An IPSOS MORI Poll in today's Times has the SNP surging ahead of Labour.
Astute commentators always predicted the Holyrood race would be closer than other recent polls predicted. However nobody could have thought it would happen so early in the campaign.
After the blip of the UK General Election, voters are beginning to link the issues they care about with what the parties offer. Earlier polls such this one for BBC Scotland last October showed public priorities - eg ring-fencing health, freezing council tax, and freezing wages in the public sector reflected SNP policy. Now Salmond's government is benefitting from that as minds concentrate on the choices on offer.
Reflecting on this, John Curtice, Politics Professor at Strathclyde University told The Scotsman: "It may be that now the Holyrood election is coming into view, people are looking at what the parties are offering, rather than being mesmerised by what is happening south of the Border."
That can only intensify as May draws closer. The focus in the budget on apprenticeships for young people has stolen Labour's thunder and that party's decision to vote against its own key demand has lead normally favourable observers to queston its credibility. Cracks are appearing. It is becoming apparent that SNP infrastructure spending - fast tracked to boost recovery - has slowed the effects of the recesson in Scotland. If that is what can be achieved with good management, what might we gain from greater economic power?
That's before we even talk about the quality of potential First Ministers and front bench teams. Certainly it livens up the election, even if you are non-aligned - see Alex Massie's post in The Spectator.
Sad to hear of the death of Iain Noble, the merchant banker who spent much of his life and personal fortune promoting Gaelic culture and fostering enterprise in the Western highlands. He funded the Gaelic College on Skye, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, as well as many other local businesses that - backed through his boutique banking group. His was the good face of capitalism and certainly a man who gave banking a good name.
Ben Thomson, who knew Sir Iain and recently retired as the head of The Noble group said of him:
"He was always looking to see how he could help develop a sector or develop something new based in Scotland.
"He was an inspiration to many about how you could develop Scottish companies. He was a great ideas man; he had lots of them, and threw himself into them all enthusiastically. Some of them were 50 years ahead of their time and still haven't come to see the light of day.
"He believed entirely in Scotland empowering itself ... that Scotland (would] thrive under its own steam."
The Scottish parliament debate on the Tartan Tax was dispiriting to watch. Far from seeking clarification in the interests of the people they serve, the opposition parties all indulged in point scoring about an issue they didn't actually care about. Far from "allowing the Scottish tax powers to lapse", it seems that the SNP in 2007 inherited a system which was inoperable, at least according to what HMRC told them at the time. I think the word used was "mothballed". But rather than address this rather important new fact, the opposition ploughed on with pre-prepared spontaneous hysteria.
It is pretty obvious from John Swinney's statement that there was a long and protracted row between his officials and those at HMRC over the latter's demands that the Scottish government should pay for a portion of the upgrade of the tax authority's IT systems. The convention normally is that when a Whitehall department makes a change that affects devolved administrations, it is the Whitehall department who pays for it. There are important issues here. To concede to HMRC demands would have set a dangerous precedent. For example can HMRC think-of-a-number any time they like in relation to Scotland? What will they charge to implement Calman, which is based on income tax collected in Scotland (not, of course the important stuff like corporation tax, whisky and oil revenue). So the London Treasury continues to rob us blind and then charge us whatever they like. If Scotland moved to full economic powers with taxes still collected by HMRC, would they hold us over a barrel again? The Revenue is clunky, confused and tangled - and will fight to control every twisted tentacle of its operation.
Perhaps the opposition parties believe you do business by gifting your opponent a gun to hold to your head. After all, that's how Labour and Liberal Democrat gave us a parliament building which over-ran its original cost by several hundred million. The contract was open ended. Same goes for the Edinburgh trams, another Labour/ Lib Dem pet project. Nor did Labour, Liberal Democrat and Tory have any problem handing public contracts to PFI consortiums who will charge us from here to eternity for schools and hospitals. Good Housekeeping is not their strong point.
The other completely duplicitous aspect of opposition argument today was the accusation that Swinney had somehow conspired to strip the parliament of its miniscule tax power and then stage a cover-up. What on earth would the nationalists have to gain from this? What could their motive possibly be? As the opposition well know there was no ulterior motive. Going public would have been a winner for the SNP politically. But Swinney is not in the business of picking fights and breaching confidential negotiations for political gain. Even when the row culminated in a £7m demand by London this year, Swinney felt it would have been discourteous to speak out on the disagreement, clearly hoping it could be resolved. This says a lot about the man and how he operates. He earned the nickname Honest John for a reason. It's something his opponents today could learn from. Calling him a liar is totally unacceptable and will be seen as such. Swinney's budget statement contained a formal phrase about the SVR. So did the budget statements of Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling and the Comprehensive Spending Review of George Osborne. All mentioned the tartan tax as an option. If Swinney was "lying" so were they, as they too knew about the HMRC position. They were all telling the truth because the tax power still exists, it has not lapsed. London is refusing us the machinery to exercise that power (if we wanted, which we don't).
The Scottish Secretary Michael Moore proved himself a far less honourable man than Swinney when he delibrately triggered this row with his "open letter". Ostensibly, his job is to represent Scotland in Westminster - something he has done singularly badly as he is about to present a Scotland Bill that will cut our budget by another £900m a year. But this pretendy part of the job is a figleaf anyway. Moore's raison d'etre is to undermine the Scottish government at every turn, no matter the level of duplicity involved. Moore is trying to distract attention from the cost and flaws of Calman. On several occasions Tavish Scott has tried to spin tartan tax row into an attack on fiscal autonomy eg "the SNP, which bangs on about giving more powers to this parliament, give away the one it already has etc etc..." Given that fiscal autonomy is about taking full control of the economic levers in a way that benefits the people of Scotland, there is no comparison. The tartan tax is so small, that some estimate the cost of implementing it would cancel out any money it raised.
This week the Liberal Democrats had an even more pressing embarrassment than Calman to cope with - the student demonstrations against tuition fees in England. Tavish Scott fulminated away about SVR as students in London were prevented by massed police lines from demonstrating outside the Liberal Democrat head quarters. (Didn't hear much LibDem talk of civil liberties then, eh?)
This was one occasion to be pleased that the BBC national news led with an England-only issue. Nick Clegg's hypocrisy was the big UK story of the day. They even demonstrated on his home turf of Sheffield where at the General Election, students had queued outside polling stations for hours to back him. Then came Reporting Scotland whose viewers must have wondered what on earth was going on in their own parliament. All this sound and fury about nothing more significant than an obsolete, tax...which Labour and The Tories never wanted the Scots to have in the first place.
Any viewer who persevered may have been more struck by Swinney's edited highlight - he didn't want to hand £7m of Scotland's money to HMRC, an organisation whose incompetence had lead to tens of thousands of people paying the wrong amounts of tax. Sounds reasonable to me...and millions of others I imagine.
For a detailed narrative on how the tartan tax story has been distorted day-to-day please go to Moridura
Alan Trench at Devolution Matters has just filed an excellent explanation about how The Treasury deals with devolved governments inadequately. Trench is an academic and politically non aligned. He is incredibly knowledgable about the detail of how government works and this piece is invaluable.
Some of the most exciting things happening in Scotland are happening online. That's what I took from the Political Innovation Camp today at The School of Infomatics in Edinburgh. I already knew one of the main speakers, Pat Kane rather well. It was great to put faces to some bloggers I hadn't met in person, such as James MacKenzie of Better Nation, Peter Curran of Moridura, David Farrer from Freedom in Whisky and of course the redoubtable Caron of Carons Musings. Also caught up with an old colleague from the Herald, David Milne, who is now heading STV's hyperlocal service. It was heartening to meet the young women behind mypolice.org, a tool that allows the public to give their feedback to the force in their own area.
I met some new people who impressed me greatly, such as Peter Geoghegan, an Irish writer living in Scotland who edits Political Insight and another Irishman, Mick Fealty of Slugger O'Toole, the Northern Irish politics, community and culture blog who organised the event along with Paul Evans. Slugger O'Toole is a blog that manages to engages all sides of the debate in Northern Ireland, which is quite an achievement - and something we have not managed to replicate in Scotland to date. Much of the discussion was about this - whether we could have a Scottish hashtag that would link disparate online content - like a permanent scotlandspeaks, the twitter campaign that tried to get Scotland's voice heard during the last general election. At the PI Camp, there was a lot of enthusiasm for establishing so-called "aggregated sites" . It seems to me that this desire to create online communities is already happening naturally. Like minded bloggers are grouping together on aggregated sites such Bella Caledonia and Better Nation. Two sites, Scottish Review and newsnetscotland take this further and strive to create online sites that hope to compete with the mainstream. Kenneth Roy at Scottish Review has broken stories. Or these sites highlight news overlooked elsewhere - such as newsnet's campaign on the anti Scottish episode of Any Questions. A couple of weeks later I was invited on the Newsweek on Radio Scotland to discuss the rise of anti-Scottish outbursts.
As I pointed out in the PI Camp plenary session, many bloggers in Scotland have gone online in frustration at the mainstream media failure to engage positively with the independence debate. At least a third of Scots favour full independence and more than half, according to polls, think real economic power for the Holyrood will help Scotland out of recession. Despite this, and the Campaign for Fiscal Responsibility attracting many high profile names, our public discourse continues to frame the debate in UK terms, seldom challenging the block grant system or exploring alternatives.
Bloggers challenge this manufactured consensus. But as a mainstream journalist who now blogs as well, I worry that online activists only reach others with similar views. Established broadcast and print media offer entertainment, fashion, sport, business, breaking news that attracts a wide spectrum of people including, crucially, voters who have yet to make up their minds. And while many of my independista facebook friends would claim that the MSM is completely without merit, it is material generated by these newspapers and broadcasters that they share and comment on. Often this is original material that you need professional journalists to create. The Scotsman, for example, has devoted a lot of resource to exposing the tram debacle in Edinburgh. Newsnight Scotland was the first outlet to think of interviewing Professor Joe Stiglitz and asking specifically about oil in a Scottish context. And Newsweek, the Radio Scotland Saturday morning show, ran a long interview with Professor Andy Hughes Hallett explaining how Scotland was subsiding England. The reason we know about Stephen Purcell et al, and the scandal about Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, is because my previous paper, The Sunday Times Scotland, put a lot of resources into exposing Labour clientism in greater Glasgow.
Now, of course, the Sunday Times Scotland has been effectively closed down. Other newspapers struggle to keep afloat. Circulations continue to shrink with alarming speed. Investigative journalism, in particular, requires resources. Scotland does not have an philanthropic organisation such as the American propublica which funds public interest reporting. When activists complain about newspapers simply "reprinting political press releases", as can happen, it is often a matter of resources as much as prejudice. A hard pressed reporter with an FOI handed to him on a plate, especially if it's "exclusive" and makes for a strong headline, will likely take it to his or her newsdesk. Real, self generated stories take much longer. They require you to speak to lots of people in the first place, really get to know the subject and spend hours on research. They might also require you to ditch the story given to you by a political contact when you realise that the facts just don't stack up...
Bloggers unhappy with the perceived bias of the mainstream media shouldn't crow too loudly about the troubles of print though. We desperately need more quality public discourse in this country. Can we afford to lose the space we do have? Where are the online spaces that attract Scots who are not necessarily political junkies? Some of the self described young geeks I spoke to at the PI camp yesterday confessed they got a lot of their news from the BBC website and The Guardian - but they also complained that they couldn't get coverage for their own digital projects in the shrinking Scottish media...a vicious circle. If we get more news from UK wide sources, do we risk becoming Scotlandshire, North UKania...?
I don't think this will happen, phew! I left the PI Camp today feeling pretty optimistic about the future of blogging and political social media in Scotland. Ideally the rise of aggregated sites would be backed by investment to allow them to break more original stories and attract readers from outwith the politically consumed classes - Huffington Post is a good model. It set out to create an online liberal voice for the US but used entertainment to help drive traffic. Even without this largesse, I predict the blogosphere in Scotland will increase its influence, a view shared by the majority of those at yesterday's event. The thing about all media, old and new, is that it is interdependent. Currently, the agenda of newspapers feeds into radio and television. If the circulation of newspapers continues to decline, bloggers and online aggregated sites will become more powerful influencers. The evidence? A man from the BBC checking out the PI Camp, keen to meet as many bloggers as possible. I already get invited onto the radio occasionally as a result of Go Lassie Go. Social media helps too. The simple act of sharing a story creates a buzz that cannot be ignored. Content producers will take note.
At the PI Camp, Peter Geoghegan was very informative on how independent online commentary already shapes the agenda in Ireland, where economists have taken to the blogosphere to explain the financial crisis. In Scotland, we have a good recent example of blogpower re the Dimbleby debacle. The Question Time from Glasgow which excluded Scottish discussions caused immediate anger that was articulated first through the blogosphere by myself, Gerry Hassan, Scot Goes Pop and Alex Massie among others. I predict that such incidents will become more common. The traditional media are beginning to understand the power of the blogosphere, and cannot ignore what it is telling them.The rise of aggregated sites will accelerate this. If such sites could attract enough investment to fund some original journalism...well who knows where it might go...
It's fast becoming a social media cliche, but the Random List still pulls in the page-hitters. My last one on the Papal Visit was well read, and the biog bullet points proved strangely popular. In that spirit I give you Day Two of the SNP Conference in Perth. It's a particularly attractive blogging option because (a) there's a lot of material to get through and this is a fun way to summarise the best bits, and (b) The time is now 2am.
Viral video. The new SNP viral video features a young rock band - Jakil - playing a version of the old Canned Heat number Let's Work Together. It shows Scots from all walks of life doing just that. Someone suggested I might wish to share it on my social media networks "if you like it". I do, and so here it is. I'm particularly looking forward to the classic soul version featuring my hero Al Green....
Smouldering John Swinney no, really.... I don't want to damage his reputation for frugal moderaton, but John Swinney's speech was - whisper it - somewhat passionate. At the end he suggested that Scotland could no longer afford to remain in the UK Union. We have been in surplus for four years while UK was in deficit. You can read the whole speech here.http://www.snp.org/node/17386
I always thought the Fair Maid of Perth was invented by Sir Walter Scott to add romantic interest to an extremely complicated plot line in his novel. But I see that her house is being restored right opposite the multi-storey car park I am using. Historical dramatisation is all the rage again so who cares if Sir Walter took a few liberties with the fair maid? Cultural tourists don't..
While waiting for coffee I meet the leading soprano Alicia Hayes, who has just started working for Bruce Crawford MSP, the parliamentary business manager. Alicia has sung with opera companies all over the world, often playing the romantic lead. She's staying closer to home on account of her baby daughter these days, we will surely see her on the political stage before too long.
I meet Liberal Democrat Andy Myles, a facebook friend who's fair scunnered with some of the compromises made by his party leaders in coalition at Westminster. He's here in his professional capacity as a lobbyist for Scottish Environment Link which represents dozens of individual groups. I am particularly interested in the human ecology of the countryside - eg preserving its people as well as flora and fauna. Turns out he is very keen on repopulating the highlands and breaking up sporting estates. He offers examples of mixed use tenure. Environmentalists encourage cattle being wintered outside when possible, especially in woodland. Would love to taste some of the beef that spends months grazing in pine forests around Abernethy. Is it aromatic?
Lunchtime fringe meeting. But which one? The SNP conference has grown considerably in recent years with lots of groups like the charity mentioned above keen to influence policy makers. One of the downsides is that a lot of interesting fringe meetings are scheduled for the same time. At 12.30 today you could chose to learn more about Victim Support, Scotland's Colleges, the challenges of Foster Care, the difficulties older women have in accessing the right breast cancer care and a Scottish Social Enterprise seminar on how communities can buy their assets. I was tempted by a Reform Scotland/NESTA discussion on reforming public services but went instead for...
Dragons' Den. Sponsored by the Centre for Public Policy Research, Stewart Stevenson the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Minister lead a team of dragons listening to pitches for a new Forth Crossing, upgrading the Glasgow Subway and introducing a smartcard for all public transport. All three had merit. Was particularly impressed with Jonathan Findlay the Labour councillor who chairs SPT, who was brave enough to come before the nationalist audience. He was applauded too. It is surely something of a scandal that the Glasgow Subway (rebuilt in 1970) and the Forth Road Bridge, are major postwar engineering projects that have scandalously failed to pass the test of time. If we must invest billions to replace or renew, let's take a tip from those sustainable Victorians and make our bridges and tunnels last longer than a few decades.
Angus Brendan MacNeil, the MP for the Western Isles and hard-working Barra crofter, has sacrificed the Mod to attend conference. He directs me to this funny exchange from Hansard on the Arc of Prosperity. How many times do you hear that Ireland and Iceland still enjoy standards of living far higher than our own...?
Fantastic fringe meeting on the creative industries with Jim Mather, minister for Enterprise, Andrew Dixon, of Creative Scotland, Jackie MacKenzie, Head of Innovation Programmes Scotland at NESTA and Rob Woodward at STV. One of these meetings that you really wish had been webcast. Andrew Dixon has had a few knocks but I was very heartened by his presentation. He seems genuinely enthused by what he has found here - and keen to grow audiences for artists in Scotland. The more local something is, the more compelling it can be to a global audience. Is the word glocal? He has identified music as a vibrant cultural resource that doesn't get enough attention. Jackie had interesting things to say on education - the divide between art and science, in both school and university, is damaging our competitiveness in computer games. Artistic kids need the maths skills to programme as well, say developers. Breadth is supposed to be the rock on which our educational system stands, so Scotland should be able to find a way around this. On a positive note it's a shame Jim Mather is retiring, though he will be 68 at the close of the next parliament and has many other plans. Until next May we should celebrate having as Enterprise Minister a highly successful entreprenuer who quotes Hugh Macdiarmid And Richard Florida. It doesn't get better really...
Chat to representatives of The Police Federation who say they have more access to government since the SNP took power than under any previous Scottish administration. They are not the first group to say this. I wonder why previous ministers were so remote - did they fear contradicting London policy by accidently promising what they could not deliver?
Media reception in the evening, hosted by Scottish Power. Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is in good humour. She gives the diarists a nice story about her own social networking slip. Recently married, she tried to change her relationship status to reflect this and link to her husband Peter Murrell. Unfortunately the predictive language married her off the party press officer Paul Togneri. It took a few desperate phone calls to undo her cyber-bigamy, without a puzzling broken heart appearing on the profile...
Alex Salmond arrives at conference today (Saturday) fresh from Dehli where he joined Glasgow Provost for the "handover" ceremony fo the Commonwealth Games. The question on everyone's lips is: "Will he bring the hat?"
If you love music you must watch this new BBC Alba documentary iTRAD which features some incredibly talented young people. You'd never guess from English language television and newspapers, but traditional music is experiencing a renaissance. The programme features students from Lews Castle College Benbecula where you can study your instrument and the Gaelic language. It attracts musicians from around the world and allows many young local people the opportunity to study the culture of their community. The course is run by the lovely Anna Wendy Stevenson (left), a talented fiddler and composer. They also have access to some of the finest Gaelic tradition bearers, such as Cathleen MacInnes, as tutors. iTRAD, made by BBC Alba, also features some even younger talent from Plockton High School, which specialises in traditional music. The vocal performance from the teenage girl at the end of the documentary took my breath away.
I'd not normally use the word hack - the disparaging self-definition some journalists use that seems to celebrate - and so excuse - sloppy work. However it is too tempting in the context. I'm currently in Boston visiting MIT, where my daughter is an engineering undergraduate. MIT is famous for producing Nobel prizewinners - and hacks. Here a hack is not a scibbler - though they do have a fine newspaper The Tech. An MIT hack is a practical joke, but one carried out with skill and ingenuity. Often a hack involves some sort of violation of the landmark MIT dome. Two years ago students built a solar powered subway car that circumnavigated the dome. On another occasion they stuck a police car on top and, most recently, a Doctor Who Tardis. Like the Tardis, the hack must appear from another dimension - or at least arrive overnight and unexplained. The best hacks put a smile on the city's face and make the news beyond Boston. Even those who are hacked see the funny side - and the advantages. Once a burger bar that famously had a lifesize cow on its roof found the bovine kidnapped by students. It was returned wearing a little mortar board, chewing on an MIT "degree". The restaurant was delighted by the free publicity.
The cow features in a college exhibition devoted to hacks. I liked one from 1987 where a warning traffic sign featuring a human figure was changed to Nerds Crossing. The figure acquires glasses and carries a...floppy disc. Definitely a period piece. One of MIT's founding fathers made a famous speech in which he said an education there should be like drinking knowledge through a fire hydrant. So the students somehow acquired a street fire hydrant and and linked it to the college drinking water system so it could be used as a fountain.
The exhibition features a list of hack rules for students, such as never steal, never endanger yourself or others, never hack alone, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. These are more than jokes, of course, requiring imagination, weeks of hard work and technical ability. But still they reflect the sense of fun and mischief that motivates many young people. My daughter's dad, Pat Kane, would call it the Play Ethic. In Scotland, in time gone by, student pranks were tolerated and enjoyed, and it was not uncommon for medics to do unspeakable things with body parts. Today even throwing flour bags is likely to result in a breach of the peace. And for young people without the benefit of full time education, any high spiritedness will immediately be branded anti-social. There were reports of kids being cautioned for throwing snowballs during the last cold snap in Scotland...and when sixth year leavers decided to turf their gymnasium in Scottish school a few years back they were all expelled...
Of course when youth is left idle, unstimulated, stripped of any cultural pride, respect for others or themselves, the most likely outlet for natural thrill-seeking is drunken mayhem. It is worth remembering that pent-up energy and creativity need to be released somehow. That doesn't have to mean causing damage and upset. At MIT the results are impressive and applauded. Perhaps there is a lesson there as to how we view youthful abandon. A little less condemnation and a little more direction perhaps...?
I was rather embarrassed interviewing Michael Klavenhaus, the chap in the front of this picture. I speak about six words of Gaelic. He is fluent and teaches the language to 60 students a year in his native Bonn. Michael has also just published the first German-Gaelic textbook and runs the world's only film festival dedicated to Scottish Gaelic movies
Michael, who has a masters from Sabhal Mor Ostaig, is one of many nationalities including Japanese, Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Austrians and Swiss who attended the Ceolas summer school last week. But why are they so keen when many urban Scots are disdainful? Is it the dreaded cringe again? Read more about foreigners embracing Gaelic in my feature A Sort of Homecoming in The Scotsman.
Delighted to hear Susan Deacon has beenappointed to improve early years education in Scotland. Susan is the former Labour Health minister, now professor at Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh. She recently wrote a piece for me at Ecosse on her long distance (and totally platonic) relationship with the late Michael Foot. Susan was a founder member of Scottish Labour Action, the campaigning group in the 1980s that wanted the Scottish party to have more autonomy from London. Funnily enough, not much progress has been made on that front despite the coming of the Scottish parliament. I suspect this rather frustrated Susan, who stepped away from politics despite being one of her party's leading talents. I am sure she will do a great job. Her appointment also reflects the importance with which the government views early years. High quality education and care before the age of five can erase disadvantage more effectively than at any other stage. Good to see the government putting that priority ahead of political difference.
Alastair Allan MSP on Newsnicht refused to budge on the assertion that the coalition has no legitimacy here, and the Lib Dems are just propping up a Tory government with one seat, which was opposed by 85% of Scots who voted. But the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives last week scrapped slightly more than the SNPs share of the Scottish vote in the 2007 election. So is AA trying to defend the indefensible?
There is a key difference - and not just the one advanced by Allan, that the SNP actually won, whereas in Scotland this is a government of losers. The SNP tried and failed to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2007 - the latter now find the Conservatives more acceptable bed fellows. Only after being rebuked by the Lib Dems did Salmond chose to govern as a minority, accepting that he would need to bring others on board policy by policy. The nationalist Holyrood government does not dictate to Scotland - the arithmetic doesn't allow it.
The Con Lib Alliance does. They will decide what's good for us then force it through parliament with English MPs. There was lots of talk tonight that the Lib Dems had a mandate due to their healthy number of Scottish MPs. But perhaps a better way of judging their "right to rule" would be to consider the parts of their manifesto relating to Scotland. How much of these made it into the partnership deal announced today?
Trident - of particular interest to Scotland since these weapons of mass destruction are currently squatting on the Clyde. Total Lib Dem cave in- they misleadingly gave the impression during the campaign that they were against renewing the missile system.
Accelerated budget cuts: Lib Dems said they were against the Tory plan to start cutting deeply this year. Total cave in again. Unemployment in Scotland is now higher than in England and we are more vulnerable to a double dip recession as a result of this decision.
Abolish the Scotland Office: I'll believe it when I see it. Young Danny looked VERY pleased with his new job.
No tax on incomes below £10k. This is a concession from Cons to Libs which could benefit poor Scots but no timetable when it will happen.
Funding: Libs are making a big deal of how their plans for health and education will have consequences for Scotland. This just means what happens at the moment. Spending decisions are made about English health, education, police etc based on English needs and priorities. The rise or fall is passed proportionately to Scotland through the Barnett formula. We have to make the best of it, even though our needs were not considered when determining the funding.
So do the Lib Cons have a mandate? I think we all know the answer.
