TheShiningWire retweeted
You are standing in a £350m factory whose entire business model relies on Scotland being part of the UK. Sumitomo didn’t invest in the Cromarty Firth to sell high-voltage subsea cables to an isolated Scottish domestic market of 5 million people; they invested to supply the massive GB-wide National Grid and build the undersea transmission links powering the entire British economy. Scotland is an attractive inward investment destination precisely because international manufacturers gain direct, frictionless access to the UK’s 67-million-person internal market without customs borders, trade tariffs, or currency risk. Claiming this investment somehow proves the case for breaking away from the very domestic market that justified building it is a breathtaking dishonesty John.
@BBCRadioScot Diabolical interview with Russell Findlay.
Martin Geisller doing an impersonation of a wee angry bloke in the pub.
Compared to the fawning, mealy mouthed kid gloves shown to SNP politicians this was terrible.
I rarely listen to BBC Scotland and certainly won’t now
TheShiningWire retweeted
It is genuinely hilarious watching the editor of The National try to take the moral high ground on transport journalism. You want to know why the media is focusing on the backlash from “reactionary businessmen”? Because those businessmen own the buses, the depots, and the infrastructure. The SNP is about to plunge a government with a £5 billion structural deficit into a multi-million-pound legal war to seize control of a network they have no capacity to run. And pointing to “our own capital city” as a success story is embarrassing. Lothian Buses is run by the local council, completely untouched by Holyrood. Whenever the SNP actually takes “public control” of transport, we get the Ferguson Marine £400m black hole and a nationalised ScotRail crippled by slashed timetables and daily cancellations. Proclaiming to be doing real journalism by speaking to “actual BUS USERS” while deliberately ignoring your own party's catastrophic track record of managing public transport is why nobody outside the nationalist echo chamber takes your paper seriously😂.
TheShiningWire retweeted
😳 @JohnSwinney telling the Easdale brothers to “watch their language” rather neatly illustrates the very attitude they're complaining about.
He's the @ScotGovFM of Scotland, not the nation's headmaster. His job is to answer criticism, not to expel people who express it in terms he finds disagreeable.
I've experienced this culture myself. Challenge a policy, question a funding decision or expose an uncomfortable truth, and suddenly the conversation becomes about your tone, your language or your attitude. Anything, it seems, except the substance of what you've actually said. It's a remarkably convenient way of avoiding difficult questions while making the person asking them the problem.
Democracy is not simply the right to vote every few years. It also requires the freedom to challenge those in power without fearing that your livelihood, funding, reputation or opportunities will suffer as a consequence.
And that is where my criticism of the SNP goes considerably further than its apparent dislike of dissent.
My concern, informed by my own experience, is that criticism can carry identifiable institutional consequences, while compliance and political conformity can bring equally identifiable advantages.
That is a far more serious allegation than a government being thin-skinned, and it deserves proper scrutiny.
The Easdales have the resources and public profile to challenge the government openly. Many smaller organisations, particularly those dependent on public funding, do not enjoy that luxury. For them, the perceived price of speaking out can be enough to ensure silence.
A government doesn't have to ban criticism to discourage it. It merely has to create an environment in which people believe there is a price to pay for speaking their minds.
So perhaps, rather than lecturing his critics about their manners, the First Minister might reflect on why people feel compelled to use such strong language in the first place.
Democracy isn't a classroom, Mr Swinney. The electorate aren't your pupils, and disagreement isn't a disciplinary offence.
Scotland’s First Minister has told a bus company boss to watch his language after he branded him a dictator over plans to bring the country’s bus network under public control.
i.stv.tv/4zDMZjI
TheShiningWire retweeted
It's one of my pet peeves. I'm as certain as I am of anything that the very wealthy paid essentially no tax in the 1950s.
Probably not much more in the 70s taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/05/08/…
TheShiningWire retweeted
This is economic illiteracy of a high order.
After separation Scotland would still use sterling. So it would have to borrow in £s to cover its massive budget deficit and promise lenders it would pay back in £s (or they won’t lend).
But after an unspecified transition it would move to a Scottish currency. But all the borrowing done during the transition would have to be paid back in sterling.
If the Scottish currency plummeted v sterling (likely given the size of the deficit, lack of credit track record etc) that could become an unmanageable burden given the likely poor exchange rate.
Scotland would have to borrow billions in its own currency just to convert to sterling to pay back lenders. Devaluing the Scottish currency further.
What a shambles that would be.
He has no idea what he’s talking about.
TheShiningWire retweeted
Kemi Badenoch will order a review of devolution which will consider withdrawing powers from the Scottish Parliament if she wins the next general election.
dailymail.com/news/article-1…
TheShiningWire retweeted
Demanding a presenter be sacked for not parroting nationalist spin is ridiculous. You are deliberately confusing gross salary with net take-home pay. Because the Scottish Government's 42% higher tax rate kicks in so early, the tax system completely wipes out the gross pay advantage for Sergeants and Inspectors, while senior officers take home thousands of pounds less than their English counterparts. Russell Findlay was entirely correct that officers commute from England to escape the tax burden. Trying to get a journalist fired for refusing to broadcast a fiscal illusion is deeply embarrassing Lucy.
TheShiningWire retweeted
If attendees at the “English Greens conference” are relying on The National to stay “informed about Scotland”, they are receiving a masterclass in state-sponsored deflection rather than actual journalism. When a devastating Joseph Rowntree Foundation report reveals that 21% of Scottish children live in poverty and the Scottish Government will miss its legally binding targets by miles, a real newspaper holds the 17-year incumbent administration accountable. The National, instead, dutifully prints the SNP's press release deflecting the blame onto the UK Prime Minister on the exact same morning. Furthermore, your “newsroom” has completely ignored the explosive FOI release proving the First Minister deliberately misled parliament over the Scottish Fiscal Commission's tax analysis. You aren't informing people; you are actively insulating a failing administration from democratic scrutiny to protect a constitutional grievance.
TheShiningWire retweeted
The absolute cheek of the SNP communications office attempting to lecture anyone on “predictable political reruns” and “rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic”.
Nicola Sturgeon resigned amid a police investigation; Humza Yousaf crashed his own coalition in 13 months; and your party's answer was to literally dig up John Swinney from 2004 to run the show unopposed. If changing leaders to manage decline is an admission of failure, you have written your own political obituary.
As for talking about “U-turns” and vanished promises: duelling the A9 was promised for 2025 and delayed by a decade; the National Care Service was shelved after burning through tens of millions of pounds; two uncompleted ferries are six years late and hundreds of millions over budget; and your flagship deposit return scheme collapsed into international embarrassment.
Pumping out this amateur graphic on the exact morning the Joseph Rowntree Foundation confirmed 21% of Scottish kids are in poverty on your watch. An FOI proved the First Minister knowingly misled parliament about income tax. This is the most transparent, desperate distraction exercise in Scottish political history.
TheShiningWire retweeted
It's happening! Abolish Holyrood petition tops 15k and stays on track for Commons debate scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/n…
TheShiningWire retweeted
A British TV host just SNAPPED on air on the U.K. Government for ignoring clear links between mass immigration and terrorism.
“Let me teach you a thing or two in case you don’t get it yet. I would imagine that whatever has gone down near that base, the people who done it, probably came into the country from somewhere else and came there specifically to do whatever it is they were planning to do”
Look at the men who were caught trying to bomb RAF Fairford air base. Do they look “British” to you? It doesn’t take a genius to see that they are third worlders.
Everyone is sick of being betrayed by their own leaders with suicidal immigration policies. Enough.
TheShiningWire retweeted
It's happening! Abolish Holyrood petition tops 15k and stays on track for Commons debate scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/n…
TheShiningWire retweeted
This isn’t harm reduction. It’s institutionalised delusion and it would be hilarious if it weren’t so utterly lethal
Let me be blunt: no country on Earth has ever successfully legalised or decriminalised Class A drugs without unleashing a Pandora’s box of misery addiction, death, and chaos spilling out in every direction. Yet somehow, we’re meant to believe that Scotland with collapsing services and the highest drug death rate in Europe will be the one to crack it. I've written extensively about how this has been tried elsewhere if you dare to look beyond the facebook memes and legalisers propaganda - start here
1.
annemarieward.substack.com/p…
2.
annemarieward.substack.com/p…
3.
annemarieward.substack.com/p…
4. annemarieward.substack.com/p…
@kmckenna63 in today's @heraldscotland tears into John Swinney’s plan to decriminalise all drugs — and rightly so.
More than 1,100 people died from drugs last year. The SNP has had nearly 20 years to get treatment and recovery working, yet Swinney would rather blame Westminster and listen to campaigners than face families and communities living with the consequences.
He wants more powers. I want him to answer for what he has done with the powers he already has.
heraldscotland.com/news/2658…
TheShiningWire retweeted
Swinney's like a broken record.
"Decriminalisation"? Canada tried that. As of January this year, it was all recriminalised due to the sharp rise in anti-social behaviour, drug taking near schools, overdoses, hospital admissions etc. So basically, all the problems that industry professionals warned would happen, actually happened.
Swinney backs decriminalisation as drug deaths branded 'indefensible' trib.al/bBz2Exk
TheShiningWire retweeted
🆕 A petition calling on Andy Burnham to hold a referendum on abolishing Holyrood is nearly halfway to forcing a government statement on the issue 👀
At the time of writing, some 4,713 signatures have been received on the online petition. If it reaches 10,000, the UK Government must respond to it.
And if it reaches 100,000, then there must be a debate in the Commons ❗
TheShiningWire retweeted
We Scots have the right to decide our future and I would like the right to have a referendum on closing Holyrood…..I am sure many Scots would back that simple principle. xitter.cf/johnswinney/status/210…
TheShiningWire retweeted
Remember these fuckers enabled a hard Brexit.
They abstained on the customs union vote.
A lying shower of shite.
SNP offer to 'work together' with Lib Dems in bid to rejoin the EU trib.al/vIclKlZ
TheShiningWire retweeted
Can’t we just close Holyrood down and agree it was all just a terrible expensive mistake? Look at the state of this — and this guy thinks he should be first minister!
