😳 @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.

Choose Scotland? How about choosing to tell Scotland the truth? The SNP launching a campaign called Choose Scotland is almost beyond satire. Thirty years after Trainspotting gave us the famous “Choose Life” monologue, exposing the devastation of heroin addiction, Scotland has recorded another 1,133 drug deaths. And we're being promised a better future. But there's something the Scottish public really needs to understand. Westminster controls drug laws. Holyrood controls drug treatment. Full stop. The Scottish Government already has responsibility for funding and delivering addiction treatment, residential rehabilitation and recovery services. It doesn't need Westminster's permission to improve any of them. Yet whenever Scotland's appalling drug death figures are discussed, we're directed back to Westminster's Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, as though that legislation prevents people receiving treatment. It doesn't. England, Wales and Scotland operate under the same drug laws, yet Scotland's drug death rate is around three times that of England and Wales. Same laws. Dramatically different outcomes. So perhaps the problem isn't Westminster's legislation but Scotland's treatment response. And this is where I believe the public is being misled. The SNP repeatedly conflates drug laws with drug treatment. I don't believe that's accidental. In my view, it's political misdirection that also serves to soften public resistance to more permissive drug laws. The SNP wants to decriminalise possession for personal use. That isn't the same as legalising the sale and supply of drugs, but I believe the public deserves an honest explanation of whether ministers see decriminalisation as the first step towards wider legalisation. Instead, the argument about drug laws repeatedly diverts attention from the government's existing responsibility for treatment. Changing the law on drug possession won't open a single rehabilitation bed, create a recovery community or guarantee someone access to treatment. After nearly twenty years in government, ministers should be explaining what they've achieved with the substantial powers they already possess. Trainspotting exposed a generation trapped in addiction, hopelessness and a lack of meaningful choices. Thirty years later, we're still burying people who desperately needed a way out. The SNP wants Scotland to choose its future. What about the Scots who simply want the chance to choose recovery? You don't need independence to provide that choice. You need to take responsibility for the powers you already have.