The SNP : Rotten from the head down.

Colour me unsurprised to see the cold dead hand of Ian McCann still at work as SNP Compliance Officer. Once upon a time I thought this role was about maintaining standards within the SNP. I’ve now come to believe this post is instead designed to gather up all the dirt on individuals within the party, and find how best to cover it up while simultaneously hanging it over the heads of the miscreants to keep them on a short leash and in line. What we have here in one office is an Aegean Stables worth of internal party sleaze, thrown into one massive bucket and suspended by a single wire, over which the Sword of Damocles hangs. Unfortunately for the cabal who were in charge, that sword has fallen, and the contents are beginning to tip out.
The election of the continuity candidate Humza Yousaf may well delay the spillage, but to be honest the damage is done.
I’m also unsurprised to see Neil Gray mentioned as part of Mr Yousaf’s campaign team. May of the shenanigans I observed in Airdrie under Mr Gray and Alex Neil are now saw writ large on the national stage. I recall the 2015 Westminster selection process for the Airdrie & Shotts seat which saw a plethora of anonymous complaints to SNP HQ about Mr Grays opponents. Candidates such as Craig Murray failed vetting, while others were removed from the short list at the last second to leave a two-horse race in which one candidate was illegally endorsed by office bearers and complaints of GDPR breaches were sent to Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell, Ian McCann and Scott Martin – where they were quietly ignored.
There are a few new faces in the list of names calling on the SNP to sort it’s act out in North Lanarkshire in relation to the Jordan Linden scandal – but they are asking the wrong people for help. Asking Ian McCann for help here is like asking Fred West for tips on laying a new patio. The SNP membership need to finally grow a pair and demand action from their leadership to create the fair, open and honest party we were promised – and stop sitting back, eyes glazed after consuming too many carrots, pretending all is well because they are being told all is well. It’s almost fucked beyond repair, and if they don’t act soon then “Once in a generation” will be the best we can hope for.

Martin Hannan – Thank You

I read Martin Hannan’s letter describing his reasons for leaving the SNP and thought that I would register my thanks to him in the face of the bitter and childish criticism that he received from some quarters on social media which unfortunately bore out his comments that the SNP was more and more becoming a cult. His reasons for resigning struck a chord with me on a personal level. I joined the SNP in the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, and quickly saw practices and attitudes which were entirely unacceptable, and which as far as I could see went all the way from a rotten branch right up the tree to SNP headquarters. What I saw at a local level has been replicated and magnified many times at national level, and for those who tried to pretend that our branch was an exception, only now are they seeing that it was just a part of a bigger, cancerous whole. I left the SNP as quickly as I joined and I believe, like Martin now does, that you cannot stay in and fix this from the inside, for that means getting down in the sewer with your opponents and joining them, and who with any modicum of self-respect wants to do that?As an activist with more than one independence group, Martin has been a great friend to us in our efforts to grow and promote our activities. You only have to read his articles to see that he lives and breathes independence; his credentials as a supporter of independence cannot be called into question. That’s why people across the independence movement and especially within the SNP should be sitting up and taking notice. They cannot afford to lose good people like that – yet they are, hand over fist. Membership numbers have fallen drastically recently, and those who claimed credit for the 2014 rise seem unwilling to accept responsibility for the 2021 crash. Many of those members were once folk who would go out and chap doors for nothing more that the thought that they were helping achieve something better, and were let go with nothing but a thank you email from Peter Murrell, not the heartfelt, unscripted video which a select few received from Nicola Sturgeon. Some of the most dedicated supporters are becoming demoralised, and how do you motivate people to chap doors when the best they can offer is to tell you to keep your eyes on the prize and hold your nose while you vote for the SNP? In 2014 we were offered “hope over fear”. Now we are being offered Westminster corruption with a tartan paint job. As an independence supporter and activist, I cannot take that message onto the streets. I know that we are far beyond the point where the internal differences of the SNP can be resolved over a handshake. We can now only sit back and wait to see what we can salvage from the wreckage, before regrouping to fight again. In Scotland some things never change. 

No Mince Please, We’re Scottish

Letter to The National

On Sunday I went into my local shop to pick up the Sunday National and saw the front page proclaiming the launch of another independence task force by the SNP. I’m afraid your paper stayed on the shelf as I just couldn’t bring myself to even turn the page. In the movie ‘As Good as It Gets’ Jack Nicholson’s character utters the immortal line “Go sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here”. Well, I’m all stocked up on task-forces, false starts, relaunches, fund-raisers (where exactly IS that “ring-fenced” cash) and Indyref2 being just round this corner. I’ve had it up to here (imagine if you will a line somewhere waaaay above my head) with it being assumed that I am going to swallow the latest reheated mince which is produced just prior to an election, and boy haven’t we had a lot of those to go round since 2014. This might be good enough for the “Nicola has a secret plan” brigade, but really, there has to come a time when even the most loyal of Pavlovian supporters must cry “not again”!What happened to the analytical, forensic, critical thinking of the 2014 Yes movement? Collectively we could demolish any argument put forward by the No campaign through attention to detail, now I hear too many voices exhorting us not to look too closely, to overlook the fact that we keep being promised progress yet nothing concrete is ever delivered. I’d imagine that this new initiative will be more task farce than task force, and will disappear into the same cupboard as the mythical Rebuttal Unit.If I seem disappointed in the SNP’s performance over the last few years it is because I am. In some respects they have provided competent administration. They have presented a calm and measured response to the coronavirus pandemic which, while not entirely removed from the routes adopted in England, has been done with an air of control lacking from Westminster. But in so many other areas they have been an utter let down, most notably the ethics (or lack of them) in regards to transparency and accountability. The Yes movement of 2014 was carried on a wave of optimism, a chance of a better future, with a cleaner politics, where the Labour Party trademarks of cronyism and nepotism where a thing of the past. What now for the Yes movement in 2021 as we try to go forward reliant on an SNP riddled with those same failings? We cannot go on deluding ourselves, and the National cannot be complicit in deluding us. You can either be the voice of the Yes movement or the voice of the SNP, because at present those aren’t one and the same. Perhaps by being more critical of the SNP your paper can steer them back onto the straight and narrow, because as it stands it is becoming increasingly unpalatable for many in the Yes movement to stand with the main party of Scottish independence. 

A New Green Deal? More like No Deal With The Greens…

Ross Greer, talking about The National

In Wales a “Remain Alliance” of Plaid Cymru, the Lib-Dems and the Greens have agreed to stand aside in various constituencies to allow them to maximise the chances of electing anti-Brexit candidates. In Scotland there will be no such alliance and the Green Party and the SNP will be going head to head in the fight for the pro-independence many constituences, some of which are already sitting on a razor thin majority.

It was the Greens standing in Edinburgh which split the pro-independence vote there and allowed Ruth Davidson to sneak up from list MSP to constituency MSP, a propaganda win that the Tories celebrated heartily. The Scottish Greens are unlikely to win any seats in this election so their taking part must be viewed as a vanity project in the main, and it is a vanity which looks as though it will cost them in the long term. Many of the smaller parties stand aside in the Westminster elections and there’s no shame in doing so. In fact for the Greens there would be a positive advantage to standing aside, if they have an eye on future Holyrood and council elections, as many SNP voters would possibly be more likely to give them their second vote. However, those same voters will be watching the seats the Greens stand in and should the SNP lose those seats by a small margin then they are likely to punish the Greens accordingly in future elections. Those voters have already watched as the Greens helped the British Nationalists remove the OBFA legislation and they’ve listened as MSP Ross Greer has described them as “zoomers”; watching them help deliver Westminster seats into the hands of the unionists would probably be the last straw and would in all likelihood see their future Holyrood hopes dashed.

The Green Party is the soft underbelly of the Independence movement in Scotland, and would probably be the easiest turned away from independence. As a smaller party if a committed number of people join who see green issues as more of a priority than independence or if a significant number of pro British Nationalist people joining up and steer the party away from independence to a neutral or pro-UK position then you will quickly find that their support disappears. Perhaps that has already occurred at the branch level and just hasn’t had time to filter through to the leadership yet.
With the Greens determined on standing they have instead left it up to the electorate to decide, and now it will be up to pro independence voters to use their own good judgement to decide whether to vote along party lines or to vote tactically in the forthcoming election and I fear that the Greens will be left regretting their decision to stand in an contest they could easily have sat out.

Syrian Air Strikes: Theresa May Has Overstepped Her Authority and Must Resign

Trying to have some reasoned debate on the subject of the alleged Syrian chemical attacks seems to me akin to trying to quietly asking for calm in a room full of people shouting ‘fire’ at the top of their voices. In the rush for the door, no one is asking for detail, and those that do are being shouted down anyway.

I am a former instructor in Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) defence, trained only a few miles from Porton Down. Every serviceman and woman is trained in NBC defence as part of their basic training. As such they are taught to recognise the symptoms of nerve agent poisoning, which include difficulty in breathing, pinpointing of the pupil and muscle spasms. Footage shown of an alleged Sarin attack on Douma does not show these symptoms, and instead appears to show the victims of the attack choking, coughing, with redness around the eyes; this is more in common with the use of a riot control agent such as tear gas, or with a choking agent such as chlorine. It should be pretty apparent to any sevice person engaged in Britains latest military misadventure that if they are being told they are being sent in response to Sarin attacks, it is highly likely they are being led up the garden path.

It is however highly likely that Chlorine may have been the cause of any such symptoms, and this creates a dilemma in that there are many reasons why chlorine may be present. Chlorine has a number of legitimite uses, water purification being the main one. Stockpiles of chlorine which are stored in an environment where they can be damaged by shell or missile fire can be accidentally released, and its presence is not in itself proof of one side or the others use of it as a chemical agent.

Since Tony Blair took us into the highly controversial Iraq War it has been an accepted convention that Prime Ministers make their case to engage in military action to parliament before taking any action. Theresa May has now blown that convention out of the water. This was mainly due to the Tony Blairs case for war being made on the back of flimsy or indeed utterly wrong “intelligence”. In this case there was no immediate threat to the UK. Had there been, Theresa May could have been said to have acted correctly when using the “royal perogative” to order an attack. But that was not the case, and this attack, coordinated with the French and the Americans could and should have waited until the case for air strikes had been made and won in parliament. Instead, clearly fearing she might not win, Theresa May has clearly overstepped her authority and launched an attack on the timings laid down by the United States, doing so specifically to bypass parliament.

It may well be that these were genuine chemical attacks and it may well be that the Assad government is responsible, but the British response has been premature. On occasions when the United Nations has deemed that Syria has been responsible for chemical attacks, Britain has done nothing. Now, with no such investigations Theresa May has acted, and cut the UK parliament out of the loop in the process. I feel that in part her actions are to send a message to the Russians, who she also holds responsible for the Salisbury incident. Indeed Ruth Davidson, no doubt dressed up in her Honorary Colonels uniform while excitedly watching news reports of British military action tweeted that “chemical weapons cannot be used with impunity”. So why no action against Russia? Why instead are we bombing a country who does not have the ability to strike back directly? It seems to me that what the Theresa May has demonstrated is that some countries can act with impunity. By cutting out the UK parliament, being going beyond her authority, our weak and wobbly Prime Minister has demonstrated, if it wasn’t apparent already, that she is not fit to hold the office, and must now resign.

Rail Fare Rises

Letter published in The National, 07/01/18

Last Wednesday I was handed a leaflet by a Labour Party activist at Edinburgh Waverly Station entitled “the Great SNP Train Robbery: An SNP Party Production starring Humza Yousaf- Nicola Sturgeon”. The leaflet stated that:

1. Rail fares rise again in 2018
2. Since 2012 rail fares up by 12%
3. Fares rising faster than wages
4. The SNP are failing to stand up for millions of passengers

While number 1 is undoubtedly true, there’s no facts to back up point 2 or 3. Furthermore it’s my understanding that although rail franchising is devolved in Scotland, ticket pricing is not, and rises in fares are set by the UK government, not Holyrood.

The leaflet being handed out by the Labour Party was clearly printed in advance to tie in with the implementation of the annual fare changes and tied in with similar sentiment printed in columns by Labour members such as Tom Harris. Richard Leonard has been in the past accused of confusing the responsibilities of the two parliaments, and this is another example of the grey man of Scottish politics operating in the grey areas between London and Edinburgh.

Their propaganda fails to stand up to scrutiny, indeed when I pressed the Labour Party activist who gave me the leaflet on the accuracy of the leaflet he tried to back it by reaching for proof, and produced from his bag a crushed copy of the free Metro newspaper!

Isn’t it time that the Scottish Government raised awareness of who exactly is responsible for what on our rail network? Perhaps if they did Labou could finally be shunted off into a sidings somewhere.

The Father Dougal McGuire School of Politics

In the Westminster elections on June 8th the SNP lost 21 seats. That doesn’t sound like much if you say it quickly, and it could have been worse. Much worse. Stephen Gethins in Fife was elected with a majority of just TWO. Neil Gray in Airdrie went from a 9596 majority to a mere 195. Overall the SNP lost 476,867 votes. almost half a million people who previously voted SNP in 2015 either switched to other parties or failed to turn out. Examination of the figures shows that Labour gained almost 10,000 votes on their 2015 showing, yet the Tories gained a whopping 323,852 votes more than their last time out. 

Last week RISE co-founder Cat Boyd revealed that she had voted for Labour in the 2017 Westminster elections to show her support for Jeremy Corbyn. The revelation that a well kent face of the Indy movement had gone back on her word and voted Labour (she previously stated she would “never” vote Labour again) was siezed upon by many, with some claiming it showed that Labour were winning back voters from the SNP. In all likelihood they were in a roundabout way. Many people wanted to show solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn in England and voted for “him”. In reality they were voting to endorse an anti independence manifesto and in some cases (like Ian Murray) anti-Corbyn candidates. Someone as well versed in politics as Cat Boyd, who has a weekly column in The National should have known this. Voting for a party is an endorsement of their manifesto. If you want to change that manifesto then you join the party and change it.

Putting that detail aside though, Cat, like many others looked at Labours UK manifesto and swung on behind, no doubt hoping to sweep the Tories out in the process. Even though they supported independence and as Cat herself said, she still does, they voted for a party which was offering something they felt was immediately achievable, even though it contradicted their long term goal. Why? That is simple; their long term goal wasn’t on offer. Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP were intent on playing down talk of a second referendum to such an extent that not only did some of their core vote slip away to Labour, but many, many more just didn’t turn out at all. They weren’t fired up. They weren’t inspired. The message they received was clear: This election isn’t about independence. Their response? We’ll come back when it is.

Overall Labour gained only 9860 more votes than 2017. That’s a fraction more than the total votes lost by Neil Gray alone! So while the SNP were failing to motivate their supporters they were also losing votes to Labour. Labour’s problem was of course that they were losing voters in even bigger numbers to the Tories. The Tories had set themselves out as defenders of the union and employed the same tactic they had employed in the council elections: treat every election as a mini-referendum, motivate the voters and get them out. Which they did, pulling in an extra 323,852 votes on 2015, in an election where the turnout was down overall by over a quarter of a million votes.

That was never more evident than in the SNP’s vote, and if there’s a lesson they need to learn it’s that they too have to treat every election as a referendum, because every defeat will be used to hammer away at not only the SNP but at the cause of independence. Because although supporting independence doesn’t mean you automatically support the SNP, we need to recognise that every defeat for the SNP, any deficiency in their policy as a party is, by unionist logic, reason against independence. If the SNP are poor on education then an independent Scotland by default would also be poor. Repeat ad nauseum.

In the last 12 months Cat Boyd has revealed that despite her strong opinions on the subject she didn’t vote in the EU referendum and then followed this with her revealing she voted Labour has left many to ask why she is given a political column at all and if there’s anything they can learn (or indeed want to learn) from her, and there is. It’s this: If you give people something to vote for or against, and make your case, then they will turn out and vote. If you don’t motivate them, then forget about it. Because they won’t show.

Kevin McKenna’s Attack on the Territorial Army (and Ruth Davidson)

They always say you should write about what you know. What a pity Kevin McKenna failed to heed this basic guideline when writing his attack on Ruth Davidson for taking up the post of Honorary Colonel of 32 Sigs regiment, as clearly he knows little or nothing about the Territorial Army and fell back on the much worn stereotypes of it being a Dad’s Army type organisation, wandering aimlessly around the Campsies playing dress up. As someone who spent a total of 17 years in the TA let me try and put Kevin straight on the “part-time professionals”. When the regular soldiers were going off duty on a Friday night many TA soldiers were finishing shifts at their normal Monday to Friday jobs, they would then spend a weekend training, often on exercise with little or no sleep in all conditions, before returning to work on Monday. The training we would carry out was virtually the same as that carried out by regular soldiers, so much so that on the occasions where we were trained or deployed alongside regular soldiers you would be hard pushed to tell the difference. I attended many training courses where I and other TA soldiers not only equalled but outperformed our regular counterparts, and the TA soldiers I served with included some of the finest soldiers I know, regular or otherwise. TA soldiers have been deployed alongside their regular colleagues more and more in recent years, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. The idea that they are somehow all in the Private Pike mould couldn’t be further from the truth, and perhaps Kevin McKenna should take the time to visit a TA deployment and maybe he’d learn something.

As for the real subject of his article, I as an ex-serviceman was left slack jawed at the appointment of Ruth Davidson as Honorary Colonel to her former regiment, as it showed a complete lack of tact from the MOD for offering the role and from her in accepting it. Once upon a time for an ex-serviceman to become an Honorary Colonel was a sign of your contribution to your regiment, a reward for perhaps long and distinguished service; as far as I am aware Ruth Davidson only spent some two years as an officer cadet before leaving through injury, and was never actually commissioned. Nowadays the role of Honorary Colonel is dished out to all and sundry and is perhaps on par with those gaudily attired Regimental Goats that are wheeled out for ceremonial occasions.

These are however the least of my concerns. Davidson has spent the last few years rallying the forces of unionism to rebuild the Conservative Party. She’s wrapped herself in the union flag and banged on about “no divisive second referendum” above all else. She has successfully managed to convince hard core British Nationalists that her party will protect the union and by exploiting Jeremy Corbyn’s apparent support for the IRA has also seen the Orange Order come back to the fold en-masse, with many abandoning Labour and any pretence of concerns over policies as they do so.

I was told recently of a soldier who decided to run in the council elections, who was told that if he was successful he would have to leave the military. The military is supposed to be impartial, to represent all of us equally, but this appointment blurs the lines of impartiality, and instead subliminally invites us to draw a line between supporting the union, the military and the Orange Order/ the far right and the Conservatives.   Army regulations clearly forbid the wearing of uniform where it may infer some sort of support by the MOD. The fact that Ruth Davidson is not actually a serving soldier means the rules don’t actually apply in this case, however the spirit of the rules should be adhered to as they exist for good reason and their minutiae is not known to the average person. Most people will simply see the Tory leader being endorsed by the Army, nothing less.

Someone, somewhere has played up to Ruth Davidsons vanity, allowing her to extend her repertoire from prancing around on a tank to actually playing dress up as Colonel Gadaftie. If Davidson had any sense she’d have politely refused the offer until she had left politics, instead she has grabbed it and will milk it for all its worth, and as we see from Kevin’s article, will taint the armed forces reputation in the process.

Letter to The National: When You Are In A Hole, Why Not Ask A Friend To Grab A Shovel…

Letter to The National (27/02/17)

Dear Sir,

As someone who had tweeted my support to Sadiq Khan when he was enduring racist attitudes in his bid to become Mayor of London, I was utterly sickened by his ignorant attack on supporters of Scottish independence, branding them as no better than racists. He can’t claim to have been misquoted as his office no doubt supplied the text of his speech to the Daily Record in advance. His attempt to play down the row was utterly sickening too, where he stated that he was a proud Brit and a proud Londoner. This was reinforced by the increasingly desperate Kezia Dugdale who tried to play down his xenophobic comments by trying to compare racist hatred with having a different view on political policies. Here’s news for you Kezia: politics is divisive by its very nature. It requires you to pick a side. If you think that division is wrong, and that once defeated you should meekly accept that your opponent was right all along, then what on earth are you still doing in your job? You lost the last election and by your own ill thought out logic should have walked away, or joined the SNP because they won. Instead you are pocketing the cash while twisting this way and that, taking doublethink to previously unheard of levels.

Kezia is one of the worst type of Scot. She is the type who will not only talk Scotland down whenever she can, but will defend anyone outwith Scotland who does likewise, no matter how vile their comments. If she truly stood up for Scotland she would never have allowed Sadiq Khan to be fed such a bile laden script to read, but as it was no doubt created with her approval all it reveals is how much of a British nationalist she really is, and that’s where the doublethink kicks in. Because being a proud Brit is good and that’s where it ends. She’ll accept borders, if they are British borders, she’ll accept division, if it’s British division, and she’ll accept pride in one’s country, so long as that country is Britain. The one thing that she won’t accept is that Scots can take pride in their country, want it do well and have the balls to stand up, be counted and work to make that happen. Just because she and her cronies lack the vision and the self-belief to see that an independent Scotland could thrive doesn’t mean we should succumb to her petty, spirit sapping ideal of a neutered Scotland.

Yours Sincerely,

James Cassidy

Letter to The National: Labour Party Doublethink

Letter to The National (23/02/17)

Dear National,

Last weekend The Labour party (Scotland Branch) took to the streets of Airdrie to campaign against the recent rises in council tax which were imposed by the Scottish Government. Labour have been demanding an end to the council tax freeze since the SNP introduced it, except in the immediate run up to elections when they have flip-flopped and supported it just in case it cost them the election. In 2008 they helped to scupper the SNP minority governments Local Income Tax plan; now almost ten years later they are making the SNP’s failure to scrap the council tax a major thrust of their attack for the 2017 council elections, despite being instrumental in ensuring that didn’t happen.

The 2008 defeat for the SNP was a solid one and as we have come to expect, the unionist parties were strongly backed by the press and other media, meaning that any attempt to reintroduce a Local Income Tax would receive a hostile reception. The SNP in an attempt either at testing the waters for change or simply trying to be seen to do something formed the cross-party (sans Conservatives, who declined to contribute) Commission on Local Tax Reform in 2015, which was tasked to explore alternatives to the council tax. Part of their recommendations were to end the present system of council tax and to explore introducing an income based element alongside a property based element, however there were no hard and fast recommendations, and the report acknowledged that each party was liable to have a different answer to the problem. In the meantime, it recommended a transitional approach and acknowledged that a long term solution would not be done overnight. The recent end to the council tax freeze has possibly seen the first move towards that, with the higher rated bands (E-H) seeing rises of between £2 and £10 a week. That’s between 28p and £1.42 a day. Or if you are Labour that can be summarised as a 22% hike which will cost you £517 a year. Because what they are concentrating on is that top figure. Some council tax payers WILL pay an extra 22%, but I’m concerned that this is the only figure they’ll be using. Telling people on the doorstep that their council tax will rise by 28p a day doesn’t make people’s blood boil. Telling them that the Scottish Government is hiking their “council tax” by 22% (or £517) possibly will, even more so when you aren’t ascertaining if they are affected or not. According to Scottish Government statistics from 2011, 1% of householders in Scotland are in Band H homes which are valued (at 1991 rates) at over £212,001. For North Lanarkshire that was 120 homes, and unless there has been any great change, a spate of lottery wins for example, that figure isn’t going to be radically different, perhaps (and I’m being generous here) there are around 200 homes valued at over £212,001. That’s the reality. 1% of what may be broadly viewed as the wealthiest households will see a rise of £10 a week. Yet Labour are saying this figure so often that one might be mistaken for thinking that everyone is being hit with a 22% rise.

From the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 until 2007, Labour ran the Scottish Parliament. At the same time Labour were in charge at Westminster and controlled the majority of Scotland’s local authorities. In that time council tax rose year on year. In 2007 the average Band D council tax payer, on average income in a middle of the table house was paying 30% more council tax than they had in 1999, while some of the higher bands apparently saw as much as a 60% hike! We aren’t talking 120 homes here, we are talking about every council tax payer across the board, paying more every year to keep Labour local authorities in the manner to which they had become accustomed to. Had Labour remained in power that pattern of continual tax rises would have no doubt continued, hitting everyone, across the board, rich and poor alike. I’d say that a 22% rise after 10 years to 1% of council tax payers is pretty good going in comparison, and I wonder how Labour can complain about such a rise to the top rate, considering they spent years stating that the freeze only benefited the richest in society!

The term Doublethink was coined by George Orwell in his novel 1984, and it refers to the ability to hold and espouse two contradictory views at the same time. Scottish Labour are demanding that the general rate of income tax be raised for everyone in Scotland by 1p, while simultaneously complaining that the four highest council tax bands will see a rise of between 7.5% and 22%. So someone on a salary of about £30,000 a year would pay around than £4 a week (£208 a year) extra under its plan, and someone on the same wage as the First Minister would pay an extra £28 a week (£1,447 a year). So Labour are comfortable taking an extra £208 off someone earning about £30,000 a year, but are outraged if that same person has to pay an extra £2 on council tax? Or that someone earning £140,000 a year is paying an extra £10 a week council tax yet fail to mention that they would pay an extra £28 in income tax if Labour were in government? I wonder if their outrage is more at the fact that they see people not being squeezed for every last drop of cash they can get or if their outrage is because they simply aren’t in power and can’t effect change to the extent they would like.

Since losing power in Scotland, then in the UK, Labour have become the most petty of oppositions. While in Westminster they will happily support the Tories on many issues, or abstain when not wanting to appear to be openly supportive, they have no such trouble in Scotland. If the SNP propose it, we’ll oppose it is their mantra. Opposition for opposition’s sake is as bad as unrestrained majority government, and their opposition in 2008 to council tax reform killed off what was a real chance to radically change the system. Their hubris is a major stumbling block to reform, and if they could overcome that then it’s possible that we could see a more progressive and radical form of taxation introduced in Scotland. Unfortunately there appears to be no sign of that day coming any time soon, and it looks as though decoding Labour doublethink will be a necessity for some time to come.

Yours Sincerely,

James Cassidy