My word of the year for Scottish nationalists

Posted on 1 January 2026 by Roger White

Compromise.

It’s something that we all have to exercise in our daily lives. It’s the lubricant that allows civilised people who may disagree to get on with one another.

Frankly, it’s not something many of you seem capable of. Your pursuit of one goal, and one goal only, seems monomaniacal.

Britain/British governments/the British people/even the majority of Scots, on the other hand, have been willing to compromise with you.

In 1979, you were granted a referendum on devolution. You lost (Yes, yes, I know the argument about the rules, but only 33% of the electorate voted in favour, scarcely a ringing endorsement of the idea).

In 1997, you were granted another referendum on the subject. You won. A parliament and an executive were created, powers were devolved.

In 2014, you were granted another referendum, on independence. You lost.

In 2016, despite your losing and following the Smith Commission, further powers were devolved to the Scottish parliament.

Britain has compromised. It’s about time you, and especially your leaders, learnt the benefits of compromise.

————

My thought on the importance of compromise in politics was prompted by a visit I made to Italy recently. There, tucked away in the far North of the country, is the autonomous province of Alto Adige, known also as South Tyrol.

There also you have a clue to the historic compromise that created the province and the wider region it’s part of, because South Tyrol in English is actually Süd Tyrol locally and is historically German speaking. Until 1919 it was part of Austria and the Austro-Hungarian empire. When Austria was on the losing side of the Great War, the area was transferred to Italy.

The history of Süd Tyrol after 1919 was one of great turmoil until the 1960s. First, it endured government-sponsored mass immigration of Italians and attempts by fascist Italy to dilute then eliminate the language and culture of its people. During World War Two, still under fascism, its people were given a blunt choice of moving to Nazi Germany or assimilating as Italians. Finally, long-standing discontent following the war culminated in a number of violent terrorist acts.

Since 1945, the predominant political party representing the German-speaking population has been the SVP, the Südtiroler Volkspartei – its acronym eerily reminiscent of Scotland’s own predominant nationalist political party. By the 1960s, their leadership realised that the separatist game was up and they worked with the Italian and Austrian governments to negotiate autonomy within Italy for their region, an agreement that holds to the present day.

On my recent visit to the area, I saw two quotes that could with profit be applied to Scotland. Each needs some explanation.

In the courtyard of the regional parliament, a display that includes thesec words:

Silvius Magnago was the long-serving leader of the SVP. If you were to look for the nearest equivalent in Scottish nationalism, it would be Alex Salmond. Both were democratic politicians but they came to different constitutional conclusions, although of course there is no implication that Salmond supported violence. One was able to compromise, to the benefit of his people, the other was not.

The second quote comes from a display at the castle of Firmian, near Bolzano, part of the Messner Mountain Museum set up by German-speaking Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner:

Here you see a complexity in South Tyrol lacking in Scotland – there are actually three language groups in the region, the third being Ladin, probably spoken by no more than about 20,000 people. In the autonomy settlement the status of each language group is protected in law, with its speakers entitled to a proportionate number of jobs in public administration, and its children to education in their native language.

Scottish nationalists see their situation as a difference from and a disadvantage as part of Britain. Many of us don’t agree, but how less our differences and purported disadvantage than the South Tyrolese have suffered within living memory. And yet they were able to compromise.

‘We must work together to shape what is home to us all.’

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So what? Those pesky separatist lists

Posted on 2 November 2025 by Roger White

Lists like this are ten-a-penny on social media and have been doing the rounds since before the 2014 referendum. I don’t normally bother to respond to them. But this time, maybe piqued by the assertion that they’re ‘kind of cool’, I weakened and simply replied ‘So what?’

My question was perhaps a little blunt though certainly not rude. I’ll return to it later.

It prompted a third party (an anonymous account) to jump in and attempt to engage me in a quick-fire interrogation:

Despite my adieu I foolishly continued the exchange for a brief time while my interlocutor challenged me, a bit like a card trick, to pick a purported statistic, ‘any one’, and he would provide me with the proof of its truth (I say ‘he’ because women rarely prove to be as acerbic as this particular account). I wasn’t too impressed with the first proof as it relied on some claim dating back to 1999. I finally gave up at that point, despite continued needling to choose another statistic that I needed explaining. [Update: he’s still at it a week later, trying to goad me with ‘Roger the Dodger’ – pathetic schoolboy stuff]

My confidence in this bag of tricks was not improved by the statistic in the image that simply read ‘25% EU Offshore’. I wasn’t sure if it was offshore oil, gas, wind (plenty of that around), energy generally, pearl oysters or mermaids. Only a typo I was told, but this from someone who claims in their X biography to be founder of a separatist research group, a research activist, and an AI consultant. But can’t check a list for a ludicrously obvious error.

Back to Mr 20th Century Debris for a moment. His claim that numbers are beyond me prompted my reply, which I stand by absolutely, that statistics which purport to have some meaning should 1. be given a source that is reliable and can be checked 2. set in an appropriate context, for example clarity about what they’re being compared with 3. are capable of being explained. No-one expects a summary for popular consumption to include all this, but at a bare minimum a source really should be given at the bottom of the list. All this needs to be done by the person making the claim.

Let me exemplify the point by reference to just one of the claims made above: ‘Scotland Has … 70% UK Fish’.

  • Is the figure for all fish in the sea under UK control?
  • Does it include fresh water fish in lakes and rivers?
  • Does it include crustaceans, shellfish, and farmed fish?
  • How is it measured – by number of fish or weight?
  • Does it include only species commercially fished?
  • Is it actually a percentage of the total catch rather than just ‘fish’?
  • When does the percentage relate to? Is it up to date?
  • Is there information available about how reliable the statistic is? (CLUE: you can count something like houses accurately, they don’t move; fish less so because, er, they swim round all the time. Kind of cool)
  • Who collected the information – a reputable government agency, research institute or industry body, or a partisan group?
  • Where can I find answers to these questions?

The same analysis could be applied to each of the statistics in that list

Should anyone just think I’ve got it in for separatists (I have, but that’s a different story) I apply a truncated version of all this to all claims of fact. As my X profile says,

Do you have any evidence for your claim? A link to a reliable source will do. Thanks.

However, I digress from my original question to the poster of this list –  ‘So what?’

For your mild amusement, my original question elicited this from her:

Ah, you hate Scotland? Is that right?

Yes of course, that’s why I’ve stuck around here for forty years.

Anyhow, my ‘So what?’ was really getting at a different fundamental problem of these lists. Essentially, even if correct they always say, to be colloquial, ‘We got stuff’, in fact an allegedly disproportionate amount of stuff compared to somewhere else. Stuff that’s usually just there in the environment.

That’s why I ask ‘So what?’ Having stuff proves nothing. What’s important is what you do with it.

  • Does your society have the technology and entrepreneurial skills to exploit those resources?
  • Does it have an educated and available workforce to do the work to exploit the resources?
  • Does it have credible and stable financial institutions to fund exploitation?
  • Does it have the physical infrastructure to exploit the resources?
  • Is there a market for whatever products you can make from the resource?
  • What opportunities can be exploited to develop the economy that don’t rely on natural resources?
  • Is your society politically stable and is its government doing everything it needs to answer all these questions positively?
  • Finally, bearing all this in mind, do investors think it worth risking their capital in your society, or are there better opportunities elsewhere?

So yes, it’s kind of cool to have figures at your fingertips. But they have to be the right figures for the right reasons. That’s not something many nationalists waving these lists around seem to understand. But then, is it possible their main aim is propaganda, not truth?

For a more thorough take-down of this sort of list, see the amazing range of similar efforts demolished by ‘Jock Tamson’s Bairn’  – The “Big Meaningless List ” Scottish Assets against Population meme Lie. It dates from 2016 but sadly tells you that little has changed in the world of separatism.

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Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom: the Scottish cut

Posted on 16 August 2025 by Roger White

You may not be old enough to remember Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom described as ‘political art horror’ by Wikipedia. But trust me, it delivers on the implied horrors of its title.

The real point, however, is that its degeneracies are set in the short-lived Republic of Salò, a town on Lake Garda that was the centre of Mussolini’s rapidly-shrinking fascist state from 1943-1945 where illusion and bombast outshone reality for a brief period before il Duce was bumped off by partisans.

I sometimes think I’m living in a Scottish version of Salò. Only on this occasion as I write it’s not even 120 days since the Supreme Court decision referenced below.

Let me explain.

I’m suggesting neither that we live under any form of fascism nor that sexual perversion is the driving narrative in our society (although sometimes …). The comparison that intrudes unwonted into my mind is of a madness and corruption that feels as if it’s spinning out of control with an inevitable implosion as it collapses in on itself – our own version of political art horror.

Consider, from the last four months alone …

We’ve had the Supreme Court ruling on the statutory definition of a woman (part of me wonders how this can even be a matter of doubt). This was not merely relevant to Scotland, it arose entirely out of the Scottish Government’s actions and their detrimental effects on women.

In the wake of that ruling, rather than a straightforward acceptance of its implications, we’ve seen numerous attempts by public and other bodies in Scotland to ignore, sidetrack or obfuscate the action they need to take.

Those interested have been treated to a jaw-dropping blow-by-blow account from Tribunal Tweets and boswelltoday of NHS Fife’s defence against one of their employee’s claims of unfair dismissal as a result of her being forced to share a changing room with a man dressed as a woman (aka ‘trans woman’). Bizarrely, to this lay observer at least, the tribunal has continued even after NHS Fife was excoriated by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, admitted it acted unlawfully, and has found its employee not guilty of gross misconduct following disciplinary proceedings.

The Edinburgh International Book Festival has been under attack for not including in its programme ‘gender critical’ authors/editors associated with the best-selling anthology The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht. The festival director, forced to defend her action (trans/pro-trans authors are apparently included in the festival line up), said feebly that the ‘inter-generational aspects’ interested her and might feature in a future festival. You can hear her weasel words on the subject here (from 24:08).

Meanwhile, over at the National (that’s National) Library of Scotland, the management decided to pull the aforementioned Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht from an exhibition to celebrate their 100th anniversary entitled Dear Library, after it was ‘deemed by the library’s staff LGBT network to have “significant risks to the library’s relationships with authors and other stakeholders”’. And this after an ‘Equality impact assessment’ was carried out – correct, an equality impact assessment to help determine whether a completely legal published work should or shouldn’t be included in an exhibition. Yes, librarians censoring the printed word. Read the full story through The Frontline’s Freedom of Information requests here.

Festival Fringe venues (some) have variously banned, blocked or made unwelcome performers who are deemed by them to be politically incorrect, although various mostly mediocre politicians strut their stuff in vapid fringe Q&A sessions.

Almost at the end of my list of examples and I feel I’m veering into the lunatic fringe here. The Summerhall arts venue in Edinburgh (an ugly building that used to be a veterinary school and now seems to house ugly minds) wanted to make another politician unwelcome – no less a luminary than the SNP deputy first minister, Kate Forbes. A series of events hosted by The Herald newspaper was an ‘oversight’ and ‘should have considered the likelihood of her being booked to attend, and the understandable upset [my emphasis] it would cause’. The upset is that she’s a Christian with some views that ‘progressive’ artists find challenging. No point in being challenged if you’re in the arts, is there?

Finally, let’s add to that depressing list the publication, almost as I write, of our erstwhile first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir Frankly. Judging by comment across the political spectrum and by those with no overt political affiliation, it might better be entitled Evasively. I’ll not attempt my own analysis of the failings of her work of self-promotion. But if you’ve been immune to the comments so far, you could do worse than check what Joanna Cherry (SNP) has to say about it, Brian Wilson (Labour), Neale Hanvey (ALBA), or  J K Rowling (no political affiliation).

You’ll note how much of this swirls around sex/gender/sexuality/trans issues (choose your preferred word). I have only written once before about the trans issue, in a blog post of 2022 entitled In which I venture (delicately) into the area of Scottish trans issues. The hook I hung the piece on was the then Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. I said I took only a passing interest in trans issues and I did not intend to get sucked into the subject ‘beyond this particular post’. And yet here I am.

If I can give myself some retrospective credit, it’s that at the time I recognised then first minister Nicola Sturgeon was at the heart of the controversy surrounding the proposal for (trans) ‘self ID’ in the Bill:

If wisdom is a first essential criterion of leadership, it is a hurdle at which our first minister seems to have fallen on this issue. Instead of seeking to negotiate a way between two apparently contradictory strongly-held (and non-political party) views, she has dug herself further into a trench marked ‘No problems! Full steam ahead!’.

My failing at the time was to not realise that the problem would grow exponentially, of which the above current examples are just part of the evidence. I should have been alerted shortly after my previous post by the willingness of SNP parliamentarians to appear at a rowdy pro-trans demonstration in front of a sign that read ‘DECAPITATE TERFS’. That’s not some fancy metaphor. It means to literally chop the heads off your fellow human beings. Nice.

In Scotland the trans rights movement is not merely part of some more amorphous social trend. It has been aided, abetted, actively promoted, and led by nationalist politicians, chief amongst them our failed ex-first minister Ms Sturgeon.

Let’s hope the publication of her egregious memoir represents the end point of the madness and corruption documented here and spinning out of control in the course of these last few months. It’s a madness and corruption that must surely end with an implosion as it collapses in on itself.

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‘English residents moving to Scotland at near record levels’ – The National

Posted on 15 October 2024 by Roger White

The National newspaper has been crowing about how popular Scotland is as a destination for people to move to from England:

Net migration out of England to the rest of the UK soared by 53 per cent to 31,393 in the year to June 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

In Scotland, net internal migration rose by 11% to 13,900 – a 21-year high and 39% higher than before the pandemic.

Experts have suggested that the increase is due to the impacts of the cost of living crisis and Scotland, largely, being more affordable.

Beyond that reference to the UK government’s national statistics agency, the only evidence The National cites are the comments of two UK-wide upmarket estate agents, who say what a great deal residential property is in Scotland. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

While The National casts the numbers in a positive light, more English people in Scotland is a tricky one for nationalists, as the discussion on the newspaper’s Twitter feed shows:

  • The majority of them are no voters The next referendum should be only people that were born in Scotland are allowed to vote (@Roberto)
  • I see so although the unionist keep on saying Scotland is crap and poor they all come here? I wonder why (@Anty41)
  • The Great replacement is well under way. If they can’t burn us out, they’ll breed us out. For every freeloader coming to Scotland to reap the reeards [sic] of OUR system, that’s a Scot that’s missing out (@Highlander1320ii)
  • How many are actually moving, and how many are just buying a property to register their offspring at to avoid [university] fees, and thereafter letting it out? (@angels20)
  • Don’t mind them coming as long as they aren’t imperialists or unionists (@Albahighlander1).

And so on and so on.

The truth, as usual, is a lot more complex.

The National’s ‘net internal migration’ number of 13,900 is, as the newspaper correctly says, taken from an ONS dataset Estimates of the population for the UK, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, Mid-2023 edition, which in turn feeds into their publication Population estimates for the UK, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: mid-2023.

As an old hand at population analysis I was very familiar with this approach to analysing population change. It relies on a simple equation:

Population change = No. births – No. deaths ± Net migration.

Net migration means the difference between the number of people moving into an area and the number moving out. So, hypothetically:

1,000 move in, 1,100 move out, net migration = –100

1,000 move in. 900 move out, net migration = +100.

But note:

100,000 move in, 100,100 move out, net migration also = –100.

To put it another way, the net figure tells you nothing about the scale of the movement. Note also that The National are only quoting net migration from the rest of the UK, not international migration.

The other factors in population changes are easier to grasp. Let’s say net migration is 0 (moves in are exactly balanced by moves out), then:

If there are more births than deaths, then the population is growing

If there are more deaths than births, the population is falling.

For a full understanding of what’s happening, it’s also important to know the population broken down by age and sex (an old demographer’s joke lurks in that phrase). These mid-year estimates of population do not include that detail. But if they did, it might be possible to guess at the truth of The National’s assumption that net migration into Scotland from the rest of the UK is being driven by lower property prices than by, say, young people coming to study, or working age people simply moving within the UK for a new job. It would also highlight the growing elderly population, a well-established trend of wide concern in most wealthier countries.

So let’s dive into the detail of the figures The National was quoting from. They all apply to the twelve months leading up to the middle of 2023.

The population of Scotland increased to 5,490,100 from 5,447.000 a year earlier, a growth of 43,100 or 0.8%, compared to 1% in England and Wales. Our population is growing at a slower rate.

46,100 babies were born in Scotland and 65,000 people died, so the number of deaths exceeded the number of births by 19,100. For a far larger population, the number of births in England and Wales just about balanced the number of death (although that was made up of a gain in England and a loss in Wales).

The Scottish net internal migration figure (i.e. internal within the UK) of 13,900 was made up of 48,400 people moving in and 34,500 moving out (from and to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, not just England). We don’t know why any of those people moved in or out. For those triumphant at the attraction of Scotland as a destination or fearful of the dilution of the existing population by incomers, it is worth noting that the 48,400 incomers are only 0.9% of the existing population a year before.

The net international migration figures are more significant as a driver of population change than internal migration. So, while 35,100 people moved abroad from Scotland, 82,800 moved in, a net increase of 47,700. England and Wales, meantime, attracted 1,084,000 people from abroad. Scotland, with 8% of the UK’s population, attracted just under 7% of people moving into the UK.

In summary:

  • if it weren’t for migration, Scotland’s population would have fallen in the year to mid-2023
  • our population growth is slower than that of England and Wales
  • that growth is only sustained by net migration into Scotland, most of it from abroad, not England.

It’s a far cry from the fear (or triumph) of ‘English residents moving to Scotland at near record levels’. If you’re concerned about the size and make up of the population of Scotland, there should be many more issues to worry about than that.

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What does the general election tell us about the Scottish appetite for independence?

Posted on 11 July 2024 by Roger White

I published an earlier version of this table, minus the 2024 figures, in my blog article Some Scottish electoral statistics for reference in November 2022. It all seems a long time ago in political terms – pre- Peter Murrell resignation, pre-Operation Branchform, pre-SNP/Scottish Green power-sharing agreement, Nicola Sturgeon still in her pomp pre-arrest, the SNP with 48 out of 59 Scottish MPs, and delivery of the two Ferguson Marine ferries only 3/4 years late.

One of the questions I was interested in testing was, ‘To what extent do the number of votes cast for the SNP, as opposed to MPs elected, demonstrate an appetite for independence?’ So, for example, the fact that in 2019 the SNP had over 80% of all Scottish MPs looked superficially like a powerful seal of approval, and as was frequently claimed, a ‘mandate for independence’.

The reality in 2019 was that only 45% of those voting did so for the SNP, while pro-UK parties captured 54% of the vote, a balance that mirrored almost exactly the 2014 referendum result. Factor in a turnout of 68%, and only 31% of the electorate could be bothered to turn out and vote for the SNP. Not quite the ringing endorsement that was claimed.

This time, the SNP collapse to nine seats in the Commons is reflected in the shrinkage of their share of the vote to 30%. But unlike previously, there are parties on both sides of the constitutional divide who gained small but significant numbers of votes – the Scottish Greens, ALBA, (both pro-separation obviously) and Reform (pro-UK). Including them in the above statistics for 2024 produces the following result:

SNP/Greens/ALBA – 34%

Pro-UK, as above plus Reform – 65%

Of course, there are many reasons people cast their vote for a particular party. For example, I explained the reason for my own vote this year in Confessions of a (failed) tactical voter.

What is clear is that the SNP put independence at the front, literally, of their own election campaign, on page 1 of their manifesto:

And on page 7 we find:

If the SNP wins a majority of Scottish seats, the Scottish Government will be empowered to begin immediate negotiations with the UK Government to give democratic effect to Scotland becoming an independent country.

So with this widely known, and unlike some previous occasions no shilly-shallying about ‘a vote for us isn’t a vote for indy’, the SNP achieved their worst general election result since 2010. Charitably adding Green/ALBA votes to theirs, only 34% of all votes cast were for pro-independence parties. On a relatively low turnout of 59%, that means only 20% of the entire electorate could be bothered to turn out and vote for a pro-independence party.

The dubious claim that the SNP would have a mandate for independence if they achieved a majority of Scotland’s MPs would have meant they achieved at least 29 out of the new number of 57 seats. With their desperately poor performance in this election, their failure is almost complete. Add in a general weariness with them for their dismal seventeen years in government at Holyrood, not to mention the still ongoing Operation Branchform, they must be all but dead in the water in their current guise. Moreover, no other separatist party is yet be capable of replacing them.

I don’t pretend this is the only way of looking at electoral statistics, and votes cast are not the only indicator of a desire for independence. But as a number of opinion polls have shown, it’s way down in any list of Scottish voters’ priorities. The separatists really are going to have a tough few years.

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Confessions of a (failed) tactical voter

Posted on 7 July 2024 by Roger White

This is the first and probably the last time I’ll be telling the world how I voted in an election, and why.

Ever since the Scottish referendum, I have voted tactically at every level – council, Scottish and UK parliaments, and formerly the European parliament. My aim has been simple, to lessen the chance of Scotland breaking away from the United Kingdom.

In practical terms, that has meant voting for whichever pro-British party is most likely to defeat the only separatist party with a chance of winning anything, let alone independence, the SNP. That in turn has meant choosing between Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat.

Many won’t like what they see as an unprincipled approach to voting. They include small minorities in each of the pro-British parties who hold their own party’s advantage more highly than the maintenance of the UK. They certainly include many online nationalists, who claim tactical voting in favour of the union as unprincipled. I’d merely remind them of the argument they often use: ‘Vote SNP. You don’t have to agree with their detailed policies but it’s the only way we’ll get independence. After, you can vote for any Scottish party you want’. That’s tactical voting too.

Of course, what these people choose to ignore is the fact that tactical voters are not unprincipled. They’re just abiding by a different principle.

Anyhow, to my own tactical voting in last week’s general election. Here, as a scene setter, are the results of the poll in Aberdeen South, where I live, for the previous general election in 2019:

If that was the only information I needed to read forward to 2024, my tactical choice would have been clear – Conservative.

But in the run-up to the 2024 election, several things changed:

  • Opinion polls confirmed that Labour were now much more popular across Britain, and the Conservatives much less
  • The SNP had had what might be politely described as a challenging time and were clearly much less popular than they had been in 2019
  • The incumbent MP (Stephen Flynn) had become the leader of the SNP in the Commons in 2022. He had a much higher profile than in 2019 and a reputation as a more effective leader than the previous holder of that post
  • When nominations for the poll closed, it became apparent that there would be more candidates than in 2019, including the Scottish Greens and the electorally untested Reform party, assumed to be of little account in Scotland compared to England
  • There had been some minor boundary changes in the Northern part of the constituency
  • Finally, a lot of tactical voting guidance appeared online. Some was comprehensive and appeared to be objective, but didn’t explain clearly why it made the recommendations it did. Some was simply partisan, although a bit of rooting around was sometimes necessary to confirm that.

Trying to balance all this information I came to the conclusion that a vote for Labour was the best chance of defeating the SNP.

Here are the actual results in Aberdeen South:

I described myself in the title of this piece as a failed tactical voter, although to be honest that was as much to lure you in to read as a personal confession. Successful tactical voting by all who thought like me could have seen Mr Flynn defeated.

On the other hand, the SNP share of the vote fell from 45% to 33%, and the three main pro-British parties remained steady at 55%. The difference is accounted for by the three parties and one independent standing in 2024 but absent in 2019. Whether they stood as part of an increasing diversity/fragmentation in British politics or were attracted by the chance of standing against a high profile incumbent is a moot point. Incidentally although I’d never vote Reform (for numerous reasons), add them in to the pro-GB vote, and that rises to 62%.

So there you have it. Voting tactically can be a challenging thing to get right. But for whatever reasons, the SNP across Scotland, and Stephen Flynn locally, have been taught a salutary lesson. Whether he and his eight fellow SNP survivors in the Commons (who could all fit in a campervan as more than wag has pointed out) are capable of learning the lesson is another matter.

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Ten priorities for a future Scottish government

Posted on 27 March 2024 by Roger White

St Andrew’s House, home of the Scottish government (Kim Traynor CC BY-SA 2.0)

The next Holyrood election is in 2026. It’s not too soon to start thinking about what people would want a new government to achieve. Here’s list of things I’d like to see. It’s not comprehensive, it’s not a manifesto, it’s certainly not an election winner. It’s just part of what I think could help government focus on what is important. Enjoy (if you can) and feel free to comment.

  • Seek with other political parties a review of the operation of the Scottish parliament with the aim of improving its effectiveness and efficiency, to include reviewing and reinforcing its scrutiny function, potentially introducing an outside element.
  • Limit the number of ministerial posts in government to a set number in strict alignment with devolved responsibilities and with a maximum number of MSPs to hold government office, perhaps to 20% of all MSPs.
  • Abolish the constitution, external affairs and culture cabinet secretary post. Reconstitute the responsibility for culture at ministerial level with an appropriate budget.
  • Identify Scottish government agencies that add little value to what is achievable using UK bodies and negotiate the delivery of the services on an integrated or agency basis. Examples might include Food Standards Scotland and Social Security Scotland.
  • Review Scottish government representation abroad with the aim of restricting the role to trade promotion and reducing or removing posts that are not effective in that role.
  • Over the life of the next parliament move towards a system in which no charity receives more than 75% of its annual funding from the Scottish government, with the longer term aim of reducing any individual charity’s government funding to under 50%.
  • Identify sectors of the Scottish economy with major growth potential and confine state support to those sectors.
  • Introduce a more rigorous method of improvement in education, to include better measurement of outcomes and a reinforced system of inspection.
  • Review universal benefits within the control of the Scottish parliament to ensure that they are directed towards those in greatest need, to include the ‘baby box’ scheme.
  • Unless otherwise stated, direct any savings from these proposals towards education and health provision.
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Unanswered questions

Posted on 7 January 2024 by Roger White

I ask this question of the world generally on my Twitter profile. The ability to provide evidence for a factual claim is fundamental to rational debate. And there’s scarcely a political party that hasn’t claimed at some time that it believes in ‘evidence-based policy’.

Unfortunately, the political world is awash with parties and individuals who make factual claims without providing the evidence for them. It doesn’t need a long academic treatise, just a link to where evidence for a claim can be found, the small print ‘Source: …’ you often, and should, see underneath a statistic or a graph. Where that basic safeguard is missing, even after a polite enquiry has sought it, we have the right to be suspicious. It’s why I ask my question.

As a result of my question, I have quite a collection of organisations and individuals who decline to provide evidence for their claims. Here is a small selection, focusing mainly on nationalist parties and their senior representatives, but with a few examples of undoubtedly intelligent people who should know better, and the much larger number of random, often anonymous, accounts who make even wilder claims based only on their own naivety or fantasy.

Enjoy.

From Twitter accounts who declare, or obviously have, a party affiliation

SNP MP Douglas Chapman claimed ‘Over the next 5 years the UK will suck £80bn directly out of the Scottish economy. Labour want to spend it on giving English taxpayers a council tax cut.’

I asked ‘Have you got a link to a reliable source for that £80bn figure …? I’m sure you’ll agree the facts and truth are important in politics. Many thanks.’

Answer came there none.

The SNP said ‘Scotland is bearing the brunt of a broken Brexit Britain, with UK car insurance skyrocketing by up to 43.1%. Car insurance inflation remains low within the EU.’

I asked ‘Do you have a source for those figures and their connection to Brexit? Thanks. BTW It’s good practice to include a source on a meme if you want to be taken seriously.’

Answer came there none.

SNP MP Stephen Flynn said ‘The values of this place [“Westminster”], they aren’t Scotland’s values’

I said ‘If he hadn’t blocked me on Twitter … I might have asked him what I reasonably ask of many people making factual claims.’ [Mr Flynn is my MP]

Unsurprisingly Answer came there none.

The ALBA party said ‘In 2014, we were told that North Sea Oil and Gas was about to run out.’

I asked ‘Can you produce evidence for that statement about 2014? A link to a reliable source will do. It’s not something I remember.’

Answer came there none.

SNP MP Dave Doogan said ’When the people of Scotland vote for independence, the rest of the UK will have to buy our energy resources.’

I asked ‘What proportion of the rest of the UK’s energy needs are met by Scottish resources at present? It’s a simple factual question and I’m happy with a link to a reliable source of the information. Thank you.’

Answer came there none.

Alex Gill (‘SNP member … former Constituency Assistant to SNP MP David Linden) said ‘A majority of those aged 54 and under support Independence. Younger folk much more likely. If you feel Independence isn’t coming fast enough, don’t feel down. Demographics are destiny. The clock is ticking down on union, and they know it.’ [He had attached part of an unsourced table as ‘evidence’]

I asked ‘Here’s the latest poll on What Scotland Thinks … Somewhat different from yours, where you also omit those >64. Now tell us your source …’

Answer came there none.

Celtchar [‘SNP member’) said ‘Scotland’s Seabed was changed by Tony Blair’s Govt. the NIGHT BEFORE Scottish Devolution in 1999 – it’s a matter of Public Record – FACT! England secretly took 6,000 MILES of the North Sea bed – the Right-wing MSM Buried that Information – FACT HISTORICAL FACTS are FACTS!.’

I asked ‘Do you have a reliable source for that claim? A link will do. Thanks.’

Answer came there none.

Christopher McEleny, ALBA party general secretary, said ‘Scotland is on course to deliver a whopping 46% of Europe’s actual offshore energy by 2035.’

I asked ‘Have you got a source for that forecast please? A link will do. Thanks.’

Answer came there none.

From people who should know better

Craig Murray, former British ambassador and now well-known Scottish nationalist said ‘If England wishes to be the sole successor state [to the UK] and retain the seat on the UN Security Council, it has to take responsibility for the total UK national debt.’

I asked ‘Have you got an authoritative source for that? A simple link will do. Thanks.’

Answer came there none.

James Smith (‘Vice Principal & Professor at Edinburgh University’} said ‘About a quarter to a third of people in the UK believe colonies were better off under the Empire, are proud of it, and wish we still had it.’

[This tweet creeps in as Smith was responding to a statement about a nationalist-supporting Scottish actor returning his Order of the British Empire medal because he had discovered the British empire was ‘toxic’]

I said ‘Interesting. Do you have a source for that statistic? Thanks.’

Answer came there none.

@ProfJWR (‘Retired Professor of Media Politics‘ John W Robertson) said ‘Native Scots are strongly in favour of independence’ and linked his tweet to his blog post of the same name, in which he included an unattributed map showing ‘where the English-born electorate lives in Scotland.’

I said ‘What’s the source of the map showing “where the English-born electorate lives in Scotland”? It can’t show the “electorate”. No one has ever measured the electorate by place of birth. If it’s total population from the census it’s at least 11 years old.’

Answer came there none.

Unfortunately, he has removed the map from his blog post, though the text remains.

A few examples of the far more numerous, often anonymous, accounts that make sometimes wild unsubstantiated claims

Bob Scott @xrpbobscott said ‘Pmsl* why is Broken Britain who haven’t balanced the books since ww2 so keen to keep scotland? Because they are bankrupt without it.’ [* Pmsl – a social media abbreviation for ‘pissing myself laughing’]

I asked ‘Have you got a source for the claim that Britain would be bankrupt without Scotland? A link would do. Thanks.’

Answer came there none.

Jollyman56 @jollyman56 claimed ‘Our economic performance is determined by England’s parliament. Currently, we give our revenues to WM. They return 50% via Barnett. Only when England requires more spending do we get consequentials. It doesn’t work in reverse. That’s imbalance.’

I asked ‘Do you have a reliable source for that 50% statistic? A link will do. Thanks!’

Answer came there none.

Ken @outofunion claimed ‘… Scotland’s NHS budget is DEPENDENT on what the British Government allocates to England’s NHS …’

I asked ‘Can you tweet a link to a reliable source that confirms Scotland’s NHS budget is dependent on what the UK government allocates to the English NHS? Thanks.’

Answer came there none.

And so it goes, interminably. In every example I cite the perpetrators provided no proof of the claims made. In many cases, others have countered with evidence proving the claims are false. Very rarely do any of the nationalist accounts who make unsubstantiated claims respond positively to my polite request for evidence. Of those who do, I cannot remember a single case where their response provided definitive proof of their claim. Most link to a source already discredited or evidence that at the very best is ambiguous.

Quite frequently I have to point out to hostile respondents that it’s not my job to search for the evidence I believe is important: you make the claim, the onus is on you to substantiate it. As I say above, it’s the way rational debate works.

Others take a more robust view on the subject than me, asserting that anyone unwilling to provide evidence for their claim is almost certain to be lying, and should be treated as a liar. I have some sympathy with that point of view but there are also naïve or ignorant people who do not understand the nature of facts and evidence. And of course, some only tune in to what supports their views.

Worst in this are the two political parties, SNP and ALBA, and their elected representatives. They set the tone for fellow separatists and will know what they’re doing.

Me? I’ll keep plodding away with my polite question and drawing my own conclusion when silence (or occasionally abuse) ensues. It may seem wasted effort. But the perpetrators of unsubstantiated claims discredit themselves and their cause. They’re nearly always found out and will suffer as a result.

A note on sources. As someone who tries always to give sources for my own claims, let me pre-empt any criticism that I’ve not done so in this post. All I’ve done is quote verbatim what others have said on Twitter. All the examples here date from late 2022 at the earliest. I found them all by searching on Twitter for ‘@rogerlwhite: sources’ and you could do the same. In many cases the name or Twitter handle of the account concerned will lead you to the claim. Finally, and perhaps most effectively, you can also do a simple search on the quoted words the account used.

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Shovelling sh*t: the Herculean task facing any SNP leader

Posted on 17 April 2023 by Roger White

Less than 24 hours after writing this post there was an update to record, and more are being added almost every day. See end of post.

Forgive the infelicity. It’s not my normal style. But sometimes needs must.

My disguised-yet-not-disguised title for this blog post is a reference, arcane if you will, to the twelve labours of Hercules, the son of Zeus, king of the Gods in Greek mythology.

As punishment for killing his wife and children, Hercules is set a series of tasks that would be impossible for any mortal. One is to clean the stables of King Augeas (hence the saying ‘clearing out the Augean stables’}. No ordinary steading, the stables house over a thousand divine cattle and haven’t been cleaned for over thirty years, hence accumulating a vast amount of, er, dung. Not quite best animal husbandry practice, but there you go, different times, different mores.

While you and I might resign ourselves to years of labour with a wheelbarrow and shovel, Hercules was made of more divine stuff. Using his huge strength, he knocked a hole in the stable walls and diverted two rivers so they flowed through the stables, flushing out three decades’ worth of bovine ordure to leave them tickety-boo spotless. (It occurs to me there might be a message lurking in the diversion of the rivers for those nationalists who believe ‘England needs our water’ but that’s another story)

You can probably see where this is going. With new revelations almost every day it’s easy to view the SNP as those stables, with an accumulation of dung that needs clearing out, not perhaps thirty-years’ worth, but certainly sixteen, since they came to power at Holyrood.

Setting aside any record in actual government, woes beset the party on every side – an apparently secure leader and FM resigning both positions unexpectedly for a reason (too knackered) that just didn’t ring true; the resignation in short order of the party’s comms chief and the CEO, her husband, because the membership turned out to be 30% lower than claimed only weeks earlier, and also turned out to have been falling for some time; a subsequent bitter leadership contest that the winner only scraped through with 52% of votes on a second round of voting; the arrest and then release without charge of the CEO, while his and his wife’s house was searched by the police, complete with police gazebo parked on the front lawn; the removal of a £110k motorhome (supposedly an election ‘battle bus’) that had been parked in the CEO’s elderly mother’s driveway and never apparently used; the financial mess the party may or may not be in but certainly encompasses the questions of where £600k raised for an indyref2 has gone and a curious £100k loan the CEO made to the party; the perhaps related resignation of the party’s long-standing external auditors, not revealed until six months after they left; and the inability, or perhaps indifference, to find a replacement auditor, with the party’s latest annual accounts due to be lodged with the Electoral Commission by July.

All this without mentioning the resignation of members a while ago from the SNP national executive committee (NEC), including MP Joanna Cherry and a national treasurer who complained that he couldn’t get the information he needed to fulfil his role (video has just emerged of Ms Sturgeon telling that same NEC to lay off with questions about the party’s finances – everything was fine). Oh, and to finish off with some more initials, deep splits about GRR (Gender Recognition Reform), DRS (Deposit Return Scheme) and the SGP (Scottish Green Party).

WTF, as many a member has probably said in private.

Although most of this – and you’ll probably know there’s more – will be familiar to many readers, it’s worth setting down in one place to emphasise the crisis facing the party. It’s a staggering litany, and all self-inflicted.

Dealing with this faecal mountain is going to need a herculean effort. Who can do it? Certainly not the old guard who oversaw and perhaps partook in the mess and until the last few days have been fulsome in their praise of the previous regime – some still seem to be in denial about what is happening. As for new leader and FM H Yousaf (that’s H for Humza not Hercules), his track record in ministerial office and performance since he became leader confirm he’s certainly not the person for the job. Is the narrowly defeated leadership candidate Kate Forbes lurking in the wings ready to pounce should Yousaf resign? Hmm, difficult to see for all sorts of reasons. As for the rest, the talent pool is shallow and/or marooned over the water (that’s the water of the River Tweed) in Westminster.

I don’t pretend to see a way through all this for the party without much bloodletting, a diminution in numbers of MPs/MSPs in the next Westminster and Holyrood elections, and perhaps some sort of split. Many leading nationalists within and outwith the party have already gone on record with the view that the situation has set their cause (independence/separation, as you prefer) back many years. Let’s hope so.

But let’s also not be complacent. After so many years in power at Holyrood, the SNP probably need a period in opposition anyhow. And other parties can’t rely on nationalist disarray to guarantee their own futures. They need the policies and the presentation to ensure electoral success and help Scotland get back to the more normal left-centre-right way of doing politics in western democracies.

Nicola Sturgeon is of course not the only nationalist idol to fall suddenly from grace. The previous incumbent of that role, one A Salmond, once wrote ‘The dream shall never die’. It may never for some but let’s hope that fewer and fewer Scots are prone to that particular dream as time goes on.

Updates

18 April 2023 – long-term SNP treasurer and MSP Colin Beattie arrested, taken into custody and being questioned by detectives. Remember, arrest is not the same as being charged with any offence. People are innocent until proven guilty. Later released without charge. Even so …

19 April 2023 – Beattie resigns (is ‘stepping back from’) the role of SNP national treasurer.

20 April 2023 – Humza Yousaf announces that 22 months after Peter Murrell loaned the SNP £107,620 in June 2021 they have still not paid it all back. About half had been paid by October 2021, i.e. about £53,810, equivalent to a rate of about £13,500 a month. There is no word on how much is outstanding 15 months later, or why.

22 April 2023 – SNP MP Stuart McDonald is appointed as the party’s new treasurer. Good luck Stuart, you’ll need it.

22 April 2023 – there are online and some media rumblings about Angus Robertson MSP, both the funding of the Progress Scotland polling outfit he founded a while ago, and a ‘secret’ salary supplement he is said to have received when he was leader of the SNP’s Westminster group. Whether they come to anything, we shall see.

23 April 2023 – SNP deputy leader Keith Brown MSP says, ‘We are a more transparent … party than any other party in Scotland’. So there you have it. Ignore everything you’ve read here and in innumerable other commentaries. All is right in the world of Scottish nationalism. File under Self-delusion of the grandest order.

24 April 2023 – the SNP’s apparent inability to replace their accountants who resigned last year could affect not only the party itself, but also their Westminster group of MPs. They receive so-called Short money, granted to opposition parties to help defray their expenses. If they do not file their accounts by 31 May (only five weeks away) they stand to lose £1,2 million. Westminster leader Stephen Flynn is quoted as saying ‘I thought it would be a relatively straight forward process to secure new auditors but that’s proven not to be the case’. Hmm, I wonder why.

25 April 2003 – a bonus today. Two updates to add. 1. Ex-SNP treasurer Colin Beattie (see 18 and 19 April above) has clarified when he first found out the party had bought a motorhome. ‘He was asked by journalists whether he knew about and had signed off the purchase. “No, I didn’t know about that,” he said [similar vans are said to retail for over £100,000]. He later said although he did not know about the transaction at the time of purchase, he found out about it in the 2021 annual accounts.’ 2. Nicola Sturgeon has broken her recent silence with what looks like an impromptu press conference (for which read rammy) in a Holyrood corridor. She said ‘the police investigation into the party’s finances did not influence her decision to stand down as first minister’. So now you know. The same article records that the party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn only knew about the motorhome ‘when it was printed on the front of a newspaper’ and that Humza Yousaf only discovered the party owned the motorhome when he saw a warrant outlining property that the police wanted to confiscate. It’s beginning to look as if never was so little known about something by so many.


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Why I voted No in 2014

Posted on 4 April 2023 by Roger White

I’ve just seen someone on Twitter (@putey_pute here) explain why he voted No in 2014 and ask:

What made you decide, if you had to decide at all?

In some ways, it seems a curious question to ask after all this time. But we’re stuck in a sort of political stasis with recent opinion polls showing exactly the same appetite for independence as in 2014 – No 55%, Yes 45%. And this after 17 years of SNP government. Mr Pute’s getting some interesting answers to his question. With the SNP down on their uppers perhaps it is a good time nearly a decade later to revisit the question and consider what if anything has changed.

So here are my reasons in no particular order, from memory refreshed by occasional reference back to my blog.

Sentiment

Don’t underplay sentiment in determining people’s views. Judging by what was said and done at the time, it certainly seemed to drive much of the mood for separation in 2014 with frequent references by leading separatists to ‘destiny’ and the ‘sovereign will of the Scottish people’, not to mention the whole panoply of Scottish accessories – tartan, pipes, tammies, saltires and the rest. It all sat uneasily with the desperate attempt to persuade waverers and the non-committed that it was really all about civic nationalism (see for example Destiny and civic nationalism).

Well, as I and many others had reinforced at the time, there’s another sort of sentiment – that of shared family, friends, experience and culture across Britain. For me, that played strongly in 2014 and still does.

Charlatans, chancers and frankly unpleasant people

Even in the run-up to the 2014 referendum I could see too many nationalists who just didn’t strike the right tone to convince me. Here are a few examples.

First, a graphic produced by Yes Scotland that put simply says ‘We’re decent folks. Here are the mainstream Brits lined up with some dodgy types including racists and fascists’:

If not in a legal sense, the association was certainly defamatory in common parlance. And guess who retweeted it with Yes Scotland’s caption ‘Look who lines up for Yes. And who lines up for No. #indyref #voteYes #Scotland.’ Correct, Nicola Sturgeon (see On the relevance of fellow travellers).

Then there were the spurious ‘Xyz for Yes’ groups that emerged from nowhere, most if not all the offspring of the Yes Scotland campaign, heavily dominated by the SNP, and all designed to give the sense of a movement broader and deeper than it ever was. Lawyers for Yes was a classic example, with a glance at the leading lights telling you all you needed to know. One of them was quoted as addressing a meeting of property developers with the memorable justification for separation that ‘setting up of the mechanisms of a new state will provide a huge boost to the corporate and commercial property sector.’  You knew it, Office Developers for Yes.

Finally, or at least in terms of what determined my vote in 2014, there was the whole fringe of frankly weird and sometimes hate-filled groups and individuals that appeared on the streets and in your face, not just on a pretend football pitch – the cosplayers, the Scottish Resistance, the fascist Seed of the Gael, and the producer of the so-called Wee Blue Book.

It’s the economy, stupid

Oil at $113 a barrel will save the nation (paraphrase from ‘Scotland’s Future’). The most ludicrous example of the fantasy economics that drove the Yes campaign. There was a lot more of course, even unto the claimed share of UK assets a separate Scotland would inherit and the cost and speed of setting up shop separately after the purported independence day (24 March 2016 since you asked). All well documented at the time. Nine years on that all-time expensive oil has been replaced by the nirvana of renewable energy and the lie that the EU are gagging to have us back.

On the day of the referendum, my gut feeling that my No vote was the right one was reinforced by what I saw around me – on the media the sight of naïve Yes voters being led by a piper, Hamelin-style, towards a polling station in Glasgow; a clapped-out estate car covered in Yes tat at the nearest distance it could get to my polling station without being hauled away; and bumping into my elderly neighbour who was so worried that the vote would go the other way. And after, more nastiness, from Salmond and Sturgeon’s refusal to attend the subsequent service of reconciliation, to the continuing drip-drip of defamation, like the online abuse of my then-local former Labour MP Anne Begg, and of course much more until the present day.

So sentiment, the unpleasantness of many separatists and the economy. Has anything improved in the case for independence that would make change my mind? Mark me down as unrepentant.

Note for any passing unsympathetic nationalist. If you read my blog you’ll realise this is not a case for Scotland remaining as part of the UK. It only seeks to answer the question of what made me vote the way I did in 2014. No whataboutery in response, thanks.

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