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeons-husband-admits-sending-22798102
5 Oct 2020
The SNP is still failing on jobs, as yesterday it was revealed that it has only spent half of what they promised on business investment.
The £500 million Scottish Growth Scheme was announced by the SNP Government in 2016, but only £258.9 million has actually been dished out.
Small companies have been left in the lurch again, waiting on the SNP to live up to its grand announcements.
The people of Scotland need urgent action so they can continue to provide for themselves and their family.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/douglas-ross-calls-snp-government-22790521
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/6118728/snp-criticised-spend-business-investment/
Ruth has written to the SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell to ask him whether leaked WhatsApp messages about Alex Salmond are genuine.
Last week, Nicola Sturgeon refused to answer questions about the actions of the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell - saying we should ask Peter Murrell directly for answers.
So Ruth took her instruction and wrote to Mr Murrell directly, to ask if the messages are real and if so why he sent them.
The evasive, dodgy SNP has failed to co-operate with the Scottish Parliament committee.
The Scottish public will not accept a whitewash. They deserve the truth.
2 Oct 2020
Margaret Ferrier must resign and the SNP must come clean.
SNP MP Margaret Ferrier blatantly broke self-isolation rules as she got on public transport after testing positive for Covid-19.
These actions not only broke the law, they will have put lives at risk.
We must hear from Sturgeon and Blackford about when they knew and why they kept this information secret from the public for hours or maybe even days.
The Scottish people have made sacrifices and followed the rules. They deserve answers.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/margaret-ferrier-must-resign-over-covid-breaches-nw67ql5nv
Sturgeon lied to Parliament over the Salmond inquiry.
At FMQs, Sturgeon refused to confirm that leaked messages, reportedly sent by SNP chief Peter Murrell, were genuine.
This is after Sturgeon said repeatedly that she would co-operate fully with this inquiry. She is now refusing to hand over key documents to the committee.
This SNP Government must now provide all evidence the inquiry has requested, and Sturgeon must finally come clean on what she knew, and when. The lies must stop.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-refuses-say-whether-22774244
Sturgeon must step in to save Scottish football.
The coronavirus pandemic is an existential crisis for Scottish football that threatens the existence of many clubs across Scotland.
SNP ministers need to hold discussions with clubs about a financial package to save grassroots facilities from closure.
Football clubs are at the heart of many communities. The SNP Government must do all it can to save them.
1 Oct 2020
The dithering SNP must act now to save 100,000 jobs.
Douglas Ross has written to Sturgeon to call for ambitious action to protect jobs, following reports that 100,000 more people could be out of work by Christmas.
The UK Government has stepped-up to protect jobs throughout this crisis, now it’s time for the SNP Government to do the same.
Jobs and livelihoods depend on both of Scotland’s governments working together.
The people of Scotland need urgent action so they can continue to provide for themselves and their family.
Sturgeon lied to Parliament over the Salmond inquiry.
Conservative MSP Oliver Mundell was ejected from the Scottish Parliament yesterday for asking Sturgeon to explain why she lied to Parliament.
Sturgeon stated repeatedly that she would co-operate fully with this inquiry, but is now refusing to hand over key documents to the committee.
This SNP Government must now provide all evidence the inquiry has requested, and Sturgeon must finally come clean on what she knew, and when.
The Scottish public will not accept a whitewash. They deserve the truth.
Students are still being let down by the shambolic SNP.
In a statement to Parliament yesterday, hapless and floundering Universities Minister Richard Lochhead failed to reassure students on several key issues.
Students – some as young as 17 – still don’t know whether they can go home for Christmas or whether they’ll be refunded their rent.
The SNP Government is completely out of its depth on this issue. This could have been a bump in the road but instead it’s been a car crash.
Students have every right to feel abandoned by the clueless SNP.
The UK Government has signed a historic deal with Norway that will deliver a sea of opportunity for Scotland’s fishermen.
The agreement demonstrates the shared will of the UK and Norway to cooperate as independent coastal states and seek effective and sustainable management of their fisheries.
But meanwhile, the foolish SNP wants to drag Scotland back into the EU and the hated Common Fisheries Policy.
We will always stand up for Scotland’s coastal communities; the SNP will always sell them out.
30 September 2020
Sturgeon misled Parliament over the Alex Salmond Inquiry.
Sturgeon repeatedly promised Parliament that her SNP Government would provide all material requested.
However, it has refused to release key documents to the committee, despite repeated requests.
The SNP Government, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell and Alex Salmond have all been accused of ‘obstruction’ by the committee convenor, SNP MSP Linda Fabiani.
Sturgeon’s broken promise means the inquiry now looks like a whitewash.
Violent crime has soared under the SNP.
Thanks to the SNP’s soft touch approach to justice, violent crime is at an eight year high.
The latest figures revealed that non-sexual violent crime is at the highest level since 2011-12, and it has increased for each of the last five years.
Victims have been let down repeatedly and our police officers are not receiving the backing and resources they need from this SNP government.
It’s time to end the SNP’s soft touch approach to crime.
The SNP must avoid a cancer crisis.
The latest figures show that cancer referrals dropped by a fifth during lockdown.
This is a ticking time-bomb for the health of Scottish people if it’s not tackled urgently.
The SNP must do everything possible to avoid a cancer crisis in Scotland and save lives.
29 Sep 2020
The SNP has failed to clear up the confusion for students and their families.
The revised guidance issued late on Sunday night was clearly another rushed, last-minute job. Students – some as young as 17 – still don’t know whether they can go home for Christmas or whether they’ll be refunded their rent.
Today it has been revealed that the SNP Government U-turned at the last minute to allow students to move into halls. Yesterday the grossly incompetent Richard Lochhead said he hadn’t seen key scientific advice that predicted this outbreak.
Students have every right to feel abandoned by the useless SNP.
The delay of the care home scandal report is an outrage and an insult to grieving families.
Almost half of Scotland’s coronavirus deaths have taken place in care homes – after thousands of hospital patients were transferred before mandatory testing and at least 37 were transferred after testing positive.
A long-awaited report on the true scale of the problem – promised by the end of September - has now been postponed.
The SNP won’t own up to what went wrong and now it won’t publish key information on time.
The SNP Government’s failure to protect our most vulnerable is a national scandal.
28 Sep 2020
An SNP candidate has said ‘nothing is more important than independence.’
It comes after the SNP Government refused to drop their Referendum Bill and focus on restoring our schools.
Rather than focus on taking us back to the division of the past, the SNP should focus on the health crisis, jobs and schools.
Only the Scottish Conservatives can unite and take Scotland forward.
The SNP’s own supporters have called for it to scrap the dangerous hate crime bill.
Lawyers, actors, the police and churches have spoken out against the bill. Now the SNP’s own supporters are slamming the legislation.
Humza Yousaf’s minor changes don’t go anywhere near far enough - and he has flat-out refused to remove the stirring-up offences.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this law goes too far.
Our fundamental right to freedom of speech remains under threat.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/snp-supporters-hit-out-controversial-hate-crime-bill-2984861
Holyrood’s Justice Committee has warned that it could take a decade to clear the backlog of cases in Scotland’s courts.
There were already long delays before the pandemic began and the situation has only worsened since.
This means that victims could be waiting years for justice to be done.
The failing SNP must do all it can to get Scotland’s court system back up and running as efficiently as possible.
Only the Scottish Conservatives will put victims first.
https://news.stv.tv/politics/court-backlog-could-take-a-decade-to-clear-msps-warn?top
The SNP Government must be clearer with university students.
Students have had nothing but mistake on top of mistake from this incompetent SNP Government.
There is no excuse for this confusion and delay. Students as young as 17 are anxiously waiting to find out if they will be stuck in halls for up to six months.
These young people have suffered through unprecedented disruption to their education and now they are being threatened with expulsion just for going home.
Students and their families deserve better.
25 Sep 2020
Victims and their families have been failed by this SNP government.
Two years ago, the Michelle’s Law campaign demanded that victims were given a greater say over the parole and temporary release decisions for criminals who had attacked them and their families.
Michelle’s father now says he feels let down by Humza Yousaf as promised action has ‘disappeared’.
Despite promise after promise, the SNP have failed on every account to enact the specific demands of Michelle’s Law.
Only the Scottish Conservatives will put victims first.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54284595
24 Sep 2020
Last night in Parliament, the SNP voted to prioritise an independence referendum over schools.
A Scottish Conservative motion urged the SNP focus on closing the attainment gap rather than independence – but it was voted down by the nationalist extremeists.
Nicola Sturgeon said education would be her top priority. Instead we have seen the SNP continue to put independence ahead of everything else.
We have spent the last six years on the divisions of the past: let’s spend the next six years on restoring excellence in our schools.
It’s more important than ever that every young person gets the opportunity to do well in life.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/tories-challenge-snp-prioritise-fixing-22730868
The SNP’s minor changes to their dangerous hate crime bill don’t go far enough.
We warned the SNP some weeks ago about the avalanche of opposition to this Bill and the direct threat that Part 2 poses to freedom of expression.
Unfortunately, Humza Yousaf has not only failed to fix the problems – he has arrogantly refused to remove the ill-considered and dangerous ‘stirring-up’ offences.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this law goes too far.
Our fundamental right to freedom of speech remains under threat.
Labour cannot be trusted on the Union - or anything else.
Yesterday, Starmer said that the SNP would have a mandate for indyref2 if it won a majority next year.
We are eight months from the Scottish Parliament election - and already Labour are throwing in the towel and agreeing to the SNP’s extremist demands.
Only the Scottish Conservatives can unite and take Scotland forward.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54270062
23 Sep 2020
Exams going ahead must be the SNP’s plan A.
Yesterday we questioned Swinney over his plans for the 2021 exam diet and called on him not to throw in the towel on next year’s exams.
The SNP must ensure it exhausts every other option before choosing to cancel exams again, and have a credible plan in place if they can’t go ahead.
Parents, pupils and teachers do not deserve a repeat of last month’s results fiasco.
A whole generation of pupils risk being left behind.
The SNP must take urgent action to increase the number of contact tracers in Scotland.
The SNP promised that 2,000 contact tracers would be in place by June. Yet three months on, they have recruited less than half that number.
Contact tracing is a vital part of stemming the spread of this virus. It’s disappointing that Scotland has been left under resourced by the SNP in light of an increase in cases.
We need enough testing and tracing to stop outbreaks and get life back – or closer to - normal.
Floundering Jeane Freeman has announced further delays to the reopening of children’s cancer wards in Glasgow.
Getting these wards back in operation quickly and safely needs to be an absolute priority for the SNP.
Children have been let down for too long already – they cannot afford any more SNP delays or mistakes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-54257966
22 Sep 2020
The SNP has been slammed for failing to deliver online teaching.
Despite claiming to set up a ‘schools digital network’ in 2007 when they came to office, SNP ministers failed to get children learning online during lockdown.
John Wallace, Chairman of the Music Education Partnership Group has said that the system was ‘neither functional enough nor widely enough used to enable a switch to blended learning’
Instead we saw a postcode lottery in education, and a widening of the gap between the least and most advantaged.
A whole generation of children are at risk of being left behind.
The sleazy SNP must come clean to the Salmond inquiry.
It has emerged that no minutes were taken at a crucial meeting between Leslie Evans and Nicola Sturgeon in November 2017 – when they discussed Alex Salmond’s alleged behaviour at Edinburgh Airport.
Emails uncovered via freedom of information show Sturgeon and Evans arranged to speak, but no details were recorded of what was discussed.
The SNP Government have been secretive from day one of this inquiry.
The Scottish public do not want more secrecy and spin. They deserve the truth.
A former SNP councillor has joined the Scottish Conservatives.
Councillor Andrew Wood branded the SNP a ‘far-left extremist movement’ and criticised the SNP Government’s attack on free speech and obsession with indyref2.
Only the Scottish Conservatives can unite and take Scotland forward.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/former-snp-stalwart-switches-conservatives-22717941
21 Sep 2020
Exams going ahead must be the SNP’s plan A.
John Swinney is set to announce that National 5 exams will be cancelled next year, with Higher exams also set to be restricted.
The SNP must ensure it exhausts every other option before cancelling exams again, and must this time have a credible plan in place if they can’t go ahead.
Parents, pupils and teachers do not deserve a repeat of last month’s results fiasco from the SNP.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scots-exams-face-axe-next-year-covid-cases-spike-2977872
Sturgeon must condemn Angus Robertson’s comments.
One of Sturgeon’s closest allies wrote that elderly voters passing away is a ‘gain’ for independence.
The most vulnerable age group has been hit hardest of all throughout this pandemic – to speak of them in this appalling way only demonstrates the SNP’s blind obsession with independence.
Only the Scottish Conservatives can unite and take Scotland forward and save the nation from the disgusting nationalist ideology espoused by senior SNP figures.
The SNP is once again failing to back our police officers.
New figures show the number of special constables has halved since the SNP police merger in 2013, falling by over 500 in just seven years.
These officers play an important role in keeping our streets safe – a huge drop in numbers like this is truly alarming.
The SNP must act now to stop these numbers falling any further.
Everyone deserves to feel safe at home and in their community.
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/6065141/special-constable-plummeted-police-scotland/
The SNP lies must stop.
SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell has avoided questioning over a series of messages leaked last week.
Yet again, the SNP are showing they cannot be trusted to co-operate with this inquiry in good faith.
The Scottish public do not want more secrecy and spin. They deserve the truth.
18 Sep 2020
Leaked WhatsApp messages showed that Peter Murrell, Sturgeon’s husband and the head of the SNP, wanted to pressure Police Scotland into investigating Alex Salmond.
And now it’s been revealed prosecutors were forced to get a warrant to obtain documents from the SNP government ahead of Salmond’s trial.
Yet again, the toxic SNP is showing they cannot be trusted to co-operate with this inquiry in good faith.
The Scottish public do not want more secrecy and spin. They deserve the truth.
The SNP is failing victims.
The family of murdered teenager Michelle Stewart have been waiting more than two years for the SNP to deliver ‘concrete action’ on victims’ rights.
Ruth challenged Sturgeon at FMQs two years ago, and again yesterday following almost no action.
It comes as violent crime has risen seven per cent in the last year and the latest figures show that a third of surcharge fines on criminals have not been collected.
Victims of crime deserve better than Sturgeon’s failing SNP government.
The SNP must drop the Hate Crime bill.
The Bill has already been slammed by police, lawyers, academics, artists, faith groups and atheists.
Now Humza Yousaf claims he will make changes to the bill. He must listen to our concerns and deliver as soon as possible.
We have called time on this blatant attack on freedom of speech but the SNP are determined to plough on anyway.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this law goes too far.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/msps-call-for-decision-over-hate-speech-bill-rjknr0cbl
17 Sep 2020
The dithering SNP must take urgent action to save jobs.
New figures show that the Scottish economy has shrunk by nearly a fifth between April and June.
Throughout this crisis, the UK Government has delivered unprecedented levels of support and protected nearly a million Scottish jobs through the furlough scheme.
But so far the SNP has failed to match the UK Government’s ambition to protect livelihoods.
The people of Scotland need urgent action so they can continue to provide for themselves and their family.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/16/scotlands-economy-shrank-fifth-start-lockdown/
The SNP failed Scotland’s care homes completely.
A leading elderly care expert has condemned the SNP’s treatment of care homes during this pandemic.
Professor June Andrews has stated the SNP’s care home guidelines were written by someone who ‘doesn’t understand what a care home is for’.
Care homes have been the epicentre of this health crisis, and the SNP has neglected them right from the start.
The failure to protect our most vulnerable is unacceptable.
The SNP must come clean to the Salmond inquiry.
Alex Salmond’s lawyers have accused the SNP of leaking ‘deliberately misleading’ information to damage Salmond’s reputation.
Yet again, the SNP is showing it cannot be trusted to co-operate with this inquiry in good faith.
The Scottish public deserve the truth, not SNP lies.
16 Sep 2020
The SNP has led us through a decade of disaster and decay in public services.
Satisfaction with public services has plummeted over ten percentage points from 2011 to 2019.
After the SNP’s consistent failures in our schools, our health system and in transport, public satisfaction with these services all declined.
The failing SNP must drop the constitutional grievance and focus on delivering the priorities of the Scottish people.
The SNP is failing to deliver on its childcare promises.
In July the SNP broke its flagship promise to deliver 1,140 hours of free childcare for families, which caused fury amongst parents.
Hundreds of emails uncovered through freedom of information accused SNP Ministers of presiding over a ‘shambles’ and plunging families into financial ruin.
Our children deserve the best start in life, not broken promises.
Labour has insulted police officers on the frontline.
A Labour student group tweeted the acronym ‘ACAB’, which stands for ‘all cops are b*****ds’.
It took Richard Leonard far too long to condemn these comments which came from within his own ranks.
And a report today from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary slams the SNP for failing to adequately train our police since they created Police Scotland in 2013.
Only the Scottish Conservatives can be trusted to back our police.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54167822
Alex Salmond ‘could display bullying and intimidating behaviour’, the former First Minister’s top civil servant has said.
However, Sir Peter Housden refused to confirm whether he had spoken to Nicola Sturgeon about this behaviour.
The committee cannot fulfil its function without full transparency. If it is to only receive part of the evidence, it will only be able to produce part of an inquiry report.
The Scottish public want the truth, not more secrecy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-54159700
14 Sep 2020
The SNP's hypocrisy over Salmond legal advice must end now.
We have uncovered eight times where the SNP demanded the UK Government publish legal advice, and three times the SNP Government published it themselves.
Yet the SNP continues to make a mockery of the Salmond inquiry by refusing to give up key documents.
This is a dodgy cover-up and the height of hypocrisy - the SNP must release all legal advice it received.
The Scottish public want the truth, not more secrecy.
The SNP’s hate crime bill is the most controversial piece of legislation since devolution began.
The bill has received almost 2000 submissions from individuals and organisations across Scotland – at least 500 submissions higher than any other proposed law.
As drafted, the SNP’s Hate Crime Bill threatens our fundamental right to freedom of speech and that’s why so many Scottish people are furious about it.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this law goes too far.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-s-hate-crime-bill-is-most-controversial-for-scots-cgh7lhfhk
The SNP is failing victims of crime again and again.
Less than 1 in 4 victims are part of the SNP’s ‘Victim Notification Scheme’.
Victims deserve to be kept abreast of the most basic updates regarding their case – yet over 75 per cent aren’t signed up.
The SNP must address the failures of this scheme - and start putting the rights of the victim above that of the criminal.
Only the Scottish Conservatives put victims of crime first.
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/6041524/crime-victims-sign-up-stats/
11 September 2020
The evasive SNP must stop the cover up attempts and come clean to the Alex Salmond inquiry.
With the SNP still trying to hide evidence from this inquiry, MSPs have been forced to impose a deadline on these documents.
It is not acceptable that the sleazy SNP continues to withhold vital evidence from this inquiry.
The committee cannot fulfil its function without full transparency. Sturgeon will eventually have to come clean about what she knew, and when. The Nationalists will have to be honest – if they know how.
The Scottish public want the truth, not more secrecy from an increasingly sleazy SNP.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/alex-salmond-inquiry-msps-impose-deadline-for-documents-6twsg32g6
The SNP’s complete negligence and devastating failures on PPE have been exposed.
An NHS Director has revealed that clueless Jeane Freeman was often unaware of crucial information concerning PPE during the pandemic.
This new revelation about gross incompetence by another SNP minister is not only embarrassing for the SNP, but deeply concerning too.
It is unacceptable that the Health Secretary herself was ignorant of vital information: we urgently need a public inquiry into what really happened in Scotland’s care homes.
The SNP Government’s failure to protect our most vulnerable is a national scandal. Useless Freeman must be sacked and replaced with a minister who has at least some clue about Health.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18712353.jeane-freeman-unaware-crucial-information-mps-told/
10 September 2020
Only the Scottish Conservatives are standing up for free speech.
Yesterday, the SNP along with Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens all voted against scrapping the Hate Crime Bill with its deeply flawed and sinister attack on free speech.
The Bill has already been slammed by police, lawyers, academics, artists, faith groups and atheists.
We have called time on this blatant attack on freedom of speech - but the SNP is going to plough on anyway with its totalitarian approach.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this mess of an SNP law goes too far.
Slippery Sturgeon has to come clean to the Salmond inquiry.
Yesterday, Peter Murrell’s evidence revealed that the SNP sat on complaints about Alex Salmond’s behaviour for nine months before any action was taken.
Incredibly, Murrell also claimed to be unaware of the content of meetings that Sturgeon and Salmond were having in his own home – which were about the allegations.
Meanwhile, Leslie Evans had to correct outright false evidence she gave to the committee. Her position now looks increasingly untenable given this breach of standards.
The SNP’s mantra of silence and secrecy can no longer be accepted. The Scottish public deserve the truth, not more nationalist lies.
9 September 2020
The SNP is cynically betraying our fishermen. No surprise there then.
SNP Ministers attempted to undermine the UK Government’s fishing negotiations with the EU by advocating a weaker stance towards Brussels.
The SNP is desperate to sell out our fishermen and take us back into the hated Common Fisheries Policy. This would be a slap in the face to Scotland’s fishing industry.
Unlike the duplicitous and dishonest SNP, the Scottish Conservatives will back Scotland’s fishing communities all the way.
Incompetent John Swinney knew days in advance of the results being sent out that pupils’ qualifications recommendations would be downgraded.
A freedom of information response revealed that swithering Swinney was warned that grades would be downgraded five days before pupils were given their results.
It’s beyond belief that Swinney knew about this so far in advance and yet didn’t think a change was necessary.
Nobody in Scotland seems prepared to step up and take responsibility for failing so many pupils.
Pupils and teachers deserve better than this hopeless and dishonest SNP government.
8 September 2020
The SNP must stop dithering and take urgent action to save jobs.
The Scottish Licensed Trade Association has warned that up to 12,500 jobs are at risk in pubs and bars.
Scotland is facing an unprecedented economic crisis with hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.
But so far the SNP has completely failed to match the UK Government’s ambition to protect livelihoods.
The people of Scotland need urgent action so they can continue to provide for themselves and their families.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-54062098
7 September 2020
After 13 years of disaster in education the SNP is failing Scotland’s teachers yet again.
Head teachers across Scotland are complaining of ‘excessive’ and ‘unsustainable’ workloads.
Staff are concerned about ‘ever changing guidelines’ and a lack of support from local authorities.
Teachers need all the support they can get in this crisis to educate our children and keep schools open.
Pupils and teachers deserve better than this chaotic and foolish SNP government.
4 September 2020
Douglas Ross has urged SNP Ministers to stop pushing independence and focus on tackling the pandemic.
This plea for responsibility comes as yet another of Sturgeon’s key economic advisers – Dan Macdonald – said growing the economy was more important than a referendum.
Families are still waiting for answers about how their loved ones died in care homes, but in the insular extremist world of First Failure Sturgeon and the SNP this is apparently the time to squander yet more government and public resources on a Referendum Bill and a new indyref2 strategy.
We all should focus on what’s most important: saving lives and livelihoods by suppressing the virus and helping people back to work. Obsessive failure Sturgeon is clearly incapable of that.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/snp-government-urged-stop-pushing-independence-2960849
The hate-filled SNP has turned down extra funding for our universities – out of sheer spite.
The UK Government offered to help plug the £190 million gap in Scottish university funding due to COVID-19, but petty-minded SNP Ministers refused to co-operate.
This just proves unequivocally that that the pathetic SNP would rather pursue grievance than work with others to get the best result for Scotland.
Our world-leading universities are in financial distress: we need co-operation, not conflict, to sort this out, but Sturgeon would rather ruin more lives than listen to sense.
Scottish Labour is continuing its perpetual civil war - with party grandees, MSPs and strategists now calling for Richard Leonard to quit.
Neil Findlay has hit back at Leonard’s critics, accusing them of ‘delusion’ in a leaked email.
It just proves that Scottish Labour is far too busy with yet more infighting to be able or willing to take on the SNP.
Only the Scottish Conservatives are united and ready to take Scotland forward.
3 September 2020
Yesterday, Ruth challenged a visibly rattled and bad-tempered Sturgeon to make education her focus instead of obsessing over another independence referendum.
It is unacceptable that schools are covering less ground in key subject areas – all because of the SNP failures in education policy and practice.
We have proposed real solutions to make a real difference to pupils’ education – such as extra tuition for the most disadvantaged pupils. But the SNP does not want to help these children if it also means admitting it has got it wrong so far.
We would make education a top priority; making Scotland’s schools work for every pupil, parent and teacher.
The SNP’s new agenda for the year is a sad and divisive Programme for Grievance, one totally unfit for the needs of Scotland.
Even before the pandemic the cynical SNP was failing to put victims first, meet its childcare promises and stand up for small businesses. It puts Lies before Lives.
And one of the SNP’s own advisers knows our plans to generate economic growth and create jobs are more credible than anything suggested by the SNP in the programme for government.
Yet, the SNP programme for 2020-21 focuses on constitutional division rather than fixing its pathetic record in government.
The SNP’s first, last and only priority is independence, regardless of the huge damage that obsession has already caused. Ours is moving Scotland forward.
The sleazy SNP needs to come clean to the Alex Salmond parliamentary inquiry.
Yesterday, a delay to new evidence and documents being released to the committee from the SNP Government was announced – with the flimsiest and totally unconvincing of excuses for this latest sleazy SNP cover-up attempt.
The committee cannot fulfil its function without full transparency. If it is to only receive part of the evidence, it will only be able to produce part of an inquiry report.
The Scottish public want the truth, not more secrecy. Slippery Sturgeon can’t pick and choose what evidence the inquiry gets to see.
1 September 2020
The SNP will not be forgiven for betraying Scottish fishermen.
SNP MPs are set go vote against crucial legislation that would allow us to take back control of our waters.
The UK is preparing to become an independent coastal state, but the cowardly and duplicitous SNP is desperate to sell out our fishermen and force us back into the hated EU Common Fisheries Policy.
This would be more than just a slap in the face to Scotland’s fishing industry: Scotland rejoining the EU would have to accept whatever terms the unelected fat-cat bureaucrats in Brussels dictated, and that would mean a total surrender to plunder by foreign fishing vessels.
We will back Scotland’s fishing communities all the way. Slippery Sturgeon will sell them out every time
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-tories-clash-ahead-brexit-22606613
27 August 2020
Yesterday’s GERS figures show that the Union is more valuable to Scotland than ever – and that the SNP is making a total mess of our economy in Scotland.
Under the appalling SNP, Scotland’s deficit has now risen to £15.1 billion - more than the entire Scottish health budget.
The Union dividend is worth nearly £2,000 a year for every man, woman and child in Scotland.
These figures throw an entire box of grenades into the SNP’s fantasy economic case for a separate Scotland. Sturgeon would have to throw away the entire NHS, every nurse and doctor, just to balance the books.
That is the shocking, appalling, bleakly stark reality of just how much damage the incompetent and economically-illiterate SNP has already done to Scotland.
We can see the Union in action and it is delivering for Scotland - unlike First Failure Sturgeon and her rotten SNP "government".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-53917226
Slippery Sturgeon needs to come clean on COVID-19 positive patients being discharged into care homes.
Yesterday at FMQs, Ruth once again questioned a rattled and evasive Sturgeon on COVID-19 positive patients being sent from hospital to care homes.
Yet again, First Failure Sturgeon dodged, dived and refused to answer basic questions on what she knew. We all know when someone is lying, and yesterday that was plain for all to see.
The effects of the coronavirus have been tragic, and the thousands of families whose loved ones have died deserve answers, not more SNP evasion, lies and deflection.
This is a complete failure to be transparent with grieving families and we will not accept it.
The SNP has completely mishandled the delivery of the Sick Kids Hospital in Edinburgh.
This hospital project has been hit with delay after delay - spanning 8 years.
The fact that much of this was a result of a spreadsheet error is completely unacceptable.
Jeane Freeman has serious questions to answer about the management of this project.
The responsibility lies squarely at the SNP’s door for this entire fiasco.
26 August 2020
The incompetent SNP keeps on failing our island communities.
Constant SNP mismanagement and delays mean two new ferries for our islanders are now nearly five years behind schedule. This pathetically ridiculous situation is entirely the fault of bungling SNP ministers – but the sleazy and evasive SNP still refuses to answer questions on the failures that have cost the taxpayer millions of pounds.
This ferry fiasco just goes to show that the SNP cannot be trusted to deliver on even the most basic of projects.
Scotland’s islands deserve better – but will never get the attention they deserve under SNP misrule.
The SNP needs to be clear with pupils and parents.
John Swinney’s ‘obligatory guidance’ that says that pupils should wear face coverings between classes is as clear as mud.
And the floundering SNP has not taken into account how this would impact those with additional support needs, issues like asthma, or equality concerns.
Parents, pupils and teachers need clarity, not yet more confusion and half-baked ideas from the SNP.
The SNP is failing cancer patients in the biggest SNP disaster in the Scottish NHS so far.
The latest figures show that nearly 100,000 Scots are waiting for test results.
That comes as the proportion of patients waiting more than six weeks for breast and bowel cancer checks increased to from 25% to 65%, a frightening failure.
That’s why we are calling for an urgent treatment plan to get services up and running as quickly and as safely as possible.
Dithering SNP ministers like “Calamity” Jeane Freeman must do everything they can to avoid a cancer crisis in Scotland: their failures are costing lives.
The duplicitous SNP must do more to protect jobs.
First Failure Sturgeon has been accused of ‘playing politics with the arts’ and sitting on nearly £75 million of vital funding.
That’s from nearly £100 million sent by the UK Government to protect Scottish culture - now the industry says it is not getting what it needs.
It’s time the SNP put our money where its mouth is – jobs are on the line.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/first-minister-playing-politics-with-the-arts-gmt2c6q6d
25 August 2020
The SNP knew the pressure that hospital discharges would put on care homes.
A letter from NHS Scotland Chief Executive Malcom Wright warned health boards that discharging hospital patients would put pressure on care homes - but told them to go ahead with the policy anyway.
It also confirmed – despite previous denials - that the SNP government was taking action to prepare care homes for an influx of residents at the beginning of the pandemic.
This casts more doubt on Sturgeon and Freeman’s repeated claims that the SNP government had nothing to do with the policy of discharge people to care homes.
The SNP Government’s failure to protect our most vulnerable is a national scandal. Families deserve answers, and slippery Sturgeon must come clean about her role in this disaster.
MSPs who do not turn up to Parliament should lose their seat.
We are bringing forward a ‘Mackay’s Law’ to remove MSPs who fail to take part in parliamentary proceedings for six months.
Former SNP Finance Secretary Derek Mackay has not turned up to Parliament since February, yet has pocketed tens of thousands of pounds from the public purse.
It is unacceptable for constituents to be left without a voice in Parliament.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18671901.tories-propose-mackays-law-kick-absentee-msps/
After pressure, Leslie Evans will now write to the committee in charge of the Salmond inquiry.
Previously, Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans would not comment when asked by Murdo Fraser on whether female civil servants were warned not to be alone with Alex Salmond.
But after pressure from us, Evans has now written to the committee saying she's ‘very willing’ to write to them to address the issue.
Evans must appear before the inquiry again, to face the scrutiny she avoided the first time. And we need to know if she was told by Sturgeon to avoid giving answers.
The Scottish public do not want more secrecy and spin. They deserve the truth. First Failure Sturgeon cannot continue to hide behind civil servants.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/leslie-evans-agrees-answer-question-alex-salmond-2951622
Testing glitches must be fixed.
COVID-19 Testing centres have been overwhelmed by a surge in the number of families reporting for tests after children with cold symptoms missed school.
Parents have been told to travel hundreds of miles for tests, including to England and Northern Ireland as sites struggle to cope with demand.
Young people have already had their lives disrupted considerably. It’s vital that they can get back to school as safely and as soon as possible.Testing is essential if we are to return to normality – this must be fixed immediately.
24 August 2020
Jeane Freeman pressured health boards to move patients into care homes from hospital.
In a leaked letter Freeman urged health boards to keep hospital beds free and praised them for surpassing the ‘challenging’ target of clearing 900 delayed discharges by the end of April.
This completely undermines both Sturgeon's and Freeman’s repeated claims that the SNP government had no part in the practice of transferring people from hospitals to care homes.
Nearly 2,000 people have died in care homes during this pandemic. Their families deserve answers, not more half-truths and evasion from the SNP.
The SNP Government’s failure to protect our most vulnerable is a national scandal – as are the lies told about it by nationalists.
The SNP must explain their secret agenda to nationalise a failing ferry company.
Documents have suggested that the SNP government ensured there was a ‘right to buy’ failed shipyard Ferguson Marine when it gave the company a huge loan two years ago.
Former sleazy SNP Finance Secretary Derek Mackay told Parliament that the loan was to help the shipyard ‘diversify’.
However, it now appears that Mackay misled Parliament and the public, as he knew the shipyard was in financial difficulties and the loan would create a path to nationalisation.
This saga throws up many questions – sleazy Mackay must return to the Scottish Parliament and answer them.
The SNP are still failing on personal protective equipment (PPE).
Dentists have warned that they fear for the safety of patients and staff after they were issued with PPE masks that were almost a decade out of date.
This comes after warnings from the Scottish Police Federation about the lack of PPE given to frontline police officers.
We are months into this pandemic – it is unacceptable that there are still problems with PPE, problems that the failing SNP does not seem to be bothering to fix.
19 August 2020
Arrogant and evasive Sturgeon must come clean on what she knew about Alex Salmond.
Speaking at the parliamentary inquiry yesterday, Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans revealed that she spoke to Sturgeon about Salmond in November 2017, after learning about media interest regarding his alleged behaviour at Edinburgh Airport.
This is despite Sturgeon’s previous claims to Parliament that was she was not made aware of any complaints until April 2018.
The Scottish public do not want more secrecy and spin. They do not want lies; they deserve the truth. First Failure Sturgeon must stop evading the question and tell the truth.
18 August 2020
The arrogant SNP has rejected our calls to immediately launch an inquiry into the coronavirus care homes scandal.
Dozens of vulnerable hospital Patients with COVID-19 were sent into care homes when authorities knew they were infected, and now new figures reveal 17,000 care home staff are still waiting to be tested on a regular basis, a huge failure that "Calamity" Jeane Freeman is entirely responsible for, just one of her many catastrophic errors.
The SNP has repeatedly failed to protect our most vulnerable throughout this crisis. This failure has cost lives and harmed hundreds, maybe thousands, more and the families and individuals affected by this devastating SNP incompetence deserve answers.
The secretive and evasive SNP must end the false promises. No more hiding. No more lies. No more blaming others for SNP failures. Tell us what happened – and do it now.
The SNP is - once again - failing to come clean to the Alex Salmond parliamentary inquiry.
We continue to demand that the increasingly-paranoid SNP government release all the required documents to Holyrood as the Alex Salmond inquiry begins.
The committee cannot fulfil its function without full transparency. If it is to only receive part of the evidence, it will only be able to produce part of an inquiry report, and the SNP will have orchestrated yet another sleazy cover-up.
The Scottish public want scrutiny and the truth, not more SNP secrecy and SNP sleaze.
Nicola Sturgeon can’t pick and choose what evidence the inquiry gets to see. She might think that she is judge, jury and executioner, but she is not, and we will make sure that all the evidence is heard despite SNP efforts to hush-up inconvenient facts.
17 August 2020
The SNP must answer for the care home deaths scandal.
It emerged over the weekend that 37 hospital patients who tested positive for coronavirus during the height of the pandemic were transferred into care homes anyway.
We previously knew that 1,431 people were moved into care homes from hospitals before testing was mandatory, but the SNP has hidden the details, only now emerging after what looks like yet another sleazy SNP cover-up.
It is now clear that many of the most vulnerable people were put at risk by the SNP Government, but the true extent of this is unclear, an unacceptable situation.
Jeane Freeman must come clean. Families who have lost their loved ones deserve answers, not more SNP cover-ups
14 August 2020
John Swinney has lost all credibility as Education Secretary – not that he had much left to lose.
Despite surviving the vote of no confidence in Holyrood (courtesy of the ever-compliant Scottish Greens, the largely pointless “environmental” wing of the Nationalist Socialists), there is no doubt that Swinney's reputation is damaged beyond repair. That he failed to resign from his position demonstrates his total disregard for the Scottish pupils affected by his incompetence.
He has not only presided over the greatest exam fiasco since devolution, but has survived countless other scandals in education.
Swinney’s failing report card is maxing out: years of falling PISA standards, the Named Persons u-turn, massively reducing subject choice, and an increasing attainment gap, all under his watch, all his failures, all things that he has blamed other for.
Pupils, parents and teachers deserve fresh leadership – it’s time for Swinney to go.
The SNP needs to ensure the review into the exam fiasco is truly independent.
Professor Mark Priestley, a declared supporter of the SNP, has been chosen by the SNP to lead the independent review into this year’s handling of SQA exams.
Scottish parents and pupils have rightly demanded a truly neutral and independent review into the exams scandal. Mr Priestly cannot be seen as independent and his appointment will undermine confidence.
If the public are to have any faith in this review, the SNP must think again about Mr Priestley.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-cheerleader-lead-independent-probe-22519036
The SNP needs to get a grip of Test and Protect.
A new COVID-19 cluster has emerged in Orkney. NHS Orkney fears it is spreading rapidly through the island.
The SNP failed to do enough testing and now it seems they are dropping the ball on tracing.
Why is it that in the rest of the UK and in Europe the number of contacts counted for each case is typically 10 to 20, but in Scotland it is apparently under 5 on average? Is the SNP trying to cover up a huge failure with Test and Protect?
Contact tracing is essential if we are to stop the spread of the virus and get back to any normality.
12 August 2020
Serial failure John Swinney must resign.
We are delighted that the 75,000 hardworking pupils who faced huge anxiety and stress over the last week at the hands of the SNP - for no good reason - are now going to get the awards they deserved.
Everyone can see that John Swinney’s statement in Holyrood yesterday was a resignation speech, but without the resignation. Struggling Swinney no doubt means well, but he has presided over a litany of failures, any one of which could have been a resignation issue on its own.
What really offends the Scottish people is that First Failure Sturgeon defended the SNP’s appalling grading system to the hilt, right up until it became clear that opposition parties would unite to force both a change to awards and a change of Education Minister. She thought that the SNP would get away with it - and for all her theatrics we know that she did not care one bit about all those who's dreams the SNP were about to crush.
Enough is enough: it’s time for Swinney to go. And Sturgeon too.
The SNP must take urgent action to save jobs.
Scotland faces a looming jobs crisis - but the incompetent SNP is resolutely remaining asleep at the wheel, paying no heed to the crisis.
People across the country need urgent action so they can continue to provide for themselves and their family.
We cannot wait for the sclerotic SNP to wake up. We cannot wait for overwhelmed Forbes to grasp the gravity of the situation.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/douglas-ross-interview-ill-shift-focus-constitution-2936982
The SNP must withdraw their sinister hate crime Bill.
It has taken months for Humza Yousaf to acknowledge the sheer volume of criticism from the police, lawyers, academics, artists and churches.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this flawed, draconian and deeply sinister law goes too far.
The very principle of free speech is under threat, and you have to ask why the SNP wants to push on with totalitarian-style legislation.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rowan-atkinson-fights-hate-crime-bill-r8c3tfz0w
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/actors-join-chorus-against-hate-bill-2vbndqlzt
10 August 2020
John Swinney must resign so focus can turn back to solutions to the exam grade crisis.
It is unforgivable that pupils have been marked down based purely on where they live. The SNP’s appeals process is doomed to fail unless more staff and resources are committed to it.
After 13 years of educational failure, parents and pupils deserve better than this.
Swithering Swinney, Head of Failure, must go.
https://www.scotsman.com/education/john-swinney-set-announce-rethink-fury-over-exams-grows-2937308
The SNP must fix it’s broken contact tracing system.
With a further 28 people testing positive in Aberdeen, this issue is crucial to getting this outbreak under control.
SNP ministers like Failing Freeman have constantly messed up efforts to recruit and train enough contact tracers. This amateurish approach form the SNP simply isn’t good enough.
Contact tracing is essential if we are to return to normality: the SNP must do better, although there is no evidence to suggest it can.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/aberdeen-virus-cluster-grows-134-22493462
The SNP will not be forgiven for letting down parents and pupils.
With schools set to reopen across Scotland tomorrow, a survey has found nearly half of teachers still have safety concerns.
Our children’s education has suffered enough over lockdown – the SNP must ensure it gets this right.
Our children’s future is on the line.
Nationalist lies will not go unchallenged.
For far too long the SNP has been pushing fantasy figures and downright lies about what separation would actually mean for Scotland.
First Failure Sturgeon cannot be honest about the reality of SNP plans because the truth would shock even hard-core nationalist fanatics.
Nationalism’s toxic false promises will be relentlessly exposed for what they are: lies, half-truths, dodgy numbers and wishful thinking.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/08/can-stand-nationalisms-false-promises/
7 August 2020
The SNP must change the rules on grades.
This year’s results process has been an SNP-created shambles which has come at the expense of pupils.
The SNP must to allow pupils unhappy with their existing results to either sit exams in the autumn or receive their prelim grade.
In light of the exceptional circumstances of the last academic year, and the total failure of SNP Education Minister John Swinney to ensure that the SQA used a fair method to moderate results, it is only fair that pupils are given every single chance to succeed.
Our children’s future is on the line – but all the SNP does is point the finger of blame at teachers, schools and pupils.
The SNP needs to get a grip on its failing contact tracing system.
Contract tracing in Aberdeen has been lethargic and inadequate, with staff only receiving an hour of training.
This is a critical moment in stopping the virus from spreading. But there has been massive under-resourcing, with only eight extra staff provided to help trace contacts.
Our research also found that only a quarter of 2,000 contract tracers promised by the SNP were in place across Scotland at the start of June – a pathetic record, but all too typical of the incompetent Health Secretary Freeman.
Contact tracing is essential if we are to get back to any normality: the SNP is failing on it and must do better.
6 August 2020
The SNP’s flawed hate crime Bill threatens freedom of speech and must be binned.
The Faculty of Advocates have been the latest organisation to criticise the Bill. They said there is no alternative but to reconsider this Bill, and that unchanged it would lead to an unprecedented invasion of privacy.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this draconian and unjustified law goes too far.
It’s time for the SNP to withdraw this legislation and think again.
5 August 2020
Once again the incompetent SNP is failing Scotland’s children.
Yesterday’s SQA results revealed that that over 124,000 grades recommended by teachers had been downgraded.
The Higher pass rate for pupils in the most deprived areas fell by 15.2% between initial teacher estimates and the final results, but only dropped by 6.9% for those in the least deprived areas.
This comes despite Nicola Sturgeon previously saying that closing the attainment gap was her ‘number one priority’. Why should anyone believe anything this duplicitous First Minister says now?
The life chances of our children are being put at risk by the SNP – but Sturgeon just does not care.
The SNP need to stop boasting and get a grip of Test and Protect.
An Aberdeen bar had to proactively get in touch with contact tracers because nobody from the NHS contacted them about the outbreak.
And a freedom of information response revealed that contact tracer teams in NHS Grampian only received one hour of training in how to deal with cases.
The SNP failed to do enough testing and now it appears that it is presiding over a massive failure of contact tracing.
Sturgeon must stop deflecting blame and actually explain how this happened. Contact tracing is essential if we are to get back to any normality.
The complacent SNP must act now to restart Scotland's NHS.
The latest statistics show that almost 20,000 fewer operations were carried out in June than the same month in 2019.
This comes amid reports of patients having to spend substantial sums on travelling to England for chronic pain treatment.
These backlogs are a ticking timebomb that will kill thousands if not sorted. The floundering SNP must get a grip of this situation.
4 August 2020
The public inquiry into deaths at Scotland’s hospitals must not be a whitewash.
Infections linked to the water and ventilation at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow caused the deaths of children on a cancer ward.
And construction problems at Edinburgh’s Sick Kids hospital mean it is opening more than three years late.
The role of the SNP Government and successive SNP Health Secretaries in these failings cannot be ignored.
The SNP planned, commissioned and built these hospitals – the buck stops with the SNP ministers responsible for these failures, and that includes the First Failure, Sturgeon.
Rural crime is rising under the SNP - but it does not care about rural areas.
Thanks to the SNP’s cowardly soft touch approach to justice, the cost of rural crime in Scotland rose by a huge 44% in 2019.
Organised gangs are targeting farm machinery, with the National Farmers Union assessing the cost of vehicle and livestock theft at £2.3 million. Rural policing has been repeatedly undermined by botched SNP “reforms”.
People should feel safe in their communities. It’s time to end the SNP’s soft touch approach to crime.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53641209
The SNP must take urgent action to save jobs.
Further redundancies have been announced at textile firm Johnstons of Elgin, while high street firms are going insolvent.
Scotland faces a looming jobs crisis, but the SNP is asleep at the wheel.
People across the country need urgent action so they can continue to provide for themselves and their family. They cannot afford to wait for dozy SNP ministers to get around to waking up and acting.
3 August 2020
The SNP failed Scotland’s care homes.
Shocking revelations last week revealed the SNP’s total failure to protect care homes may have breached key public health legislation.
The Scottish Conservatives have written to the Lord Advocate to highlight this potential breach: the SNP must answer for their abject failures on this issue.
This SNP Government has failed the residents, staff and families of our care homes. Those failures meant that hundreds may have died early deaths for no reason.
The SNP failure to protect our most vulnerable is unacceptable.
30 July 2020
The SNP must stop dithering and open our schools.
Less than half of councils have told parents they are preparing for a full school timetable when pupils return next month.
Children must get back to school so that we can begin to undo the damage of lockdown. And it’s crucial to allow parents to get back to work.
Once again, this shambolic, chaotic and amateurish SNP “government” has showed a total lack of leadership on our children’s education.
A whole generation of pupils risk being left behind by SNP mismanagement.
The SNP must stop blaming everyone else and tackle Scotland’s shameful drug deaths record.
A year after it emerged that Scotland has the highest drug death rate in Europe, campaign group FAVOR UK has warned that Scotland under failed SNP policies is going backwards with its efforts to tackle the crisis.
This comes after Police Scotland reported that drug deaths had risen during the coronavirus lockdown.
This is a national scandal – the SNP must take action or even more Scots will needlessly die.
https://www.scotsman.com/health/scotland-going-backwards-tackling-drug-deaths-2927589
The SNP is putting half a million Scottish jobs at risk.
SNP Minister Mike Russell will speak in Parliament today against the UK Government’s plans to protect the UK Internal Market.
We want to protect the 545,000 jobs that rely on trade with the rest of the UK. The SNP is deliberately putting those livelihoods at risk just so it can claim another false grievance against Westminster.
His lies about powers have already been debunked – with 111 extra powers coming to Holyrood from Brussels and not a single one being removed.
Instead of playing constitutional games, the lying SNP should help to protect jobs and trade at this time of economic crisis.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18615742.holyrood-urged-oppose-uk-plans/
29 July 2020
The heartless and incompetent SNP failed Scotland’s care homes from the beginning.
Hundreds of hospital patients were forced into care homes without being tested for COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.
The BBC found that elderly residents were left without sufficient care as homes were ‘pressured’ into taking in more untested patients. That was SNP policy.
Care homes have been the epicentre of this health crisis, but Jeane Freeman failed to understand this, failed to do what was needed, and failed to get a handle on it from the start.
The SNP’s total failure to protect our most vulnerable is unacceptable
https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/warnings-stretched-scottish-care-homes-revealed-2925690
The SNP’s flawed hate crime bill threatens freedom of speech.
The Scottish Police Federation and the Catholic Church in Scotland are the latest in a long list of organisations to sound the alarm about this appalling totalitarian SNP legislation.
Genuine hate crime should be punished, but this law goes too far: it belongs in Communist China, not Scotland.
It’s time for the SNP to withdraw this sinister legislation and think again.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-53567229
Sturgeon is still putting jobs at risk - but does not seem to care.
There is still no confirmed date for when gyms and health clubs can reopen, with Duncan Bannatyne warning that he will have close his facilities if they are not allowed to open soon.
And now the latest figures show that retailers lost nearly £2 billion between March and June thanks to the lockdown.
Sturgeon must take urgent action to help struggling sectors around Scotland – livelihoods are on the line.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18613708.scottish-retailers-lose-almost-2bn-pandemic/
Vulnerable children must be the SNP’s top priority when schools reopen.
More than two thirds of vulnerable pupils have struggled to follow their coursework without the help of teachers during lockdown.
A survey showed that a quarter of disadvantaged pupils could not do any work as they were caring for others. As schools are set to return priority needs to be given to programmes that will help the most deprived children.
No child should be left behind – but under the chaotic SNP thousands are being ignored.
28 July 2020
We have written to Peter Murrell to demand the SNP stop selling their abhorrent profiteering face masks.
The decision by the SNP to try and make money from a pandemic is disgusting and inexcusable – especially when they are writing the rules which make face coverings mandatory.
Any profits that have already been made should now be donated to charity.
Thousands of people have died from coronavirus: selling masks is a tasteless move by the SNP.
http://edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/snp-urged-stop-selling-tasteless-18673468
The UK and Scottish Governments must work together to save jobs.
Falkirk bus builder Alexander Dennis Ltd is the latest company to announce job losses, with 650 people at risk of redundancy.
Workers across Scotland face being unable to provide for themselves and their families due to this economic crisis.
Instead of bleating about separation, the SNP must match the UK Government’s ambition to save livelihoods.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-53558309
24 July 2020
The UK Government is delivering for Scotland – but if it had its way the SNP would have deprived Scotland of every penny and destroyed our economy.
Another £1.9 billion in Barnett formula consequential funding is now guaranteed for Scotland to protect our vital public services and defend jobs. That means the total extra funding directly available to the Scottish Govt to tackle coronavirus is now £6.5 billion this year, on top of the block grant.
The UK Treasury has also protected the income of a third of the Scottish workforce, and on top of that huge contribution, thousands of Scottish businesses have now benefited from UK Government backed loans.
https://news.stv.tv/politics/scotland-given-1-9bn-in-additional-coronavirus-funding?top
This is the Union in action, and its value has never been more obvious. But this is also what the SNP wants to destroy. Sturgeon does not care what damage her party does just as long as the separatists' obsession is kept in the headlines.
The chaotic SNP is failing Scotland’s children yet again.
Struggling Swinney yesterday failed, again, to confirm that schools will reopen on 11 August. Apparently unable to make any meaningful decisions, he waffled platitudes and failed to deliver the necessary funding, offering Councils only a fraction of what is actually required.
Parents and teachers need more time to plan their working arrangements – they need certainty, not more SNP confusion and failure.
COSLA said councils are facing a ‘considerable roadblock,’ to reopening schools: the extra money promised by Swinney is just not enough.
Our children’s future is at stake. They are being failed by the SNP every single day, and that failure will continue until the SNP is kicked out of office.
The dithering SNP needs to act now to protect Scottish jobs.
The latest figures from the CBI show that the number of jobs in Scotland’s industrial sector are falling at the fastest pace since 1999.
The manufacturing sector also reported record low output in the last quarter.
Sturgeon has already short-changed our businesses compared with south of the border, dealing a huge blow to Scotland's economy and Scottish workers. She must now drop the political game-playing and actually do the work needed to prevent a jobs crisis.
The SNP’s failure to act is putting hundreds of thousands of livelihoods at risk, but Sturgeon just does not seem to care.
The SNP has failed to ensure that critical cancer healthcare was kept going.
SNP failure to prepare for a pandemic has seen excess deaths from cancer soar in Scotland.
The impact of a decade of SNP mismanagement of our Scottish NHS has been brought into stark focus by the COVID-19 crisis, and Freeman and Sturgeon cannot evade responsibility for this decade of disaster.
22 July 2020
The SNP must investigate claims that Russia interfered in the 2014 independence referendum.
A UK Parliamentary Committee report published yesterday has exposed Russian attempts to influence the 2014 referendum vote to help the nationalist extremists break up the UK.
This follows years of senior SNP figures becoming involved with Russian media operations. The Scottish people deserve to know what, and when, SNP leaders knew about this interference.
It may want to hide its dirty little secrets from us all, but the SNP has serious questions to answer.
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5835352/russia-media-scottish-independence-discredit-uk/
The SNP will not be forgiven for failing Scottish pupils.
With schools due to reopen in just three weeks, Scotland’s largest teaching union has warned there is a ‘glaring demand’ for more teaching staff.
There are at least 3,500 fewer teachers working in Scotland’s schools than when the SNP came to power, meaning this problem of teacher shortages is entirely of the SNP’s own making. It has presided over a catastrophic decline in Scottish education - but it just does not seem to care one jot.
This SNP “government” must now get off its backside and ensure that our schools have enough teaching staff to reopen fulltime. Dithering Swinney must actually make a decision and do his job – if he is even capable of it.
Our children’s future is at stake - and the failing SNP is crushing the dreams of a generation.
The SNP must act now to save Scottish jobs.
The Scottish Retail Consortium has warned that Scotland’s retail sector is lagging well behind the UK as a whole.
Sturgeon and her inept Finance Minister have consistently and deliberately short-changed Scottish businesses compared with those south of the border: they must do more, now, to prevent an SNP jobs crisis.
The SNP’s deliberate failure to act is putting livelihoods at risk, a scandal that Sturgeon and Forbes will be held to account for.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-53492616
21 July 2020
The SNP obsession with another referendum is harming every part of Scotland and damaging lives.
The Prime Minister has made clear that a second independence referendum is unjustified.
Scotland is only just beginning to emerge from this health crisis. We all know that SNP mismanagement of the Scottish economy has already made us especially vulnerable to the COVID-19 economic shock, and now is not the time for a divisive referendum that puts at risk the extraordinary support from the UK Government – including the protection of 900,000 Scottish jobs.
The SNP should focus on saving lives and jobs - and drop its constitutional obsession for once.
20 July 2020
The shambolic SNP must get a grip on testing.
There is a new outbreak of coronavirus cases at a contact tracing centre in North Lanarkshire - the very place you would expect to be safe.
The number of positive cases jumped again over the weekend with the largest daily increase since 21 June. And it has emerged this morning that doctors were given 10 year-old surgical masks that fell apart when worn – a failure that sits directly with SNP ministers who failed to prepare properly.
Sturgeon must explain how this happened. Contact tracing is essential if we are to get back to any normality
Struggling Swinney is failing Scotland’s children.
One of the SNP’s own education experts says reopening schools in August is ‘absolutely not a done deal.’
Stephen McCabe warned that teaching unions want more clarity on cleaning, PPE and testing in schools.
The SNP must stop talking and start acting to ensure that our children get back to school on time: they can’t afford more time out of the classroom.
15 July 2020
The SNP’s ‘shielding’ of vulnerable people has been typically shambolic.
9,221 people were wrongly advised to isolate themselves completely during the pandemic - with 3,361 of these people told to ‘shield’ unnecessarily as a result of misidentification of cancers.
This just adds to the long list of errors made by the SNP regarding ‘shielded’ individuals – from letters sent to the wrong individuals, changes in the numbers of people shielding, and problems with the text messaging service.
This error is typical not just of the SNP’s mismanagement of this crisis, but also of widespread SNP incompetence in government.
The SNP is still causing confusion with its incoherent “back to school” plans.
The SNP government has yet to issue final confirmation on whether pupils will be back full or part time on August 11. There is also confusion over school transport, testing and the wearing of masks.
Despite this shambles John Swinney is not due to give an update on the situation until two and a half weeks before pupils are due back.
Once again, the SNP government has showed a total lack of leadership on a crucial element of our children’s education.
Our children’s future is on the line. The SNP has shown that it cannot be trusted to do what is right for the children of Scotland.
14 July 2020
The SNP is - once again - failing cancer patients.
The latest figures show that 77,660 women missed breast cancer screenings as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown.
Macmillan Cancer Support have warned that the stop in cancer screening is causing anxiety for women missing their appointments.
That’s why we have been continually calling for cancer treatments and services to restart in their entirety - without delay.
Instead of ignoring our good advice, the SNP must take action and do everything it can to avoid a cancer crisis in Scotland and save lives. Why does Sturgeon fail to act?
The SNP needs to stop posturing - and sort care home testing.
Seven new cases of coronavirus, with patients showing no symptoms, have been identified in just one care home in Glasgow.
If the SNP’s contact tracing system is working properly then ministers should be able to explain where these cases came from. But the evidence suggests that “test and protect” is failing in far too many cases.
Care homes have been the epicentre of this health crisis, yet the grossly-incompetent Health Secretary Jeane Freeman has failed to get a handle on outbreaks from the start, and shows no sign of learning from any of her myriad mistakes.
The failure to protect our most vulnerable is a scandal – but sadly typical of this failed SNP “government”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53391677
10 Jul 2020
The hated SNP Housing tax must be cut immediately.
Yesterday the SNP finally conceded to Scottish Conservative demands for a cut to Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) to help get the housing market moving and save jobs.
But the SNP action is far less generous than the cut to Stamp Duty in England announced by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak on Wednesday, and no date has been set for LBTT reductions.
For Forbes to refuse to make the tax cuts immediate, and instead schedule the change months down the line, is an act of gross stupidity that will crash much of the Scottish housing market to a standstill as people wait for the reduced rates to finally appear.
A number of trades rely on people moving home to generate work. They need this decision to happen now – but failing Forbes just does not get it.
We’ve permanently protected armed forces personnel from brutal SNP tax hikes.
It is clearly unfair for service personnel who are serving in Scotland to be taxed differently to elsewhere in the UK: they go to serve us where they are needed, not necessarily where they might choose to be.
Following campaigning from the Scottish Conservatives, a permanent guarantee from the UK Government will ensure that Service personnel and their families are not hit in the pocket by the high-tax SNP.
These tax mitigation measures are also very important for recruitment and armed forces morale.
The dedication, bravery and humanity of our servicemen and servicewomen has been particularly highlighted by the COVID-19 crisis.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18572389.mod-give-scottish-troops-p…
A leading economist has said the SNP is lying about Scotland’s finances.
Kate Forbes has tried to deny the fact that the Scottish budget is increasing by £800 million thanks to the Chancellor’s announcements this week – bringing the total Barnett consequentials to fight coronavirus to £4.6 billion.
When asked about the SNP Finance Secretary’s claim, David Phillips, Associate Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said ‘that is not true’.
It is not unusual for nationalists to lie in support of their obsession with separation, but it is totally unacceptable for a minister to do so, even an inexperienced and inept one, out of their depth and struggling to understand government finance.
It’s time for the SNP government to match Rishi Sunak’s ambition to save Scottish jobs.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18571809.leading-economist-21m-claim-snp-finance-chief-not-true/
8 July 2020
The SNP must stop dithering and meet its childcare commitments.
Many parents were depending on the SNP’s promise to deliver 1,140 hours of free childcare before lockdown.
Sturgeon must now get the scheme back up and running and meet the target as soon as possible. Parents need childcare to be in place to get back to work as lockdown is lifted.
Jobs are at risk; the SNP must stop the excuses and help working parents.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/plans-double-scots-childcare-must-be-brought-back-2906709
More jobs are at risk thanks to Sturgeon’s politically-driven delay on air bridges.
Travel and tourism businesses are announcing redundancies daily, but posturing Sturgeon still refuses to take any decisions on where Scots can travel without quarantine.
The latest figures from RBS show that more people than ever are looking for work, and Sturgeon's politically-driven and divisive stance is making things worse.
Time is running out: jobs are on the line, tourists need certainty, and Sturgeon must stop the dithering.
Spineless Sturgeon must take action against racist border protesters.
These racist protesters have now admitted taking inspiration from the division stoked by Ian Blackford.
At least one of the "protesters" has been pictured with Sturgeon and other senior SNP figures, and some may have attended SNP Party Conferences and other events. These people appear to be core SNP supporters and members, not some extremist fringe as Sturgeon would have us all believe.
If any of these "protesters" are SNP members, Sturgeon must send a clear message by immediately expelling them from her party.
She must also warn SNP MPs and MSPs that the language of hate some of them have been using has consequences and must stop.
Sturgeon’s pathetic lack of action on this matter speaks volumes about the behaviour she is willing to tolerate.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/08/anti-english-border-protest-inspired-snp-leaders/
7 July 2020
Dithering Sturgeon must stop dragging her feet on an ‘air bridges’ decision.
The Scottish travel industry has blasted Sturgeon for leaving Scots’ holiday plans in uncertainty.
Elsewhere in the UK, people are clear where they can travel to, but Sturgeon insists it must be different for Scotland – despite having no clear rationale for this difference other than stoking political division.
Time is running out: people planning a desperately-needed break need certainty on this issue now.
Sturgeon needs to stop grand-standing and must end this unnecessary dithering.
Cowardly Sturgeon must go further in condemning racist border protests.
It is unacceptable that it took Sturgeon 48 hours to comment on this incident – and even then her half-hearted and equivocating criticism had to be dragged out of her at a press conference.
If any of these protesters are SNP members, Sturgeon must send a clear message by immediately expelling them from her party. It is not the first time the SNP has had a problem with racism – but it must be the last.
Her lack of action on this matter speaks volumes about the behaviour she is willing to tolerate. We have to ask: is it what she wants?
SNP ministers must take responsibility for their quarantine testing failures.
People have been arriving in Scotland from overseas for weeks, yet this hopeless SNP “government” still has no idea who they are, where they are, or if they’re abiding by the quarantine rules.
Last month, Humza Yousaf told Parliament these checks were already taking place, only to be contradicted by Sturgeon yesterday. So which one is telling the truth?
The SNP’s deceit on this matter is clear for all to see. Scotland cannot exit lockdown safely until Sturgeon and her disorganised cabal of failing Ministers get a grip on this issue.
Failures like this are putting us all at risk – and Sturgeon has run out of excuses.
UK Government cash is a lifeline for Scotland’s arts sector.
Thanks to the UK Government’s financial rescue package for the arts and culture sector, Scotland is receiving a substantial £97 million funding boost, vastly more than the £10 million the SNP government had allocated.
With Sturgeon committing to pass this funding straight on to the arts sector, she must now ensure the money goes where it is most needed.
This sector is hugely important to Scotland - this SNP Government must act now to secure its future, and we will be watching to see if all the money goes to the arts, and is not held back by the SNP as has been the case with other UK Government money.
https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/scotland/sturgeon-vows-to-pass-on-97m-arts-funding-in-full/
6 July 2020
The SNP has failed to carry out any follow-up checks on passengers flying into Scotland from abroad.
Sturgeon claimed last week that these checks were crucial to protect public health.
But under pressure from Jackson Carlaw yesterday, her failing Health Secretary “Calamity” Jeane Freeman admitted that they had not sorted the necessary paperwork to start checks. The SNP tried to blame Westminster for this failure only to be caught out in the lie: it was the SNP government that failed.
This is just the latest testing and checking failure from this inept SNP “government”. Scotland will be unable to exit lockdown safely until SNP Ministers get a grip. We could be in for a long wait.
Sturgeon and her failing ministers are putting us all at increased risk during this pandemic.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/no-passengers-flying-scotland-follow-22304438
The nationalist protest at the Scottish border was a disgrace – and Sturgeon should condemn it.
Pro-independence racist activists filmed themselves shouting ‘stay the f*** out’ to people entering Scotland via the A1 on Saturday.
We should be encouraging people to safely visit Scotland in order to support our struggling tourism and hospitality industry and save jobs.
Sturgeon is quick enough to Tweet on other matters and should be able to immediately condemn this behaviour by her Nationalist Socialist movement.
Her silence on the matter speaks volumes about the kind of behaviour she is willing to tolerate – and she has to explain why she does not think that it was provoked by her previous divisive comments on quarantine.
https://news.stv.tv/politics/carlaw-scottish-border-protest-an-absolute-disgrace
Scotland should welcome as many Hong Kong residents as possible.
It was absolutely right for the UK Government to offer Hong Kong people facing Chinese Communist Party oppression a route to citizenship. That sentiment now has to be matched by the SNP government.
But the SNP has been unusually slow to comment on this issue – a clear cut human rights matter that needs no further explanation. Sturgeon is quick to criticise Trump, but always seems reluctant to criticise China’s appalling record on human rights. Why?
The Scottish Government must put in place measures to welcome as many oppressed Hong Kongers as possible, and make Scotland an appealing home for them.
Making Scotland an attractive place to settle would not only help those fleeing persecution, but could boost Scotland’s economy at a time when we need it most.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18562436.jackson-carlaw-scotland-welcome-people-leaving-hong-kong/
3 July 2020
Sturgeon must stop her petty grand-standing and work with the UK Government on making international air travel work for the whole UK.
It’s unacceptable that holidaymakers face confusion over where and when they can travel without quarantine simply because Failing First Minister Sturgeon has to try to make it look like she is different.
SNP Ministers have no idea how to solve practical problems like Scottish holidaymakers flying from Manchester or Newcastle.
We need a UK-wide approach which works for families and the Scottish tourism industry – not petty squabbling from the incompetent and increasingly divided SNP.
The SNP must get a grip on testing as the economy is reopened.
The Scottish Conservatives have repeatedly called for relaxations to the two-metre distancing rule, and we welcome the news that Sturgeon has finally listened after weeks of dithering.
But an effective test and trace system is essential to opening up the economy safely, and the SNP’s record on testing is still well behind other nations. Daily testing in Scotland remains well below 5000, a fraction of what is actually needed to protect NHS staff and other front-line workers.
Businesses and staff need certainty as we move further out of lockdown – but all Sturgeon offers is confusion and chaos.
The SNP has repeatedly failed Scottish children throughout this pandemic – and shows no sign of learning from shambolic Swinney’s catalogue of gross errors.
John Swinney has admitted he has no idea how many children have been left without access to laptops or tablets since schools closed. Incredibly, and quite unacceptably, this means that some of the poorest children in Scotland will have received no education for six months by the time schools reopen in August – assuming the vacillating Sturgeon does not change her mind again..
Once again, the SNP has shown a total lack of leadership on a crucial element of our children’s education.
Our children’s future is on the line, but the callous SNP cabal that has already hugely damaged Scottish education does not care one little bit.
2 July 2020
Sturgeon must rule out immediately any attempt to close off Scotland from the rest of the UK.
We can all accept that localised lockdowns may be needed to deal with individual flare-ups over the months ahead. But this does not justify the SNP talking up arbitrary measures which will drive a wedge between Scotland and England – a wedge that the SNP wants to use to push for separation.
Sturgeon has repeatedly failed to rule out the idea, despite warnings it would decimate the tourism sector putting livelihoods at risk.
We are in this together – but the cynical SNP leadership wants to create division and grievance.
The shameful SNP is once again failing Scotland’s most vulnerable people.
A survey has found that almost half of vulnerable people in Scotland are at risk of going hungry because they have faced difficulty in accessing basic food and essential groceries.
Care home workers have also been forced to queue in busy supermarkets several times a day because they could not secure vital delivery slots for their residents.
We are now three months into this crisis, yet the incompetent and uncaring SNP still hasn’t managed to ensure the most vulnerable are getting the support they need.
Sturgeon is responsible for this but just blames everyone else, anyone else, anyone but herself. Pathetic.
Humza Yousaf has admitted to getting a basic part of his own Hate Crime Bill completely wrong.
The wording of the proposed law is wider than the SNP Justice Secretary claimed in the press and in Parliament – meaning more people’s words potentially being labelled criminal.
This Bill has already raised concerns about freedom of expression – something the secretive SNP has no interest in sustaining, and a play right out of the Chinese Communist Party book of oppressive practices. The range of academics, professionals, faith and advocacy groups lining up against it should force the SNP to think again.
The SNP has form on this kind of totalitarian thinking: remember the UK Supreme Court view about the SNP’s flagship “Named Person” policy, now discredited and effectively abandoned
Freedom of speech is a fundamental right and must not be eroded in this way by the SNP.
30 June 2020
Today the Prime Minister announced £5 billion of spending to accelerate infrastructure projects, fuelling jobs and economic recovery.
The UK Government will build back better, build back greener, and build back faster at the pace that this moment requires. A detailed review will look at how best to improve road, rail, air and sea links between our four nations to create a more connected kingdom.
Here in Scotland, the dithering SNP should match the Prime Minister’s ambition and work to identify where we can get spades in the ground.
We need concrete action to get our economy moving and save jobs, and Scotland can’t afford to wait for the failing SNP to dither endlessly over every decision.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53226906
The SNP has left driving instructors in limbo – because Sturgeon cannot make a decision.
The UK Government has confirmed that lessons and tests south of the border will be able to resume from 4 July. But the Scottish Government has still not issued guidance - even though other businesses which involve more physical contact have been given the green light.
This continuing and unnecessary uncertainty is damaging both for the industry and the people who need to gain a licence in order to work.
The SNP does not understand that livelihoods are at risk – and it does not seem to even care.
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5754888/coronavirus-scotland-driving-instructor-return-work/
29 June 2020
The SNP must move to protect Scotland’s high streets – or accept responsibility for thousands of lost jobs and wrecked businesses.
As thousands of Scottish businesses begin to reopen, we are calling on Sturgeon to get off the fence and take radical action to save our high streets. We’ve set out a plan to review the two metre rule, support local authorities, and ease the rates burden for as long as possible. Every part of this plan could be enacted now and start helping businesses quickly – but Sturgeon it seems is not open to ideas from outside the narrow Nationalist cabal that control all SNP thinking.
Jobs and livelihoods are at risk; without action, the SNP risks lasting and incalculable damage to communities across Scotland.
https://www.scotsman.com/business/consumer/make-or-break-high-street-scottish-shops-reopen-2897730
The SNP is deliberately costing the tourism industry millions.
Sturgeon’s unnecessary two week delay to reopening Scottish tourism could cost businesses £11 million in revenue with half a million fewer visitors. Meanwhile, hospitality businesses south of the border will be attracting many of those who would have holidayed in Scotland, a lost opportunity that Scottish businesses may never recover.
If the SNP government insists on keeping Scotland closed for business, then it must provide all the support firms need to stay afloat, or admit that it is deliberately risking more economic damage for political reasons.
It’s not just businesses on the line; Sturgeon’s delay is risking thousands of jobs.
https://news.stv.tv/politics/carlaw-restarting-scots-tourism-later-will-cost-millions?top
Sturgeon must get a grip of the shambolic broadband rollout her party has made such a mess of.
The SNP has already broken its manifesto promise to bring superfast broadband to every part of Scotland by 2021 – we will be lucky if it is completed before the end of 2023, if at all.
Even the revised delayed timetable is under threat thanks to legal incompetence from SNP Ministers.
This is just another example of a failing infrastructure project from this SNP government, one of a long and shameful list of failures on roads, ferries and hospitals, all under the control of Sturgeon and her failing cabinet.
Decent broadband is essential for the economy and livelihoods. Our rural communities deserve better.
26 June 2020
The SNP will not be forgiven if it fails to deliver on its plans for reopening schools.
Yesterday, John Swinney was grilled about union bosses' numerous safety demands for the reopening of schools after his dramatic policy u-turn just three days ago.
Struggling Swinney also revealed it could be as late as 30 July before the full-time reopening of schools is confirmed – meaning that parents, pupils and teachers will have no idea what is actually going to happen in August until less than two weeks before term starts.
This issue is too important for political game-playing with unions. Parents, teachers and pupils need certainty. The country needs leadership in education, not a floundering minister evidently out of his depth and, if he does not try harder, soon to be sacked.
Scotland cannot afford to have a generation of pupils left behind – and we will continue to fight for every child’s safe return to school, and a clear plan to tackle the widening attainment gap that the SNP has done nothing to address in a decade .
Kate Forbes has refused to rule out further huge tax hikes on working Scots.
This is despite the fact that Scotland has so far received over £10 billion in UK Government funding to help deal with the pandemic, much of it - like the £155 million for Local Authorities - held back for months by Forbes for no good reason.
For thirteen years the SNP has systematically and deliberately trashed Scotland's finances, leaving us in a far worse position to face this crisis than would have been the case under a competent government, not one wasting huge sums on separatist obsessions and failed projects.
Ordinary Scots will be hit in the pocket by SNP tax hikes just when they are struggling to make ends meet.
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5741285/kate-forbes-tax-rises-westminster/
The SNP must act now to restart Scotland's NHS.
A leading orthopaedic surgeon has warned it will take years for NHS waiting lists to recover from the impact of COVID-19.
With thousands of operations cancelled over the last two months, the SNP ministers need to act now to ensure further lives aren't lost. But “Calamity” Jeane Freeman seems oblivious to this urgent situation.
People must be able to rely on our NHS - now is the time to restart it.
25 June 2020
Sturgeon is putting jobs at risk.
Yesterday at FMQs, Jackson Carlaw questioned Sturgeon over her delay in opening up Scotland’s hospitality and tourism industry. As usual, no real answers were forthcoming.
Instead of following other parts of the UK and opening the sector on the 4 July, the SNP is forcing businesses to wait until the 15 July.
This delay will cost businesses millions at a time when thousands of jobs are already on the line.
The SNP is risking people’s livelihoods, but does not want to accept responsibility for that: Scotland needs action now, not yet more dithering by Sturgeon.
The SNP is failing councils again – and trying to shift blame away from incompetent SNP ministers.
Figures show that the cost of coronavirus to local authorities could hit more than £400 million.
Highland Council, which has seen major reductions in income from the loss of its tourism-dominated economy, is now is facing the largest budget shortfall in Scotland. Under the SNP, essential local services have been underfunded for years, with Highland amongst the worst hit.
Councils are spearheading the response to this virus. Without action vital public services will be at risk.
Attempts to raise concerns about the SNP’s flagship hospital were silenced.
A senior doctor at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital has said that when she tried to raise concerns about patient safety she was told to not put them in writing in case of future inquiries. That kind of cover-up mentality is what the SNP is driving in Scotland, a shameful indictment of a decade of SNP rule shot-through with secrecy and sleaze.
An Independent Review published last week found that patients with cancer faced an increased risk of infection because of the building and design of the hospital.
People go to hospital expecting to be treated – not to be put at risk.
SNP ministers - including Sturgeon - planned, commissioned and built this hospital, and the buck stops with them.
Infection control whistleblower says staff told 'not to put things in writing' in case of future inquiries:https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18539498.superhospital-infection-control-whistleblower-says-staff-told-not-put-things-writing-case-future-inquiries/
23 June 2020
Today in Parliament we forced the SNP to think again and make proper plans to open our schools fully in August.
Last week, public health expert Devi Sridhar said there was ‘no reason’ why schools could not return full-time in August if coronavirus continued to be suppressed.
But some Scottish schools were planning to offer only nine hours of teaching a week – or even fewer in some cases. That was and is not good enough, and parents are fuming and want answers from this SNP government. It should not have taken the Scottish Conservatives to drag John Swinney to Parliament today to explain himself and make a huge u-turn, changes that only last week he said could not happen.
A whole generation of children are at risk of being left behind under the SNP – but Swinney does not seem to understand this.
https://action.scottishconservatives.com/back-to-school/# https://news.stv.tv/politics/swinney-to-give-holyrood-statement-on-plans-for-schools
The SNP’s decade of shocking economic incompetence is coming back to haunt Scotland.
No-one could have foreseen the devastating impact coronavirus has had worldwide.
But Scotland’s economy was already lagging behind before this crisis hit - and now it seems the impact will be harder here than elsewhere.
The SNP’s latest self-justifying economic report only offers old ideas and vague, far-off promises – which will be far too late to save jobs – plus another nationalist attempt at stoking up constitutional division.
Thousands of livelihoods are at risk. The SNP needs to accept responsibility for that and take action now.
22 June 2020
The floundering SNP must do more to fully reopen Scotland’s schools.
Our schools are in crisis only weeks before they should be reopening, and across Scotland there is only confusion and mixed messages.
Swinney claims ‘blended learning’ is the answer, but the latest figures show that two thirds of pupils have had no online lessons at all during lockdown. So here is a basic maths lesson for Swinney: Nothing blended with nothing equals nothing.
There must be a statement to Parliament, before the Holyrood recess, to explain what is being done.
If the SNP get this wrong, a whole generation of children are at risk of being left behind.
The SNP must be more ambitious to protect jobs and livelihoods.
The latest figures show that jobs are being lost across the board in all areas of Scotland from the most affluent to the most deprived.
Unemployment is rising faster than anywhere in the UK, Scotland’s growth is sluggish and many firms still can’t get back to work.
The SNP has completely failed to get to grips with the economic crisis facing the nation.
Sturgeon must take radical action to protect jobs and livelihoods across Scotland.
18 June 2020
The SNP continues to fail Scotland's care homes – and SNP ministers just don’t seem to care.
New figures show that Sturgeon still hasn't met her month-old pledge to provide routine coronavirus testing for all care home staff – with no sign of any improvement.
Only 4,477 tests were carried out on care home staff last week, well short of the SNP's target of 7,000.
Testing is crucial to containing this virus and keeping our care homes safe - the SNP need to get a grip on this before more lives are lost.
Care workers are on the front line - they deserve better than this.
The SNP continue to demonstrate their staggering economic incompetence.
New figures show the SNP government underspent its budget by a quarter of a billion pounds in 2019-20, and failed to use £45 million of borrowing capacity.
Instead of demanding further borrowing powers and more funding from the UK Government, the SNP should learn to use the resources already available to the Scottish Government.
With such colossal mismanagement, it's no surprise that even senior SNP advisor Andrew Wilson has stated that Scotland is set to be the worst performing economy in the developed world.
Once again, the SNP's numbers simply don't add up, and SNP ministers continue to fail at every turn.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18524031.snp-ministers-underspent-budget-250m-covid-arrived/
17 June 2020
The SNP is failing Scotland’s children - yet again.
New figures show that fewer school leavers are going on to positive destinations – and this is before any impact of COVID-19
Sturgeon said that education is her top priority, the defining mission of her government, but the facts and figures demonstrate that she has failed on this.
The shambolic SNP handling of the COVID-19 crisis has shown that Sturgeon and Swinney cannot be trusted with Scotland’s schools.
Sturgeon has failed to come up with a nationwide plan for schooling and instead caused even more confusion for parents and teachers.
She has hung the hopeless Swinney out to dry after publicly contradicting him
But she is just as much to blame as Swinney. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/coronavirus-in-scotland-john-swinney-feels-wrath-of-parents-over-schooling-93qc66zf0
A whole generation of children are at risk of being left behind. Parents and pupils deserve better now, and have deserved better for years. Nothing will change until the failed SNP is kicked out of power.
The two-metre rule should be reviewed to save jobs.
Unemployment in Scotland is rising faster than anywhere else in the UK, in part because of the relative size of our hospitality industry.
Hospitality leaders are warning that reducing the two metre rule is essential if the industry is to survive. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18519172.coronavirus-expert-calls-distancing-rules-relaxed/
Sturgeon must stop blaming everyone else and start acting: she must review the rule today as we begin to end the lockdown, not keep dithering.
Without action, we risk lasting and incalculable damage to the life chances of the young and the poorest in our society.
16 June 2020
This failing SNP Government is in chaos over schools.
Yesterday John Swinney said that ‘blended’ learning could be in place for a whole school year and that next year’s exams may not go ahead.
Not only was this unacceptable, it was plain wrong, and he was contradicted by Sturgeon only hours later in a brutal slap-down that demonstrates how little confidence she now has in her floundering deputy.
The SNP has no coherent nationwide plan for schooling, and this has caused confusion for parents, pupils, teachers and Local Authorities. Parents are angry, confused and raging at the combination of SNP incompetence and pathetic attempts by SNP ministers to blame Councils for any problems.
The SNP does not seem to care that its incompetence is damaging the education of hundreds of thousands.
Cancer patients were exposed to a higher risk of infection at the SNP’s flagship hospital.
An independent review into the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital found that patients with cancer faced an increased risk of infection because of the building and design of the hospital.
People go to hospital expecting to be treated – not to be put at risk. The review has also left families with unanswered questions that must be addressed in the upcoming public inquiry.
SNP ministers planned, commissioned and oversaw the building of this hospital, and were quick to crow about it whenever it suited them, but have been strangely silent when it comes to taking responsibility for the problems. How typical of these cynical but incompetent Nationalists.
15 June 2020
Sturgeon must set out an urgent action plan to save our high streets.
Tens of thousands of jobs are at risk. Without radical action, we risk lasting and incalculable damage to the life changes of the young and the poorest in our society.
To save livelihoods, the SNP Government should organise a nationwide ‘buy local’ campaign, relax rules on pavement eating and drinking, abolish town centre parking charges, run a one-off scrappage scheme on household items and review the two-metre social distancing rule.
SNP ministers cannot sit back and blame Westminster: they have the power, and they must act instead of just dithering endlessly while trying to avoid blame.
The SNP’s half-baked school return plans will lead to a postcode lottery in education.
John Swinney said yesterday that it’s unlikely classrooms will return to normal in the upcoming school year, with the part-time ‘blended’ model remaining in place indefinitely.
But there are vast differences in what that means in practice across Scotland. Some Councils are offering as few as two days a week. This means your child’s attainment will depend on your postcode rather than their ability or potential. That is simply unacceptable.
We need a nationwide plan now from the SNP Government to help parents and schools deliver the curriculum next year – so no child is left behind. Our children cannot afford to wait for dithering SNP ministers to make decisions.
11 June 2020
The SNP needs to get a grip on care home testing.
Last month, Sturgeon pledged that all 53,000 care home staff would be routinely tested for coronavirus, but new figures expose this pledge as yet more worthless posturing from an evasive first minister.
Barely a fifth of these staff members have actually been tested.
The SNP's failures on this issue are unacceptable and inexcusable: within the next few days we need to see all care staff tested, and then regularly re-tested.
Care workers are on the front line - they deserve better than this gross SNP failure.
Jeane Freeman must answer for her woeful handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
Scottish Conservative MPs will challenge Freeman again today as she appears in front of the Scottish Affairs Committee.
Her repeated failures on testing, care homes and hospital-acquired infections continue to put lives at risk.
It's time for Freeman to go - before even more mistakes are made in tackling this pandemic.
https://news.stv.tv/politics/health-secretary-to-appear-before-mps-at-westminster?top
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/covid-care-homes-worst-failure-devolution-2858660
9 June 2020
Spineless Sturgeon should sack the grossly incompetent Jeane Freeman.
Freeman has presided over a long catalogue of failings in her chaotic time as Health Secretary, including two thirds of health boards now being in ‘special measures’, and waiting time targets being repeatedly missed.
Despite endless "promises" from thee hapless minister, front-line hospital staff are still not being routinely tested for coronavirus, an even more egregious failure when it was revealed that thousands of shielded patients were wrongly sent a letter telling them it’s safe to leave the house.
It’s time for Freeman to go - before even more mistakes are made in tackling this pandemic.
Police officers have slammed the SNP’s shameful soft-touch approach to justice.
In a submission to the policing sub-committee, the Scottish Police Federation said it was ‘morally indefensible’ that people who deliberately coughed or spat on police officers were not automatically remanded in custody.
It also called for daily testing of frontline officers, and said that public confidence in the justice system could crumble if criminals keep offending while awaiting punishment by a backlogged court service.
Finally, the SPF said the SNP’s language on lockdown has led to confusion and frustration.
Police officers are on the frontline enforcing this lockdown and dealing with crime - and we must make sure that the system protects them properly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52965772
The SNP has indefinitely delayed a key report on child poverty - for purely political reasons.
In last year’s report, it was clear that significant progress in this area was still required from the SNP; it was failing to meet the targets it set itself.
Given the current economic situation, monitoring the trajectory of child poverty is vital.
The SNP must give a new publication date immediately. We can’t allow this economic crisis to punish the most vulnerable and we must not allow the SNP to cover up yet another catastrophic policy failure.
https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/major-report-child-poverty-delayed-indefinitely-2878218
8 June 2020
Nicola Sturgeon is blocking a safe restart for the housing market
There were only 103 Scottish house sales in April, down from over 5,700 in March - that's over 98% down and represents tens of thousands of people with plans put on hold.
A huge sector of the Scottish economy is on its knees, and buyers and sellers urgently need clarity about what can happen and when so that they can make plans and get lives back on track.
But surveyors and estate agents have complained that the SNP Government’s vague and confusing lockdown exit plan leaves them in the dark over when they can view and inspect properties while wearing PPE.
More jobs and more peoples' homes are at unnecessary risk thanks to the inability of this failed SNP "government" and its cabal of incompetent ministers to get a grip and do its job.
7 June 2020
SNP gross incompetence reaches a new low: Freeman fails again
More than 3 months into this crisis and the SNP's staggeringly incompetent Health Minister is still only examining "the possibility" of regularly testing doctors and nurses in Scottish hospitals - and then only just for a few areas of healthcare.
Not only has "Calamity" Jeane Freeman had to admit that NHS staff in Scotland are not yet being tested regularly, quite incredibly she has no idea when such regular testing might even begin.
Freeman has already failed on just about every aspect of her brief, and this latest gross failure underlines just how unfit she is to hold any ministerial office, never mind one so critical in a national emergency.
If Sturgeon does not sack Freeman immediately then we can draw only one conclusion: she will tolerate any disaster rather than exercise actual leadership.
https://twitter.com/BBCDavidWL/status/1269559524194746370
5 June 2020
The SNP's catastrophic failing in Care Homes needs urgent action.
Sturgeon needs to take this mess seriously and appoint a dedicated minister for care homes and take the pressure off the overwhelmed health secretary who cannot cope.
The situation in our care homes is now so severe it is time that a senior government figure took charge and relieved "Calamity Jeane" of a task she clearly cannot get on top of.
Sturgeon promised to test all care home staff and residents but the latest figures show she is falling far short - again and again.
A desperate Freeman has written to Scotland’s health boards, cynically trying to lay the blame at their door rather than admit that the SNP is responsible.
The SNP needs to a get a grip, now. Sturgeon’s poor decisions are putting lives at risk but all the SNP ministers want to do is play politics and avoid blame: they are not fit for office - and they never were.
3 June 2020
The SNP rushed the over-75s out of hospitals at the start of this crisis.
Official figures published on 2 June showed hundreds of vulnerable people were pushed into care homes without routine coronavirus testing. The virus spread like wildfire in our care homes – costing lives in every community.
This is a national scandal and Nicola Sturgeon must answer for it.
Sturgeon and her calamitous Health Secretary should come clean on exactly what scientific advice they received - and how they decided to use it.
Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon denied that her advisers had told her there was no chance of asymptomatic patients passing on coronavirus to others.
But less than an hour later, her Health Secretary Jeane Freeman directly contradicted that, saying: ‘The clear advice we were receiving from scientific experts was there was no transmission from asymptomatic individuals.’
This devastating admission that one of them was not being truthful came as the SNP Government refused to publish correspondence and briefings from the Chief Medical Officer. Sturgeon should be honest with the public about what she knew and when.
When Sturgeon is saying one thing and Freeman says the exact opposite only minutes later, what confidence can anyone in Scotland have about either of them telling the truth?
29 May 2020
The SNP is still failing Scotland’s businesses.
Across Scotland, 16,000 businesses are still waiting for their support grants from the Scottish Govt - all because incompetent SNP ministers cannot cope.
And even when businesses do get their money - if they do, as many businesses are being unfairly denied support - it is likely to be much less than they would have already been given had they been in England.
Small businesses were vital to the Scottish economy before COVID-19 and they will be vital to our economic revival, so it is equally vital they get the support they need.
Why is the SNP hoarding much of the cash instead of giving it out?
What do SNP ministers plan to do with the money they are holding back?
Why are they refusing to discuss this?
What are they trying to hide?
28 May 2020
Families deserve answers on the SNP’s care home scandal.
Yesterday at FMQs, Jackson Carlaw raised the concerns of a woman whose mother passed away at a care home in Drumchapel in April. She said that a month before her mother's death, there was evidence of elderly patients coming back into the facility despite displaying symptoms of coronavirus.
There must be an immediate, full and rapid public inquiry into why the SNP allowed elderly patients to return to care homes from hospital without a coronavirus test.
Sturgeon has failed to protect the most vulnerable people in society. Their families deserve answers, and we all need to know how to prevent this kind of failing occurring in future, should CVOID-19 present a second wave, or in case similar threats emerge in future from China or anywhere else.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18479449.calls-inquiry-national-scandal-deaths-skye-care-home/
Sturgeon must explain her government’s contact-tracing failures
Yet more failings have emerged - and with no sign that the revelations have ceased.
A kilt-maker, hired to fit delegates at a Nike conference which saw an outbreak of coronavirus, has revealed that the SNP government failed to contact-trace her. Gillian Russell had to take time off with flu-like symptoms, and even travelled to Portugal after the event unaware of her possible exposure to COVID-19.
Sturgeon should admit that the SNP got this badly wrong, and that poor decisions by her and other SNP ministers could have allowed the virus to spread further.
Sturgeon has been quick to judge others, but that cuts both ways: she must now apologise for failing to be honest with the Scottish public.
The SNP is - yet again - letting down vulnerable children.
Education Secretary John Swinney admitted that the number of vulnerable children accessing learning hubs is still extremely low, despite Scotland being several months into the current crisis.
The SNP has failed miserably over several years to close the attainment gaps, and it must not now be allowed to widen simply because Swinney cannot make good decisions.
The excess capacity from the hubs should be extended to the children of non-key-workers in most need of educational support. Actions must be taken so that no child is left behind.
27 May 2020
COVID-19 testing capacity in Scotland is being wasted by SNP incompetence
The SNP must rapidly improve on its shambolic approach to COVID-19 testing, with 70,000 tests – half the available capacity – not being used over two weeks.
Sturgeon can build and then boast about whatever testing capacity she likes - but this is meaningless if the full capacity is not being used and people who need testing aren't actually being tested.
The Royal College of Nursing has warned that Scotland needs to match the extent of testing in the rest of the UK, which is outstripping Scotland despite SNP promises to stay in step.
Thousands of care home residents, workers and their families are going untested, which is why we're seeing such a crisis in these facilities.
Testing is key to controlling this virus: the SNP needs to sort it out, now. People are going to keep dying unnecessarily until the SNP does get a grip - and it has no excuses left for this failure.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18477043.fears-test-trace-70-000-missing-tests-two-weeks/
It is clear that care homes are not the SNP's priority - and have been an afterthought throughout the pandemic.
23 deaths have been recorded at a single care home in East Kilbride, and relatives of residents at Skye's Home Farm care home were left to discover news of an outbreak there through Facebook.
Care homes continue to be the epicentre of this virus, and as the SNP's gross mismanagement of this situation is further exposed every day, disgust at the incompetence displayed is growing.
Scotland's most vulnerable are being let down - and the SNP needs to do more to protect them.
23 May 2020
Struggling Finance Secretary fails to support small businesses despite the huge injection of UK Government funds
In a growing scandal that threatens to shut down vast swathes of small businesses across the Highlands and Scotland, the SNP "government" has reject huge numbers of applications for support made by businesses like B&Bs. Despite personal assurances issued by ministers, rejections continue, many also taking weeks to be processed before being rejected, leaving businesses facing shutdown and owners staring at bankruptcy. Businesses that have provided all the requested information are having to wait weeks for the response, which for many hundreds, if not thousands, has then been of no help at all:
"Many thanks for your application for the The Pivotal Enterprise Resilience Fund. As you will understand, demand for this fund is extremely high and unfortunately it is not possible to support every application. We regret to inform you that your application has been unsuccessful. Given the large volume of applications, we are unable to provide detailed feedback on each application but can confirm that every application received was assessed across a consistent set of criteria by trained assessors. Unfortunately, your application has either failed to sufficiently meet one or more of the criteria or had insufficient information to allow full appraisal. We know this outcome will be disappointing at a time of real pressure for businesses. Please visit findbusinesssupport.gov.
scot for information on other potential sources of support or to contact at https:// findbusinesssupport.gov.scot/ contact-us if you have any further questions or need further support." Why are SNP ministers sitting on £millions - perhaps hundreds of £millions - of money provided by the UK Government rather than passing it on to the businesses it was intended to support?
How do Sturgeon, Forbes and the rest of the shambolic cabal that try - and fail - to run Scotland think that small businesses like B&Bs are going to survive if they are starved of the support funds available but not being used? COVID-19 is not the fault of the SNP, but the failure to support small businesses like B&Bs is very much an SNP failure - one it will be held to account for in May 2021.
SNP Dishonesty about EU Membership Exposed
For over a decade the SNP has made a variety of dodgy claims about how an independent Scotland could either join, rejoin or remain within the EU. Despite never having had any clear factual basis for these assertions, and repeated EU Commission warnings about the requirements of the Article 49 process, Sturgeon and her party continued to suggest that Scotland would somehow be a special case, even with its huge fiscal deficit (in 2019/20, over 7% of GDP, before the COVID-19 impact).
The Express article at the link below has totally nailed the lie. If the SNP leadership did not understand the position then it has demonstrated a huge failure of competence. If it did, then it concealed the truth and pushed out propaganda it knew to be incorrect.
The Scottish Parliament should now examine every utterance of the First Minister since she became an MSP to determine if her statements in Holyrood about EU membership were misleading and thus a breach of the ministerial code of conduct.
21 May 2020
Yesterday at FMQs, Nicola Sturgeon once again ducked responsibility on the Nike conference scandal, failing to answer key points about the alleged cover-up.
The first (known) cases of COVID-19 developed in Scotland following a Nike conference held in Edinburgh in February, but the SNP Government kept the outbreak secret and failed to trace all the actual and potential contacts – people exposed to the virus. Since this failure was first exposed, a varying stream of excuses and misdirection has been poured out by SNP ministers, none of it the least bit convincing.
Sturgeon should admit she got this wrong, and that her decision could have allowed the virus to spread further and faster. Instead it now seems she is desperate to hide behind public health officials, whilst trying equally desperately not to have sack yet another failing Health Secretary.
What is even worse is that Sturgeon will not give any guarantee that such a failure hasn't happened since, or won't happen again.
Sturgeon should apologise for failing to be honest with the Scottish public, but don’t hold your breath: when was the last time she admitted to - never mind apologised for - any of her failures?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52741163
The SNP Government discharged almost 1,000 hospital patients to care homes in March – before mandatory testing.
The figures were revealed late last night after suggestions - maintained for weeks - from both Sturgeon and her calamitous Health Secretary that the number was much, much lower. It is bad enough that vulnerable people were moved into care homes without knowing whether they were carrying the virus; for SNP ministers to be obscuring the true scale of this practice is simply unacceptable and requires those responsible to resign.
There are now a number of very serious questions about honesty and transparency that the SNP needs to answer, and not just about the Edinburgh conference cover-up and the care home numbers.
Scottish care homes have been in crisis for weeks, and what we need is 100%, regular testing of all residents and staff, not more SNP failure.
Sturgeon needs to make sure that disadvantaged children are not left behind yet again by SNP failure to act.
Many children do not have access to a computer or functioning internet for remote schooling – but months into the crisis the SNP Government simply does not know who those children are and where they are. Many of these children are likely to be amongst the most disadvantaged and were therefore likely to already be being let down by the SNP’s decade-long failure to close the attainment gap.
These pupils need help urgently – they can’t just have months and months of being ignored by the education system.
Swinney has now had over two months to get to grip with this problem, but he has yet to do so. We need to get this right for the sake of our children’s future.
17 May 2020
Sturgeon fails to answer the questions - again
On 11 May Jackson Carlaw MSP wrote to Nicola Sturgeon with a series of questions about the SNP handling of the COVID-19 crisis in Scotland, and why Sturgeon was insisting that Scotland could not follow the UK Government lead on easing restrictions.
The FM's response, as has been the case all too often of late, was inadequate, incomplete and evasive. Sturgeon claims that she wants to be transparent with the people of Scotland, but the reality is she is doing all she can to avoid answering any question that does not fit her version of the narrative: everything positive about the COVID-19 response in Scotland is her triumph, and all the failures (which are legion) are to be pinned on someone else, preferably the UK Government. Rarely does she even come close to any admission that without UK Government funding, the product of the very Union that she so vehemently despises, Scotland would now be in a dire situation.
Imagine the situation we would be facing today in Scotland if the ludicrous, fantasy-based plans set out in the SNP's White Paper "Scotland's Future" had been enacted after 2014.
Perhaps one day the SNP will have the honesty to thank the UK Government for harnessing the full power of the Union to support the Scottish People.............but don't bet on it.
6 February 2020
The SNP Finance Minister has resigned.
Derek Mackay has resigned after allegations of inappropriate online conversations with a 16-year-old boy - and more allegations are emerging.
Mr Mackay allegedly told a schoolboy he was ‘cute’ and invited him to dinner while bombarding him with 270 online messages through Instagram and Facebook over six months - after contacting him out of the blue.
Such predatory behaviour falls well short of the conduct expected of government ministers - or any responsible adult.
There are serious questions that need to be answered. Nicola Sturgeon can’t expect this ministerial resignation to be the end of the matter. What did she know, and when?
The SNP: Sleazy, Nasty, Predatory
The SNP are failing Scotland’s Island Communities.
The CalMac ferries inquiry heard damning evidence yesterday from Jim McColl, the businessman behind the Ferguson Marine shipyard where the project is taking place.
He said the Scottish Government had withheld some ‘key documents’ from publication, and that Nicola Sturgeon had announced the deal for the two vessels before anything had even been agreed.
The ferry scandal, which has delivered no vessels and cost the taxpayer £230 million, goes right to the top of the SNP government.
This gross ministerial incompetence and negligence is unacceptable to the Scottish tax payer.
The SNP cannot be trusted to run our public investments properly.
The SNP have dropped the ball when it comes to planning for Scotland’s future.
The SNP’s new transport strategy for the next 20 years was launched by Michael Matheson yesterday.
The strategy claims to outline the role of transport in reducing inequalities, tackling the climate emergency and helping to deliver economic growth while improving health and wellbeing.
The document has been slammed as ‘meaningless drivel’ as it is alarmingly short on detail and holds nothing of substance to help reduce emissions.
According to the SNP, we are in a Climate Emergency yet ministers have failed to plan for a sector which is responsible for 37 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
The SNP needs to end its Indyref2 obsession
Under the SNP, homelessness in Scotland is double that in England.
In a devastating exposure of an SNP failure that goes beyond belief, almost 200 Scots died experiencing homelessness in 2018, according to figures produced by National Records of Scotland.
Scotland has the highest rate of homeless deaths in Britain in 2018, with a rate of 35.9 per million population compared to 16.8 in England and 14.5 in Wales.
Crisis Scotland has said: ‘for the first time we can see the true, devastating scale of the number of people who have died without a … home because of failing within the very system which should have prevented them from falling into poverty and homelessness in the first place.’
This is a tragic state of affairs and shows how little the SNP cares about looking after Scotland’s vulnerable people.
Only the Scottish Conservatives are strong enough to stand up to Sturgeon and protect Scotland’s interests.
22 January 2020
Under the SNP, Scotland is slipping down international wellbeing rankings.
The failing SNP is presiding over one of the biggest drops among developed countries in the latest index of social and economic wellbeing.
Scotland has fallen five places across measures including income, education, longevity and inclusion.
Scotland has dropped to 21st place, behind Estonia and the Czech Republic.
Yet again Scotland is plummeting down an international league table thanks to disastrous SNP policies.
The failing SNP is damaging Scotland and the lives of the Scottish People.
It is time for change. It is time to reject SNP incompetence and SNP failure.
21 January 2020
SNP policies are causing attainment in Scottish schools to decline.
Research this week confirmed that, since 2016, there has been a ‘trend of reducing attainment’ in Scottish schools, with more pupils failing exams.
Despite the SNP’s inability to acknowledge its continuing failures across education, Nicola Sturgeon’s international council of education advisers highlighted the need for a more coherent response to under-performing schools and persistent inequality in the education system.
The SNP has been mismanaging Scottish government for over a decade and it is wholly responsible for the declining standards in Scottish schools.
Nicola Sturgeon said education would be her priority but we can all see that she has totally failed on delivering improvement and is overseeing a disaster in our once world-beating education system
Pupils, teachers, and parents deserve better than what the incompetent SNP is doing.
Sturgeon has comprehensively failed on education - and her obsessions with separatism and increasingly extremist nationalism are damaging the life-chances of Scottish pupils.
20 January 2020
SNP supporters need to wake up to reality - their party is heading into dangerous extremism.
An SNP MSP has claimed that a so-called ‘wildcat referendum’ would be valid, even if it were boycotted by those who wanted nothing to do with the separatists’ agenda.
Alex Neil, a former SNP minister, also believes that a campaign of civil disobedience will lead to indyref2.
The Prime Minister has been clear, now is not the time for a second referendum so soon after the once in a generation choice we made in 2014.
The reality is that the majority of Scots want to move on from the bitterness and division of the past, but some in the SNP want to stoke the politics of hate and division for their own ends.
That kind of extremism has no place in Scottish politics and the SNP should disown such moves.
Scotland said No in 2014. We meant it. The SNP must either respect that result in full - or stop pretending to support democracy.
12 Jan 2020
Pupils "crammed in like sardines"
How often have we heard SNP MSPs waffle on about education being their number one priority and how we should judge them on how education in Scotland is doing?
As ever, the SNP promise big and deliver small - if at all. Once again we can see the evidence of SNP failure, and how it hurts our children.
9 Jan 2020
The SNP is responsible for the deepening crisis in Scotland’s NHS.
Two thirds of Scots are treated by NHS health boards that are in special measures.
That is a truly staggering figure and testament to the huge damage caused by over a decade of SNP mismanagement.
Growing financial pressure and an increased demand on the health service have seen health boards placed in special measures due to failing performances.
The SNP has been in charge of Scotland’s NHS for 12 years, and the blame for this huge scandal lies solely at the feet of Sturgeon and her failed party.
The SNP needs to get a grip on Scotland’s health service; patients and staff deserve better.
18 December 2019
Ferries Contract spirals out of control under SNP mismanagement fiasco
Just when you might have thought that the situation of the two new CalMac ferries could not get any worse, the SNP was forced today to reveal that the vessels will now be three years late and at almost £200 million now cost double the original £97 million budget.
The SNP has tried to blame the shipyard, but the real cause is the failure of SNP ministers to pay proper attention to the contract: they were asleep at the wheel and now we all have to pay the price - another £100 million - for yet more SNP incompetence.
How much more of this failing SNP "government" can Scotland survive? While the rest of the UK is powering forward under a dynamic Conservative government, Scotland is being strangled by the SNP and the most incompetent leadership Scotland has ever had.
SNP funding cuts have left Councils relying on emergency funds.
An Audit Scotland report revealed that local authorities are increasingly eating into their reserves to keep services going.
The real-terms drop in funding of 7.6% since 2013/14 has necessitated deep cuts in financial reserves, and more borrowing by Councils.
This is what happens when you have an SNP government which has cut local authority funding to the bone despite increases in the block grant from the UK. SNP claims that UK funding has been cut are simply untrue – it is amazing how quickly the incompetent SNP forgot the extra money provided by Westminster to plug the £1 billion black hole that SNP taxation policies have created in our budget https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/msps-demand-review-over-1bn-scottish-budget-black-hole-1-5043941
The SNP has been in charge of local government for more than 12 years – Salmond, Sturgeon and the rest of the incompetent SNP are entirely responsible for this mess.
If the chaos in local government funding were not enough, we now know also that under the failing SNP a workforce crisis has developed in our NHS.
The SNP has finally released its long-delayed workforce plan for health and social care.
The plan requires the hiring of 20,000 more staff and comes almost two and a half years after warnings from Audit Scotland about the lack of long-term planning.
It has been well-established for some time that, with an ageing and increasing population, our social care services are under immense pressure.
If the SNP had acted sooner, we wouldn’t be facing a workforce crisis within our NHS. Once again, the utter failure of the SNP to think ahead is hurting the people of Scotland.
9 December 2019
A leading think tank has slammed Nicola Sturgeon's government for withdrawing from multiple international education surveys.
Reform Scotland said knowledge of educational standards in Scotland was at a 70-year low, thanks to SNP Ministers, and demanded more openness from the SNP Government on education - criticising the 'lack of reliable data' produced.
With education standards plummeting, no wonder the SNP is yet again trying to cover up the facts.
Sturgeon must drop her demand for a second referendum and focus on driving improvement in our schools.
7 December 2019
New research has revealed the poor levels of broadband connectivity in large parts of Scotland.
This research shows that many parts of Scotland are being left behind with poor digital connectivity.
The SNP has administered the rollout of broadband in Scotland - or to be more precise, the SNP has totally mismanaged and failed to administer the rollout of broadband in Scotland.
The SNP made a clear promise to have completed the rollout of superfast broadband in Scotland by 2021 - but just this week it was revealed that this be delayed to 2024.
Or make that until at least 2024 because you have to hunt very hard to find a single promise on dates that the SNP has ever kept.
As a UK Conservative Government, we will invest £5 billion to ensure everyone in the country has access to superfast broadband.
If SNP ministers continue to delay the rollout because they are incompetent and distracted by their obsession with holding a second independence referendum, then we will act to ensure that Scotland is not left behind.
6 December 2019
At First Minister’s Questions, Jackson Carlaw confronted Nicola Sturgeon with the full extent of the decline in Scotland’s education standards.
In science, our performance dipped by 25 points, the second highest drop recorded for any country, with only Finland performing worse.
In maths, the collapse in results since 2006 has only been worse in four other countries.
However, instead of taking responsibility for the declining performance in these critical areas, Nicola Sturgeon denied there were problems in Scotland’s schools system.
That's right: despite the fall in National results and now the PISA scores, not to mention the admission that the Curriculum for Excellence is failing, apparently everything in Scottish Education is just rosy.
SNP delusional behaviour is now reaching crisis levels. We must not let the SNP get away with destroying the life chances of another generation of our children.
Our young people are being deprived of the education that Scotland was once renowned for.
Nicola Sturgeon’s obsession with securing indyref2 is restricting opportunity for our children.
The Chair of the Scottish Police Authority resigned yesterday, plunging Police Scotland into crisis once again.
In her resignation letter, Susan Deacon slammed the organisation of policing as ‘fundamentally flawed in structure, culture and practice’.
This is a scathing attack on Nicola Sturgeon’s utterly shambolic "Government": it designed the centralised police force and the police authority that supposedly scrutinises it.
Police Scotland is on its third Chief Constable and fourth police authority Chair since it was created only 6 years ago. A spate of resignations took place two years ago when the SNP Justice Secretary interfered, possibly illegally, in the work of the police authority.
This is just one more damning example of the total mess our public services are in under this incompetent SNP Government. Health, Policing, Justice, Education, the Economy, Farming - all being totally mismanaged by the failing SNP government, one that would rather indulge in cover-ups and conspiracy theories than actually take responsibility for its own mistakes.
Nicola Sturgeon should drop her plans for a second independence referendum and focus on the things that matter – like giving the public confidence in policing again.
3 December 2019
Nicola Sturgeon has been caught lying about crime figures.
The SNP leader claimed in a radio interview that violent crime and crime generally are at record lows in Scotland.
In fact, violent crime has been rising for the last four years and crime overall has risen for the last two.
Violent crime in Scotland is higher than at any point in the last seven years – and Nicola Sturgeon is doing nothing about it.
Perhaps if Nicola Sturgeon spent a little more time on the day job rather than demanding a second independence referendum, she would notice the rising violence on our streets.
If the SNP mendacity about crime figures was not bad enough, an international study published this morning shows that Scotland’s school performance has plummeted to record lows in maths and science.
Scotland’s schools have continuously fallen down international rankings for maths and science since the SNP came to power in 2007. We now perform worse than Latvia and Slovenia in maths.
While there has been slight improvement in reading, our schools are still down on 2012 levels and well below where we were 20 years ago.
And the same report shows that half of the Head Teachers in Scotland who were surveyed by the PISA research said that teacher shortages were hindering education.
Nicola Sturgeon’s obsession with a second independence referendum is failing our children.
The SNP is failing us all time and time and time again.
Enough is enough: we have to make Sturgeon and her incompetent SNP "government" listen.
Only by voting Scottish Conservative can we stop indyref2 and get back to the things that really matter - like the education of our children.
25 November 2019
Sturgeon’s Scottish NHS Scandal: Freeman must go
Scottish NHS bosses were told of major infection risks in the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital weeks before patients died.
The 2018 Health and Safety Executive papers said that there was poor staff training at the hospital and that urgent action was required to protect patients and professionals.
And now more evidence has emerged that key warnings were ignored at Glasgow's super-hospital.
The whistle-blower who exposed the infected water scandal linked to a 10-year-old girl’s death on a cancer ward has claimed to have identified 10 new cases. The revelations suggest seriously ill youngsters at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital – which only opened in April 2015 – have been falling victim to bugs since 2016.
It has also come to light that concerns about the site's proximity to a sewage works were raised as far back as 2002. This all raises further questions about why action wasn't taken sooner to prevent the spread of infections.
Sturgeon’s Health Secretary Jeane Freeman is paid to make sure this kind of scandal is prevented – but she has run out of excuses, lost the confidence of patients, and has to take responsibility for this appalling SNP failure.
Nicola Sturgeon must sack her health secretary, and admit that after 12 years of SNP control her failing party is wholly responsible for this mess.
Sturgeon’s claim that the Scottish NHS is safe in SNP hands is now a very sick joke.
21 November 2019
Nicola Sturgeon has failed hundreds of thousands of our children.
And if we do not do something about it she will fail hundreds of thousands more.
Sturgeon has spent five years as First Minister – and has wasted five years obsessing over a second independence referendum.
Since she came to power, the Higher pass rate has dropped four years in a row – and violent crime has increased four years in a row.
Sturgeon has spent five years doing whatever it takes to justify indyref2 - instead of sorting out our schools and cutting crime.
The SNP has failed on everything that matters to ordinary people: on Health, on Education, on Policing, on the Economy, on Jobs, on Farming, on good governance.
Vote for the Scottish Conservatives on December 12 and let’s get back to the things that really matter to you.
19 November 2019 - Just 23 days to stop Nicola Sturgeon taking Scotland back to another divisive independence referendum
Health minister "Calamity Jeanne" Freeman is due to be questioned by the Holyrood Health and Sport Committee.
The scandal of hospitals that have cost hundreds of millions of pounds but are unsafe for patients is inexcusable.
The SNP has totally failed our NHS - but once again has tried to cover up an incident that may have led to the death of a patient.
Patients need to have confidence in the government and our NHS needs fresh leadership.
It is time for "Calamity Jeanne" to do the right thing and resign.
15 November 2019
Nicola Sturgeon’s health secretary did not tell the public about an infection-linked death at Glasgow’s new super-hospital.
Embattled Jeane Freeman admitted yesterday that she learned about the death of a child at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in September, but kept it secret.
The information only came to light thanks to a whistleblower, who revealed that there were 26 cases of water supply infections in the cancer wards in 2017.
The most shocking thing about this latest SNP cover-up is that allegedly even the parents of the child who died were not told about the link to contaminated water.
It’s the latest development in a string of infections at the hospital since it opened, possibly liked to a contaminated water supply.
Patients and the public deserve answers. Nicola Sturgeon should drop her constitutional obsession and sort out our hospitals.
13 November 2019
On the same day that it was revealed that unemployment has increased in Scotland, the UK Statistics Authority announced it will investigate Sturgeon’s government over misleading jobs stats.
Yesterday, not only was it revealed that employment had fallen by 43,000 and unemployment had increased by 8,000 in Scotland, it was also announced that the UK Statistics Authority is investigating social media claims from the Scottish Government that youth unemployment was falling when it was actually rising. The respected Fraser of Allander Institute described the use of the stats as “truly shocking”.
Coming just days after it was revealed that Sturgeon has been destroying her instructions to the civil service, this is just another example of the SNP’s misinformation campaign to create a secret Scotland.
It is bad enough that the SNP is failing Scotland at every turn. To try to cover up the failures is unacceptable.
7 November 2019
Scottish Conservatives force the evasive SNP to admit that their school curriculum is failing.
Sturgeon’s shambolic “Government” has been shamed into conceding that the SNP’s new curriculum has had a ‘significant negative impact’ on the attainment of pupils.
Education expert Professor Jim Scott published research showing course passes had dropped and subject choice was narrowing. Article.
Floundering SNP MSPs were forced to back the Scottish Conservative motion in the Scottish Parliament which said that pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds were being failed the most.
If the destruction of opportunity under the incompetent SNP was not bad enough, the attempts at a cover-up absolutely stink. SNP ministers have been accused of misleading the Scottish Parliament, with allegations abounding in the national press after FOI requests uncovered a clear 20% fall in National-level course entries - despite Scottish Ministers denying reduction of choice.
Children used to be taught in school and at home that honesty is the best policy, but it seems that the SNP has forgotten this lesson. It could be honest about the many challenges facing Scottish education that its own ill-considered policies have caused, but Sturgeon and Swinney would rather try to change the subject and just shout about separation.
The failing SNP is destroying the Scottish Education system at an alarming and increasing rate.
Nicola Sturgeon is failing our children because her top priority is indyref2, not schools.
Time is running out to save Scottish Education from the failing SNP.
5 November 2019
Nicola Sturgeon is failing our children - again and again.
According to research by the respected and leading education expert Professor Jim Scott, pupils who were already struggling are now faring even worse since the SNP introduced its failed new curriculum in 2013.
The SNP promised to close the attainment gap between the richest and poorest pupils, but things are actually getting worse – much, much worse for many.
Scottish Government figures show that prior to the SNP’s botched introduction of the so-called “curriculum for excellence”, the proportion of pupils leaving school with no qualifications was falling.
But since the chaotic and chronically-underfunded reform, the rates of “no award” have been rising steadily, and in some local authority areas have trebled.
This disaster for our least advantaged children comes on top of the other consequences of SNP mismanagement of Scottish Education, not least the rapid decline in qualifications being taken and passed, and the sharp reduction in subject choices available in S4.
It seems that the claims made by the floundering Education minister John Swinney about the benefits of the Pupil Equity Fund are just not stacking up – and it also seems that he has no idea how to fix the mess the SNP created.
Meanwhile our children are being robbed of opportunity by SNP incompetence - and those least able to cope are suffering most.
Nicola Sturgeon needs to drop her plans for indyref2 and focus on the things that matter – like restoring standards in our schools.
The SNP has dismantled local policing.
Dozens of police stations in the North East and across Scotland have shut in the last few years due to SNP cuts.
Since Police Scotland was founded, a total of 125 police stations and offices have been shut down throughout the country.
A visible police presence is vital to combat rising violent crime on our streets and a lifeline for our communities.
When the Scottish Police Federation is telling us that the SNP has “given up on policing” and committed “an act of policing vandalism”, you would think that the First Minister would take notice, and look at how to fix the mess her incompetent government has created.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for that: Sturgeon’s only priority is the destruction of the Union, not keeping the people of Scotland safe and putting enough police onto our streets.
1 November 2019
Scotland’s NHS is in crisis - thanks to the incompetent SNP.
More than 3.5 million working hours have been lost to the NHS as a result of stress and mental health problems.
NHS staff are facing burnout as treatment times soar and the number of people waiting more than 4 hours in A&E is up by nearly 20 per cent.
The failing SNP has been running Scotland’s NHS for more than 12 years now: it has run out of excuses, and must stop running down the our NHS.
Staff and patients deserve better. Our NHS is suffering thanks to Sturgeon’s obsession with separation and destruction of the Union.
The SNP is still failing Scotland’s children.
A survey by Scotland’s teaching unions showed almost one in three headteachers believe that the SNP’s plan to raise attainment is failing.
Two years after the SNP promised schools would get more money under the ‘pupil equity fund’ scheme, a massive £40 million is still to be spent, and the attainment gap is only getting wider as SNP policies continue to unravel.
Our children are being failed by the SNP because Nicola Sturgeon has taken her eye off the ball.
31 October 2019
The SNP Lord Provost of Glasgow has resigned in disgrace after claiming an incredible £8000 in expenses for shoes and clothes.
Eva Bolander should have realised right away that charging the public for designer clothes and 23 pairs of shoes was just not sensible.
And she should have resigned when this news first broke, not waited for an election to highlight her behaviour and embarrass the SNP beyond what it it could endure.
Nicola Sturgeon now looks even more foolish for defending the ex-Provost to the hilt when everyone in Glasgow could see her expenses claims were beyond a joke.
This has been embarrassing for the SNP from start to finish - and just more evidence that the SNP is unfit to govern at any level.
Yet again, more faults have been uncovered at the delayed Sick Kids Hospital.
A review discovered failings in the building’s fire and electrical systems.
The failure to properly install fire systems, electrical systems and medical gas installations raises real concerns around the safety of patients and staff at the new hospital site.
These remedial works must be carried out comprehensively and full transparency given to the public so that they can be confident in the new hospital when it finally opens.
Nicola Sturgeon’s top priority has always been another independence referendum - rather than making sure vital hospitals are delivered on time and are fit for purpose.
It’s time for the SNP to come clean, stop hiding behind officials, and actually hold someone elected responsible for this mess.
28 October 2019
The SNP has wasted £55 million that could have been spent improving our schools and hospitals.
This shows the scale of Sturgeon’s shambolic mismanagement of our public services.
The SNP has made such a mess of running things that Scotland’s NHS is paying tens of millions to mistreated patients, and the Scottish Prison Service is having to pay shocking sums of compensation to both prison officers and prisoners.
Meanwhile, as if the scandal of compensation payments running unchecked under SNP rule was not bad enough, an Audit Scotland report has revealed that Scotland’s NHS will have a deficit of more than £207 million within two years.
The bulk of that money comes from the scandal-hit Sick Kids hospital that is disastrously behind schedule, the blame for which SNP MSPs are trying to pass on to anyone but themselves.
But ever since Nicola Sturgeon was health secretary back in 2011, the hallmarks of SNP mismanagement - financial black holes and missed targets - have become an almost daily feature of our Scottish NHS and other public services.
None of this is the fault of overworked NHS staff or under-threat prison officers.
It is the fault of a distracted and incompetent SNP Government obsessed with getting another referendum at all costs, no matter who suffers the consequences.
The growing and serious shortage of GPs has been exposed once again as the SNP fails to get a handle on NHS staffing.
The Scotsman reports that a resident at a Glasgow care home lay dead for 24 hours in the home because the chronic shortage of out-of-hours doctors meant no-one was available to certify the cause of death.
The case, which happened earlier in the year, was revealed as Scottish doctors warned that the GP service is failing due to a lack of staff.
The incompetent SNP has created a staffing crisis in the NHS, leaving staff stretched, patients at risk, and even the dignity of the dead compromised.
Nicola Sturgeon’s obsession with breaking up the UK is hurting our NHS and the services that we all rely on in times of crisis.
The SNP needs to come clean on Shetland by-election spending.
The SNP has real questions to answer about by-election spending following another example of its bad record on transparency (news article).
The SNP declared spending just under the £100,000 limit - yet failed to declare the full cost of rental properties that were used throughout the election campaign.
It is also an extraordinary situation that the SNP spent more on one Holyrood by-election (and still lost) than it did on its entire Brexit referendum campaign.
The SNP seems happy to throw huge sums of money at any opportunity to further its obsession with breaking up the Union; at least for once we have to be thankful that it was not taxpayers’ money.
25 October 2019
A medical expert has issued a stark warning about patient safety under the SNP.
Professor Derek Bell OBE, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, has been reported as saying that ignoring the concerns raised by junior doctors will have a negative impact on morale – making the situation even worse.
Junior doctors have spoken out about their unmanageable workloads due to rota gaps, unfilled posts and high levels of sickness absence.
As a vital part of the future of the NHS, it is essential that junior doctors are listened to and valued at work. The SNP has been in charge of our Scottish NHS for a decade and is entirely to blame for the workforce crisis in hospitals across the country.
Meanwhile, the SNP is happy to waste £millions more of your money on gimmicks like its new citizens’ assembly talking shop, sending another £1.4 million down the drain – money that could have been used to pay for more junior doctors.
Nicola Sturgeon’s priorities are separation and division. The SNP doesn’t care what else it breaks just as long as it gets to break up the UK.
23 October 2019
Support for Sturgeon’s separation plans is on the slide
A poll carried out by a pro-independence group has shown that 1 in 4 of those who voted Yes in 2014 have now changed their minds.
Far from building momentum for separation as the SNP endlessly claims, it now seems that Nicola Sturgeon’s failing regime is losing the argument as the facts of 2019 – like the SNP’s £1 billion tax black hole - replace the fantasy forecast figures spouted by the SNP in 2014.
This poll shows, yet again, that more Scots want to remain in the UK than want to leave it – but don’t expect the indyref extremists in the SNP to pay any heed to either the facts or what you think.
Scottish Labour is once again at war with itself.
The Herald reports that Trade union allies of comrade Corbyn have voted against Edinburgh South MP Ian Murray to trigger a selection battle in his seat.
The Unite leadership is trying to remove Ian Murray – apparently because he has been one of the most vocal critics of Corbyn’s hard-left “leadership”. How sad to see that when the country needs decisive action to get Brexit done, and take the UK forward to a bright future under the Conservatives, Scottish Labour would rather focus on 1970’s style purges and infighting and leave the SNP an open goal.
It just proves that the Scottish Conservatives are the only party who can stand up to the SNP.
21 October 2019
Panicking SNP wants to force through separation vote in as little as two months.
SNP Brexit secretary, Mike Russell, has told MSPs he hopes to force through all stages of the Referendums Bill by the end of next month.
This would empower the SNP government to call a separation vote without parliamentary scrutiny - and then hold that vote only 10 and a half weeks later.
First the SNP tried to avoid the Electoral Commission testing the question, now it is trying to dodge the Scottish Parliament and rush a campaign.
But why the SNP panic?
It is an open secret in Holyrood that the SNP leadership fears 2020 – so what new financial disaster or scandal does that SNP leadership know is coming down the tracks in 2020?
What further SNP failings will be exposed to public view?
While the SNP grandstands on the constitution, Scotland's schools, hospitals, and public services suffer.
Nicola Sturgeon needs to end her separation obsession and get back to the day job – if she still wants the job.
17 October 2019
The Scottish Conservatives have called for Sturgeon to release all her private emails related to her role as First Minister.
For years Sturgeon has been using a private political email account to conduct government business - despite strict rules that say party and government work must be kept separate.
In 2015 top civil servants were ordered to direct urgent matters to her SNP email account at weekends or in the evening.
Sturgeon cannot hide behind civil servants and avoid scrutiny any longer.
This raises very serious issues of government transparency and begs the question: just what exactly is she hiding - and why?
Cash-strapped councils are struggling to provide key services.
Research has revealed a gulf in the quality of schools, housing and roads across Scotland’s local authorities.
The research pointed to a wide range of problems: schools struggling due to teacher shortages; council homes below acceptable standards; and every local authority failing to hit recycling targets.
The SNP needs to stop wasting taxpayers’ money on pursuing separation and start to properly fund our Councils, so that they can deliver vital local services and undo years of damage caused by incompetent SNP government.
16 October 2019
Joanna Cherry praises Alex Salmond – and distances herself from Nicola Sturgeon.
The prominent SNP MP Joanna Cherry has been quoted in a press article as saying ‘I’m not Nicola’s best mate’ and describing Alex Salmond as a ‘friend’.
Cherry said Salmond - who has been charged with sex crimes and faces trial in 2020 - was ‘the greatest leader the party’s ever had’.
The ambitious Cherry, who has taken every opportunity to hog the limelight in recent weeks, has not tried to hide her growing dissatisfaction with Sturgeon: according to the press article she apparently 'liked' a tweet commenting on another newspaper article that suggested that the First Minister's "days are numbered".
Cherry has also refused to rule herself out of the running to replace Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader, and described herself as ‘popular with the party membership’.
It seems that the SNP like their cherries more Machiavelli than Maraschino.
When even Nicola Sturgeon’s own MPs think she has run out of steam, why should anyone else think she is up to the job?
Yet again, Nicola Sturgeon has shown that her only priority is separatism.
In 2016 Sturgeon claimed that education would be the ‘number one priority’ of her government.
We all know now how that has worked out, as standards decline and teacher shortages - shortages that the SNP government caused and has done almost nothing to solve - continue to affect hundreds of thousands of Scottish pupils.
During her 45 minute speech to SNP Conference this week, Sturgeon predictably failed to set out how she would reverse the declining standards in our schools or the NHS.
Instead she shamelessly tried to exploit Brexit to push for further division and feed her obsession with breaking up the UK.
This bluster came despite the simple fact that the SNP’s economic case for separation has never been weaker.
Nicola Sturgeon has no answers on how she would replace the pound, or how she would plug the £12 billion gap in an independent Scotland’s finances.
And now she has been forced to admit that under her separation plans there could be a hard border between Scotland and the rest of the UK, splitting up our internal market – on which the prosperity of Scotland depends - and potentially costing thousands of people their jobs.
The SNP will happily steer Scotland onto the rocks in pursuit of its ideological obsessions. Only the Scottish Conservatives will get us back to the things that matter – like schools, hospitals and growing the economy.
September 2019
A respected police chaplain has hit out at the SNP’s underfunding of our police force.
Reverend Neil Galbraith, chaplain for Police Scotland, has raised ‘deep concerns’ that officers in his pastoral care are tired, frustrated, and even depressed. In a letter to the SNP Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf, Rev Galbraith said “our officers are under-equipped, require more resources, and are being asked to face too many challenges”.
He detailed how riot cops have had to wear the same soiled gear day after day, and that officers are getting soaked at crime scenes because they didn’t have time to collect waterproofs.
Nicola Sturgeon cares more about wasting scarce resources on her separation obsession than backing our Police Officers on the ground. The Scottish Conservatives would restore frontline, local policing to our communities.
The list of broken SNP promises gets ever longer.
After 12 years in power, Nicola Sturgeon’s tired government has outlined its Programme for the coming year. But the litany of 30 delayed, dropped or undelivered flagship SNP pledges shows that whatever Sturgeon promises should be taken with a bucketful of salt.
This sorry list of disasters and fudge includes:
Nicola Sturgeon’s failure to close the gap between how well the richest and poorest school students perform.
Nicola Sturgeon’s failure to deliver £500 million of Growth Scheme funding on time.
Nicola Sturgeon’s failure to give victims and their families more say before criminals are released from prison.
It just goes to show that you cannot trust anything the SNP promises, except to try to break up the UK.
The dispute over the SNP’s handling of the Ferguson Marine shipyard rumbles on.
A Herald Article reports that Kevin Hobbs, the boss of the company that owns CalMac ferries, has blasted the ‘design flaws’ in two overdue ferries being built by Ferguson Marine.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Government rushed to nationalise the Ferguson shipyard, despite Finance Secretary Derek Mackay admitting he has no idea how much it will cost the taxpayer.
Meanwhile businessman Jim McColl – who saved the yard in 2014 and still sits on Sturgeon’s council of economic advisers – accused the SNP government of a ‘circus’ and ‘appalling behaviour’ for failing to resolve the dispute.
This is a shambles and island communities are still waiting for these ferries. Sturgeon must get back to the day job and order a full inquiry into the whole fiasco. But we all know that she would rather waste time and money on her constitutional obsession and leave the things that matter – like schools, hospitals and jobs – to her incompetent colleagues.
SNP hypocrisy: a new art-form?
The hypocrisy of SNP posturing in Westminster about treating Parliament with respect is reaching new heights, as illustrated by the Scottish Government’s total disdain for Holyrood, amply demonstrated by the disrespect shown to MSPs looking into the Salmond fiasco: Herald Article.
Scottish Labour (remember them?) are feuding yet again - it must be a full moon.
Labour “leader” Richard Leonard has sacked his finance spokesperson James Kelly, demoting him to Justice to replace Daniel Johnson – who resigned months ago in protest at the leadership.
Shambolic Scottish Labour spends more time attacking itself than it does holding the SNP to account - and is treated with contempt by the Corbyn cabal. What is the point of Scottish Labour?
August 2019
The SNP has missed another hat-trick of key health targets.
New figures show that Nicola Sturgeon's NHS A&E “treatment guarantee” has been broken more than 100,000 times under her latest Health Minister. Worse still, the number of patients waiting over 12 hours has more than tripled in the last year.
The Nationalists have been in charge of Scotland’s health service for 12 years, and the blame for this failure lies squarely at their door. Telegraph Article, Scottish Sun Article.
Just imagine the carnage that another five years of SNP incompetence and failure would inflict upon the NHS in Scotland if the SNP remains in government after the next Holyrood election.
The simple fact is that any “guarantee” you hear coming from the SNP is worthless.
Sturgeon’s “Citizens’ Assembly” is just a talking shop for independence.
This assembly is supposed to be considering options to improve Scotland’s future. But because of Sturgeon’s one-track indy-obsession it is not considering the really important things - like how to improve our schools and hospitals and deal with the drug-related deaths crisis: it is only considering the destruction of the Union. Times Article
This is just the latest SNP attempt to push for another referendum and divide Scotland all over again. And of course you are paying for that: this latest SNP gimmick has already racked up a bill of almost £500,000 that could have been spent on closing the attainment gap or increasing subject choice in schools.
The SNP is still failing rural communities at every turn.
On the same day that new figures from the British Medical Association reveal that rural communities don’t have enough GPs, and as the GP recruitment crisis continues, Nicola Sturgeon tried to deflect the bad news by making more empty promises on 5G coverage: P&J Article
No surprise that an increasingly out-of-touch Sturgeon chose to promote 5G when, thanks to her party, much of rural Scotland still lacks 4G, not to mention decent broadband (or decent roads, schools, bus services...........).
Nicola Sturgeon is breaking her promises on childcare.
There is just a year left for the SNP to meet its own target of 1,140 hours of childcare for 3 and 4 year-olds. But more than 700 of the new facilities needed have not even begun construction, and a Government report has revealed that not enough nursery staff have been recruited. Scotsman Article
Worse still, the impact of the changes on independent childminders has been ignored, threatening many with having to pull out of the role entirely, meaning that the gap between 1140 hours provision and the real full-time cover that many working parents need cannot be filled in many areas.
As ever, when it comes to the details, the incompetent SNP has been found wanting yet again. How much longer can Scotland take this failure?
The SNP must scrap Sturgeon’s sinister “Named Person” scheme.
Nicola Sturgeon’s plan to appoint a state guardian for every child has already been struck down in the courts. Now the SNP Government’s own advisory panel has said the new version would be too complicated for public bodies to follow. Times Article, Scottish Sun Article.
This unnecessary and Orwellian scheme has been unworkable and unpopular from the start. Nicola Sturgeon should drop it and focus on the things that matter.
Jeremy Corbyn has surrendered to Nicola Sturgeon’s demands for indyref2.
The Labour leader has confirmed he would not try to stop the SNP holding a second divisive referendum on breaking up the UK. This cynical move is a complete betrayal of the Labour voters in Scotland who support the Union. Telegraph Article, Herald Article
Comrade Corbyn’s increasingly hard-left Labour cannot be trusted to protect either the Union or the Nation, and the Scottish Labour “leader” has been left totally exposed and isolated by his Islington puppet-master.
Alex Salmond will receive over £500,000 of Scottish taxpayers’ money because of the serious flaws in the SNP Government’s investigation into the allegations about him.
It is outrageous that over half a million pounds has been wasted by the botched handling of this investigation – and you have to wonder how much more the Scottish taxpayer - you - will have to pay out before this scandal finally reaches an end. BBC Report
Worst of all, the people who made these complaints against Salmond have been badly let down by the SNP.
Sturgeon must explain why she wasted taxpayers’ money when the glaring flaws in the Scottish Government’s investigation were so apparent from the very start.
Eventually the truth will out, but expect the SNP to do all it can to prevent the Scottish people knowing the details before the next Holyrood election.
Scottish students are losing out on university places to English and non-EU students.
The SNP’s cap on student places means that Scottish students can only access half the number of courses at Scottish universities as candidates from south of the border. Scotsman Article
There are places on 1000 courses for Scottish students available through UCAS clearing, but more than 2000 courses on offer for English, Welsh, NI and non-EU students. Clearly the SNP thinks it is OK to limit Scottish candidates unfairly despite its endless rhetoric about improving education and opportunity.
Sturgeon’s student cap unfairly discriminates against Scottish pupils, holding them back from achieving their full potential.
SNP blunders are to blame for Ferguson shipyard going into administration.
Scottish taxpayers are facing a massive bill because of the incompetent SNP’s reckless mismanagement of the Ferguson Marine ferries contract. Herald Article
Nicola Sturgeon’s own economic adviser Jim McColl says there is “no economic sense” behind the SNP’s decision and has accused the SNP of ‘abusing their power’. Times Article
He said: ‘We get soundbites from ministers, tweeting about finishing the ferries and saving the jobs in the yard. It’s all PR. There’s no economic sense behind what they’re doing…The way they are acting right now is economically damaging for the local area, and for Scotland.’ Daily Record Article Telegraph Article
SNP Ministers have spent years ducking questions and wasting public money without securing jobs or protecting the future of the yard.
Sturgeon must get back to the day job, fix this mess and order a full parliamentary inquiry.
The SNP has now admitted the Sick Kids hospital might not open before 2021.
Sturgeon and her increasingly-beleaguered health secretary Jeane Freeman have been unable to provide even the most basic information to families and NHS staff on the scale of the problems at the new Edinburgh hospital. Scotsman Article
Despite the delayed opening of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and warnings from Union officials that the new building could have to be 'ripped down', Jeane Freeman has refused to resign. This comes as it was revealed that NHS Lothian hands over £1.4m every month for a hospital that is not yet operational. The safety of patients, visitors and staff is of primary concern, and it is staggering that these issues have been overlooked. Clinicians pressured to sign off flawed hospital plan - The Herald
Meanwhile, the bill for the delayed hospital is to be at least £90m more than planned, according to an Audit Scotland report . The NHS Lothian hospital has been mired in controversy since dangers to patients and staff were identified before it opened – and the total cost of the new hospital could be up to £500m. BBC Report, The Scotsman
Despite the attempts to evade its responsibility for the failure, the SNP cannot say it was not warned well in advance. A senior architect involved in the project has said he raised concerns over design flaws two years ago - but believes meeting deadlines was prioritised over patient safety due to political pressure. Times Article
The SNP needs to take responsibility for its repeated failings in supporting Scotland’s hospitals – but get ready for the SNP to find someone else to blame for its own incompetence, just as it always does. Scotland needs a First Minister focused on hospitals and schools – not separation.
Labour still cannot make its mind up on independence.
Labour’s infighting continues: the Scottish party has gone to war with the UK party leadership over its backing for indyref2. John McDonnell has insisted that a Labour government would not block a second referendum on independence. This is despite the Labour “leader” in Scotland, Richard Leonard, repeatedly saying that his party would not grant a Section 30 order to allow a referendum to be held.
The Scottish parliamentary Labour party released a statement condemning John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn for seeking to ‘undermine’ Richard Leonard. Minutes later, Neil Findlay tweeted that he did not support the statement from his colleagues, and hit out at Jackie Baillie for abusing her power. Meanwhile Labour MP Paul Sweeney had come out in favour of federalism, saying that a second referendum should have not just two, but three choices on the ballot paper – The Herald
It is hardly surprising that Comrade Corbyn and his extreme-left power-base feel that they can treat Scottish Labour with contempt: former Labour MSP Margaret Curran has said Scottish Labour is ‘now a small party in Scotland’ and ‘we are not terribly relevant.’ Herald Article
Unlike Labour’s ever-changing position, the real choice is clear: the chaos of Nicola Sturgeon and Comrade Corbyn trying to engineer years of yet more division; or the pragmatism of the Scottish Conservatives supporting the Union and getting back to the things that really matter to people. In 2014 the Scottish people said no, and we meant it: but you simply can’t trust Labour with the Union – or anything else for that matter.
Senior police officers have slammed an SNP minister for bragging about police numbers.
Community Safety minister Ash Denham claimed on Twitter that the SNP had put more officers on the beat. But Calum Steele, General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation and his Deputy, David Hamilton responded with fury. The Herald
Steele said ‘the SNP has been underfunding the service to the point we are heading to headcount lower than a decade ago’, while Hamilton pointed out that deeper cuts to the frontline are on the way due to Police Scotland’s budget mess.
Can you trust SNP claims about Police numbers? Not really: as usual with any SNP claim, truth is the first casualty - but make up your own mind after taking a look at an independent assessment: Channel 4 News
Our poorest students are being let down by the SNP.
Despite Nicola Sturgeon staking her reputation (such as it is) on driving down the education attainment gap, in reality since 2018 the attainment gap has actually widened - despite slightly more students from deprived backgrounds making it to university. The Scotsman
School standards are slipping rapidly under the SNP. Pass rates are now at record lows since the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) was introduced. The Telegraph
SNP cuts to teacher numbers and their cap on higher education places is holding Scottish pupils back from achieving their full potential. John Swinney has repeatedly failed to listen to teachers, parents and young people.
The incompetent SNP is failing on education - just like it is failing on health, policing and reducing drug-related deaths. Only the Scottish Conservatives will restore our schools to their rightful place among the best in the world.
July 2019
The number of Scottish businesses on the brink of collapse is soaring under the SNP
New figures show an 18% rise in the number of companies in Scotland in serious ‘distress’ compared to the same period of 2018. Herald Article
The number of businesses in severe financial trouble is growing at more than three times the rate of that in the rest of the UK. This increase of firms on the brink of collapse should be a sharp wake-up call for the SNP: it needs to stop strangling innovation and must abandon its anti-business mindset.
Only the Scottish Conservatives have the ideas and determination to support Scottish businesses and grow the economy.
The Scottish Policy Authority has been operating behind closed doors – again.
The Scottish Policy Authority has been criticised for holding meetings in secret on issues including health and safety and a £42 million shortfall. The SNP promised that under new management the SPA would operate in an open and transparent manner. But it seems the SNP is happy to let the SPA operate behind closed doors.
What exactly is the SNP trying to hide from us all, and why? This is the SNP’s secret Scotland – and it stinks.
The SNP needs to get its story straight on indyref2.
The SNP’s deputy leader has insisted that he had never claimed the independence referendum was a once in a generation vote. However, it has emerged that ahead of the 2014 vote he claimed the referendum was a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’.
A generation is generally accepted as being about 30 years, and even allowing for improvements in life expectancy in Scotland having stalled under the SNP’s mismanagement (BBC News), on average you can still expect to live to well over 75. So clearly the Deputy FM thought that the 2014 referendum was a once in two generations opportunity - and not something we should revisit until at least 2075 or so!
Instead of struggling with selective memories, SNP ministers should take the threat of separation off the able completely. We said no and we meant it: the failing SNP needs to and get back to the day job of improving our economy, schools and NHS.
The SNP has the Union to thank for saving Scottish services after the SNP’s £1 billion tax black hole was exposed.
After overall tax revenue in Scotland fell £941 million short of SNP forecasts, the UK Government has stepped in to provide an extra £737 million in next year’s block grant and prevent drastic cuts to vital services in Scotland. This exposes the cost of having an under-performing SNP government which is overseeing sluggish growth, doing nothing to improve poor productivity, and failing to understand that punitive tax rates drive down the overall tax-take. Herald Article.
Delivering more fiscal powers to the Scottish Parliament should have been a huge opportunity for ministers to boost our economic fortunes; instead, the incompetent and economically-illiterate SNP has squandered the opportunity for narrow ideological reasons. Fortunately for the people of Scotland, the benefits of still being part of the UK mean that this disastrous underperformance by the SNP can be compensated for by Westminster.
The SNP needs to end its referendum obsession and concentrate on sorting out its disastrous economic policies.
The SNP is shamelessly politicising Scotland’s drugs-deaths crisis.
Almost 1,200 people died from drug consumption in Scotland last year – a 27% rise year-on-year. This is almost three times the rate of the UK as a whole and the highest rate in the EU. The SNP has had control over health and justice for 12 years; yet it has not dealt with this problem. ‘Call for treatment ‘culture change’ as drug death figures soar 27%’
In their desperation, the Nationalists are now pinning their hopes on drug consumption rooms because they know the UK Government does not agree with them. The SNP Government should be focusing its efforts on rehabilitation and abstinence-based recovery, the very services the SNP chose to cut to the bone.
But to do that the SNP Ministers would have to admit to making a mistake – not something the SNP will ever do voluntarily: much better to blame someone or something else. So after this week’s shocking drugs deaths statistics, former SNP minister Kenny MacAskill claimed that independence is necessary to combat the crisis. The SNP has been in power since 2007 and, on its watch, the number of fatalities has doubled, but rather than take an honest look at the problem, it prefers to politicise the crisis to distract from yet another catastrophic SNP failure.
When will the SNP admit that the only answer to SNP failure is not indyref2, but a change of Scottish Government? When will the SNP abandon its ideological obsession and end its constitutional grandstanding? Don't hold your breath.
Police chiefs say the SNP’s Car Park Tax puts front-line officers at risk
A letter from the Scottish Police Federation to the SNP government has been published, saying:
The car park tax could increase the chance of police officers’ homes being targeted.
The levy would be a “bureaucratic nightmare” for Police Scotland.
Police officers using public transport “along fixed routes at fixed times” would be vulnerable to attacks from criminals they’d brought to justice.
With elevated terror levels police who could no longer use their cars were even more at risk given “a specific terror threat” had been identified against them.
The Scottish Conservatives tabled a series of amendments to the car park tax legislation, which would have exempted a number of groups – including police, teachers and people on benefits – but those were rejected by other political parties. Police officers are just one of many groups who are vehemently opposed to the SNP’s car park tax plans. This explosive letter shows not only their anger about it, but the very real risks they could face as a consequence.
The SNP government should pay attention to what police are saying - and drop these plans altogether.
The SNP should stop using trips abroad to promote its attempts to break up the UK.
Just a few weeks after the First Minister was hob-nobbing with the EU Elites, Fiona Hyslop, the Culture Secretary, has also been to Brussels: once again we have a senior member of the SNP taking needless trips to talk up separation. Their motives are totally transparent: yet another excuse for them to try and create artificial divisions between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Rather than wasting time and hard-pressed taxpayers’ money on these self-indulgent excursions, the SNP should be concentrating on improving its desperately poor record of governance of Scotland, for example by getting a grip on our crumbling education system, a task that seems beyond the competence of the floundering Deputy First Minister. Scotsman Article
The SNP should drop the games, and get back to the day job.
Senior SNP figures propose declaring independence - without a referendum.
Angus MacNeil, a senior MP, and Chris McEleny, a former SNP deputy leadership contender, have drafted a motion for the SNP’s autumn conference. It proposes that the SNP’s next manifesto should promise that a ‘pro-independence electoral victory’ would lead to an immediate start of talks to break up Britain. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/independence-without-a-second-vote-is-proposed-7mcwpx6tl
So having had independence rejected by a substantial margin in a democratic referendum only five years ago, and knowing that every sign points to it losing another referendum, the SNP is now trying to find another way to push its endless constitutional grievance, if necessary by twisting democracy to breaking point.
