Because this is a pure embarrassment from the notional main opposition leader. Even if it was all true – and we’d be very sceptical about that until we see the workings – £4.5 billion over 14 years would be £321 million a year.
That’s a substantial amount of money, but it’s also almost exactly 1% of the Scottish Government’s budget, and no government on Earth has ever had everything it attempted work out perfectly. Sustaining 99% efficiency on spending over nearly a decade and a half is actually pretty good going.
More to the point, it’s a staggeringly audacious attack line from a Westminster MP in a party whose government wasted £12 billion on ONE project in ONE year alone – the catastrophically failed COVID test-and-trace app.
(We’d still like someone to explain to us how in the world you can possibly spend £12 billion in a few months on a mobile phone app, even if it had worked.)
Just over a hundred years ago, the rights of women in the UK were still entirely decided by men. Women didn’t have the vote (a small minority would be given it in 1918, but most would have another decade to wait), there were no women in Parliament, and women basically had no say in anything that happened.
Record scratch and jump-cut to the present day.
That’s Kirsty Blackman, an SNP MP elected in 2015 who wouldn’t even have been allowed to stand for election a hundred years earlier, and who seems determined to take women’s rights back to that century.
It really is deeply dispiriting the see the level of utter burning contempt in which Nicola Sturgeon holds the independence movement, if this is the sort of ludicrously insulting garbage she thinks it’ll swallow.
The BBC’s coverage of the Scottish election campaign and what has been described as its “virtual blackout” of ALBA will be the subject of special Ofcom election Committee hearing on Friday 23rd April.
We imagine people may wish to read the Alba Party manifesto.
It can be downloaded by clicking the link above. Had we formed our own party it’s pretty much the manifesto we’d have written, and we especially endorse the gorgeous pooch on the front.
The First Minister released a short film this week.
While it has the character of a hostage video, with terrorists just off-camera pointing a gun at the unfortunate victim and forcing them to read out a pre-prepared text, sadly we doubt that was the case. We think this is really what she believes and intends.
We’ve been racking our brains for a few hours now, but we still haven’t been able to think of a single UK citizen of the last 100 years – indeed, probably the last 300 – who has terrified the British establishment more than Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond.
By any conceivable measure Salmond is the most successful Scottish politician of all time. He’s the only one to date to have won a (supposedly impossible) majority in the Scottish Parliament, the only one to have secured an independence referendum, and the man who took Scotland to the brink of regaining its democracy, where – despite the best efforts of his successor – it still just about remains.
He survived a uniformly hostile media for 20 years as SNP leader, then also survived a corrupt and criminal conspiracy within his own former party to have him imprisoned, walking out of court a free and innocent man despite a two-year smear campaign in the press and a police and government operation of unprecedented scale trying to convict him.
(A point that hasn’t been made enough in coverage of the entire fiasco is the amount of police resources which were devoted to the case. Ask the average woman who’s alleged a sexual assault below the level of rape – or indeed an actual rape – if SHE got a team of two dozen dedicated police officers interviewing over 400 people at a cost of millions of pounds to try to firm up HER claim.)
So you’d think that when he formed a brand-new political party, which got numerous elected representatives from the SNP to defect to it, and contested a notionally-crucial Scottish general election, it would sound like a work of absurdist dystopian fiction if one were to suggest the media would exclude it from even participating in televised election debates in a manner more befitting North Korea than a Western democracy.
So-called “puberty blockers” – the class of drugs that were used to “chemically castrate” computing pioneer Alan Turing for being homosexual (a crime in the UK in the 1950s), which is believed to have led to his suicide by cyanide poisoning at the age of 41 are extremely dangerous.
Scotland’s only gender clinic, the Sandyford, had to apologise just a few months ago for having concealed the very serious hazards posed by the drugs. But it has no plans to stop prescribing them to under-16s.
And the Scottish Government refuses to intervene in the matter.
Colin Alexander on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Holyrood is an English colonial-crumbs devolution parliament for money-grubbing lying deviant scumbags to rule over us. MSPs are oath takers…” Feb 26, 19:47
Geri on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Scotland will vote SNP because SNP have socialist policies. All that mitigation that’d be up shit creek without a paddle…” Feb 26, 19:17
sarah on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Vote for an Alliance to Liberate Scotland candidate on the list. Why vote Green – they are as incompetent and…” Feb 26, 18:42
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: “The “pro-woke half” are still colonised then, Alf? Fair enough. So the “anti-woke half” must be decolonised, and they’re the…” Feb 26, 18:13
Ross on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Readers …I’ve hatched a plan that is best of both worlds ?”Hate the SNP? Good. Vote for them on the…” Feb 26, 18:06
Alf Baird on The Tactics Of Suicide: “““SNP’s voters wouldn’t tolerate Reform support”” Perhaps the Rev is thinking about the pro-woke ‘half’ of the indy movement who…” Feb 26, 17:19
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Once England throws us out we can get into the EU and be run from Brussels. They’ll need our energy…” Feb 26, 17:05
Sven on When the law breaks the law: “The beavers about which I posted earlier were released at Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin in the Glen Affric National Reserve…” Feb 26, 17:04
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: “I’m shocked and appalled, Effijy. Where’s the genocide? It has to be stopped! “Greens will close the last of our…” Feb 26, 16:59
Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Tactics Of Suicide: “As long as you keep feeding the bear, it’ll keep coming back. [FACT CHECK: You do NOT have to vote,…” Feb 26, 16:55
Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Collectively, I am very sure.” Feb 26, 16:55
Itsagoinwrang on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Jeez… how many times does this site have to explain the dHondt voting system? SNP1&2 is the stupidest thing ever.…” Feb 26, 16:42
Effijy on The Tactics Of Suicide: “I feel headlined like this are designed for potential SNP supporters to stay at home as your party are going…” Feb 26, 16:33
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: “The crazies (Greens) are addressing the tactical voting block within the constituency in their own language (Urdu). That has to…” Feb 26, 16:33
agentx on When the law breaks the law: “” 26 February 2026, 06:11 GMT A family of beavers has been released into a Lincolnshire river to live in…” Feb 26, 16:30
Cynicus on The Tactics Of Suicide: ““SNP’s voters wouldn’t tolerate Reform support” ======= Are you sure, Rev.? Analysis of the BREXIT referendum showed that over 30%…” Feb 26, 16:15
Hatey McHateface on The Tactics Of Suicide: ““thrown away our last chance to democratically remove ourselves” How could this possibly be true when there’s nothing whatsoever stopping…” Feb 26, 16:02
ALANM on The Tactics Of Suicide: “This Gorton & Denton election looks interesting. My guess is that Labour voters will swing behind Reform in a last…” Feb 26, 15:57
TURABDIN on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Arithmetic apart the Nats have been handed leverage by the current abysmal state of British politics and its oily practitioners.…” Feb 26, 15:51
Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Of course it isn’t you thick twat. It’s literally what gets the Westminster parties almost all of their MSPs. FFS.” Feb 26, 15:38
sarah on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Vote on the list for a pro-independence candidate e.g. an Alliance to Liberate Scotland umbrella party candidate. That would win…” Feb 26, 15:36
David Ferguson on The Tactics Of Suicide: “How is a list vote for the SNP a vote “against” the Westminster parties when it will guarantee them dozens…” Feb 26, 15:32
lothianlad on The Tactics Of Suicide: “I still dont think I could ever vote SNP ahead, and I’m a die hard independence supporter. How could the…” Feb 26, 15:27
David Ferguson on The Tactics Of Suicide: “I still have faint hopes for Scottish independence in my lifetime. I plan to vote Reform 1 and 2 for…” Feb 26, 15:27
Del G on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Just come out and say it: you want everyone to vote Reform. PS a list vote for the SNP isn’t…” Feb 26, 15:19
Neil Anderson on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Exactly. There are, at present, literally no political parties in Scotland that actually deserve to be voted for. Do we…” Feb 26, 15:03
Insider on The Tactics Of Suicide: “If the SNP were to win a majority Swinney would be shitting bricks ! He’ll be quite happy with a…” Feb 26, 14:55
Campbell Clansman on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Can anyone give a reason to vote FOR the corrupt, inept SNP? For that matter, can anyone give a reason…” Feb 26, 14:36
Rev. Stuart Campbell on When the law breaks the law: ““A quick but serious word of advice, Rev. These people will stop at nothing to nail you. So make sure…” Feb 26, 14:13