Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

On a business account it's not unreasonable. I've run up some hefty bills while working overseas.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

For 7 (seven) gigabytes of data?

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...wn-affair.html

This party has denied this saying the allegations have been around for months.

Seems an odd one, has the sense of one of those stories keeping the names under wraps is untenable in the social media age (there’s already as much speculation as you’d imagine on Twatter).

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

The hashtag #HumzaBinShaggin Is trending on the Xitter this morning. Can’t imagine why.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Should had a payg tariff. Where being overcharged and surprising bills are impossible. #takebackcontrol

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Maybe not?

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

I think that question is over now, for some time.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Certainly, I look forward to Chris and his thoughts on the Scottish result.

A collapse in SNP votes - part turnout, part Labour up, Tories down and LDs narrowly down.

The proportional system* would save the SNP to some extent in Scottish elections but if they aren’t the largest party (and out of Government) it’d be unreasonable to expect a pro-independence argument to prevail on a single election victory at a later date.

It pushes the idea of a referendum into the mid-2030s and application of it a couple of years after that.

*There’s a potential for infighting over positions at the top of the regional lists too as ex-MPs and constituency MSPs on the brink seek refuge there.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

It was over in 2014. It’s just taken the SNP 10 years to realise it. Sadly they still have power over a substantial range of devolved issues and their clown car will splutter on for a while yet.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Thing is though. Knowing what I know from my years working with mobile operators is that you will usually need to turn off a price cap limiter. Vodafone had a, I think it was £150 roaming charge limit. You would get a notification via text that you reached it, you can then turn that off if you agree that you be be charged further and usually the sms has cost breakdown etc.

I presume most other networks would have similar. I had many conversations with customers about roaming charges and large bills in my time in CEO and high level complaints and customer relations. Having to listen to their story and then trawl through the account trying to pinpoint when their charges started and if they received the networks sms and if they responded.

Many wouldn't bother fully reading the details and just wanted to use their phone. £2,300 data charges when a guy was on research vessel near Russia. Everything verified and he was liable to pay. Happened to folk on cruises as no network coverage but they had their own systems to enable mobile usage.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

You’re not going to get much cogent analysis from me on less than 6 hours sleep :D

The result is very bad for the SNP because it makes them stink of failure. Especially awkward for Honest John because last time he led the SNP they were not known for winning either. That puts them on the back foot when we get to the election that really matters for the independence campaign, which is Holyrood 2026. By that point, Labour might be showing either a few early triumphs or failure to improve much at all, and that will feed through to the Scottish general election. That said, two ferries are still not in service and the bill is going up. Access to GPs, dentists and operations on the NHS is dreadful (and it makes no odds if it’s slightly less awful than England … people understand that the service is devolved and they know who’s making the decisions that are failing to improve things). We still have no deposit return scheme, highly questionable performance of Scottish schools in international league tables … the list goes on.

Add to all that the fact that an intellectual belief in Scotland as an independent country is no longer coupled to any particular political party* and we might actually have arrived at where Sturgeon and Salmond said we would be if they lost in 2014: independence as a project parked for a generation.

*It’s worth noting that Alba got fewer votes in Scotland than Reform UK yesterday, though I don’t know how many Scottish seats each party ran in so it’s hard to know exactly how irrelevant Salmond still is.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Although Alba are clearly crackpots, I do think it’s been a bad look for the SNP being more keen to cuddle up to the Greens and trans activists. Not convinced it plays well in greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire. An area I’d previously identified as “soft” - not lifelong independence voters in areas previously held Labour since the extension of the franchise to working men (sight exaggeration).

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

The SNP’s problem was that the Yes movement tried to build a broad coalition in 2014, giving each client group a reason to vote for Indy without any overall convincing offer for how it would work without being eye-wateringly expensive and ball-breakingly difficult. They got arts and media luvvies, LGBTQWTAF activists, environmentalists, CND’ers, the hard Left and a whole lot else besides to come into the tent. Nicola’s bright idea was to try to make the SNP a similarly big tent post 2014. That was fatal and always liable to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions eventually. Even if the bulk of the socially progressive cranks are still on-board, the single biggest group, Scunnered of Shettleston, (who believed Yes, and then the SNP, when they were told ‘vote for us and you’ll be better off’) have finally woken up and smelled the Buckfast. Meanwhile the Tartan Tories who were appalled by the SNP’s lurch to the left have by no means all returned to the fold, as seats in and around the SNP’s traditional heartland in the northeast attest.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

If that's true, the average voter has a lot more common sense in Scotland than they do in Wales. The average voter in my area look blank if you explain that the devolved government have been responsible for the past 25 years and not Westminster.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Devolution in Wales was always a bonkers idea. England and Wales have had the same legal system and the same body of primary legislation since the 16th century. It works in Scotland because the union of 1707 deliberately preserved the concept of Scotland as a distinct legal entity within the united parliament of Great Britain. There has always been a political dimension to Scottishness that I never detected when I lived and worked in Wales, where Welshness was an entirely cultural/linguistic thing.

There was a whole raft of things devolved government could immediately take control of in Scotland and which people could immediately understand were now Holyrood’s domain because while they had previously been delivered by the Scottish Office, which was a Westminster government department led by UK government ministers, it was empowered by distinctly Scottish legislation.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

going buy the fact the amount of scotts that deserted the SNP, I believe that the independence vote is dead and buried.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

They did not turn to Alba either.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Thank the Lord the SNP lost almost all their votes, We have had enough,

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Well just have to wait and see what happens in the next local and Scottish government elections in two years. Will people still vote out the SNP, we can only hope.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

While they lost the vast majority of their MPs they got 30% of the vote. The PR system for electing the Scottish Parliament would, if the result was replicated, translate to something like 40 seats. Labour would have something like 46.

Tactical voting won't be the same, that's not to say it can't happen. The move in Glasgow and Lanarkshire would be Labour with the first vote Lib Dem with the second. Very 1999. The first loser, for which I'm sure everyone has a special tiny violin, would probably be the Greens on the independence leaning side.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Welshness from the Cardiff Bay and Plaid's perspective is the sheer joy at every penny from Westminster that you can pour down the drain.

It will be interesting times for Wales, Gething should never have been put in the post when the scandal came to light but the unions are the ones responsible for him being there. I don't think it will be long before Westminster and Welsh Labour cracks start to show.

One thing we can thank Scotland for is the talk of Welsh independence going almost silent.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Might be twice as loud, Plaid Cymru have doubled their MPs.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

I doubt the SNP with nine are going to make much of a difference, so Plaid with four are irrelevant.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

So, not far off two years later, one of these (MV Glen Sannox) is cruising the Firth of Clyde on sea trials and due to enter service next month. CMAL - the Scottish ferry procurement business which is wholly state owned, with Scottish Ministers as its shareholders - has produced an environmental assessment at the request of said ministers, who are desperate for a good headline for when the ship enters service (six years late and four times over budget).

The problem is, CMAL has produced an assessment so optimistic it would make Eric Idle blush. It doesn’t account for known quirks in the new fuel system (such as the fact they periodically belch pure unburned methane into the atmosphere) nor the fact that LNG has to be shipped to the UK from Qatar at significant environmental cost.

These new ferries, Wee Nippy Sturgeon once boasted, were emblems of Scotland’s bold, world-leading green future. They are late and over-budget in part because of the green technology installed in them. Yet now, to the surprise of absolutely nobody outside the fanatical ‘wheesht for Indy’ cult, yet another one of Nicola’s boasts turns out to have no more substance than Brig’o’Doon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy87e72yg3o

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

But labour love it:rolleyes:

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Nicola Sturgeon will not seek re-election at next year’s Scottish general election.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg5j74ld9lo

I’m not sure she’s been bearing the standard she thinks she has.

Don’t let the door hit you on the bahookie on the way out, hen.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Brand new…overdue….£400M ferry has crack in hull.

Money well spent.

https://news.sky.com/story/fiasco-hi...rvice-13328718

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

needs thicker paint ;)

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

If it was as thick as the SNP it might just work

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

lol :D

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

How much has been spent on not building HS2 and, to the nearest decade, how late will it be?

It's not like the UK has a long and successful track record of procurement with public money or infrastructure projects.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

… for those not acquainted with what passes for political debate in Scotland, this is the standard natbot reply to every criticism levelled at the Scottish government with regard to the ferry fiasco. Literally every thread you can find on Xitter or Facebook will have this exact retort in it somewhere (and usually several times over).

Someone else wasn’t very good at something, therefore it’s ok for us to be crap at our jobs.

And they accuse unionists of talking Scotland down.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

For those not acquainted with unionist retorts in Scotland, they generally look at this too.

No genuine regard for value for money to the taxpayer - London gets a free pass ten times over. No appetite to understand any wider issues so long as they can say “SNPbad”. If the independence argument (essentially that of this thread) presents two choices it’s entirely relevant to point out that the UK Government is equally, if not more, rubbish.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Don't think there has been any 'value for money' in a very long time.e for anything.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Every fiasco is bad on its own terms. Standard nat whataboutery (and its sibling, ‘wheesht fer Indy’) doesn’t add to the analysis, it attempts (badly) to deflect from it. It is a fact that this week, MV Glen Sannox has been benched - again - because of a basic manufacturing fault. That anyone else, anywhere else, has ever made a bad decision in public procurement does not alter that fact, nor does it alter the conclusions we can reasonably draw from it.

There is an HS2 thread on the forum, feel free to vent your spleen on it about how awfully that has been managed. I agree with you, it’s a travesty, and wholesale planning reform is required if any major infrastructure project is ever to be affordable and timely in the UK ever again.

None of which detracts from the absolute catastrophe caused by the SNP’s transparent attempt to buy Clydeside votes for the nationalist cause by favouring a small, failing shipyard with a contract that was beyond its expertise, then compounding the error with a series of complacent, mule-headed bureaucratic decisions that guaranteed the failure of a difficult project in inexperienced hands.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Conclusions that can be drawn once you apply any deeper meaning to it (independence, SNP competence) absolutely do depend what happens elsewhere because the ballot box is a choice of alternatives.

The same applies when Scottish Labour howl at the moon about NHS performance it’s not unreasonable to look at the rest of the UK and in particular Wales. SNPbad works better if it can be demonstrated that literally anyone else is good.

To date none of the branch offices can do that and, even against the backdrop you portray above, it looks like the SNP may well win at a canter once again next year and Labour get almost wiped out in the FPTP seats as Scotland reject Austerity 2.0 and warfare over welfare. They’ll get saved in the regional lists by “Daddy voted Labour and his Daddy voted Labour” types.

Battle for the Planet of the Apes at the other side as well since the Conservatives will fight Reform for Rangers fans attracted to flags.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Whatabout ... whatabout ... whatabout .... :zzz:

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

And yet nobody can adequately counter the point, they can merely object to the premise that they should. A tried and tested election strategy by unionists in Scotland, it’s why the SNP always win.

Chris did eventually get round to identifying the planning system as the enemy of infrastructure projects, similarly any public procurement is held up by subsidy control (formerly State Aid) rules designed to curtail the role of the state rather than drive efficiencies or deliver value. Add in the erosion of the state to the extent all “experts” have to be brought in as contractors on exorbitant daily rates, reports commissioned, risks assessed in a big private sector gravy train for which there is almost never a penalty for failure.

One might reasonably suggest the system needs ripped up, and that’s more achievable outside the UK.

*planning itself is a devolved area, rules around subsidy control are not.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

A tried and tested objection based, here, on the premise of a topic-based discussion forum. The HS2 topic is still there. I note you are still not exercised enough by its issues to actually post there. Because, of course, you mention it purely to distract attention from what is possibly the single most egregious failure of SNP policy. (Until, of course, NHS Scotland gets sued to within an inch of its life next year for implementing de facto gender self ID in all its staff changing rooms on instructions from Bute House. But that’s another topic again).

Wow. What a word salad - and all with the intent of ignoring one simple fact. Nationalists need symbols, and these hulls, produced by the last shipyard on the lower Clyde, were meant to be those symbols. The fact is that SNP politicians are of such poor calibre, not only did they force an inadequate shipyard to start building from inadequate designs, they couldn’t even understand that sooner or later they would be held accountable for the mess they made.

And so every time a new aspect of their brave new world goes to rat poop, their loyal foot soldiers are deployed to point and shout, anywhere, absolutely anywhere, but at the leaders who (had they got their way) would be runnning an entire nation state by now.

We have dodged a bullet. Sadly the inhabitants of Arran have not.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

I don’t need to be sufficiently exercised to post about HS2 in that thread to invoke it in others. As I outlined above elections, and a hypothetical independence referendum, are a choice of options on the table. The SNP track record held against Labour, the Conservatives and anyone else.

You won’t find me sticking up for self-ID as a principle anywhere, and especially when it’s not the law of the land. It is a shame though that none of the unionist parties opposed it when the Scottish Parliament passed a Bill that was outside devolved competence. An open goal missed to instead pander to a woke agenda, so obviously out of step with the population as a whole, leaving them unable to capitalise on the scandal you correctly predict.

You say all of the above as if the average person is expected to believe the uniparty down south are capable of running a nation state anywhere other than into the ground.

It may well be a bullet dodged but the damning indictment for unionism is that even unionists can’t find a positive thing to say about it.

As you will know, although others may not, the state broadcaster has done the ferries scandal to death up here for a number of years and it has barely moved the dial. For unionists in debating these thing the answer is seemingly to simply accept delay, exceeding budget and overrun as the norm so long as it has a red or blue tinge.

The “word salad” as you put it was broadly agreeing with you, and I’m sure if you re-read it in any context other than the opportunity for an anti-SNP diatribe you’d broadly agree with it. Once again an inherent problem with unionist debating “techniques”. Little wonder neither the Labour or Conservative Party can make inroads on an SNP that is on it’s third leader in three years and fairly objectively should be running on fumes.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

(Edit) as if by magic my Xitter feed offers me this nugget. Note the ferry’s bridge has no windows - these were painted on (yes, really) to make the thing look presentable for what was a pure photo op. Note also the date, 8 years ago. This thing sat in the water for 8 years before entering fare-paying service.

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/atta...1&d=1742067760

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

No one needs to. HS2 (failings or otherwise) have zero effect or relevance to the mess being discussed.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

It absolutely is relevant when Scottish voters go to the ballot box and the topic of independence. As much as I'd like what happens in the rest of the UK to be a balls up in a foreign country, it isn't.

Similarly Michelle Mone and the PPE scandal, aircraft carriers with no aircraft , Thames Water, etc. These are all examples of UK Government balls ups relevant for Scottish taxpayers as much as the rest of the UK. 400 million - on a boat that goes back into service today - is extremely small beer despite the best efforts of the BBC and unionist parties to portray that the SNP are uniquely capable of ballsing up.

One could equally argue a (similarly weak) point it's not relevant to this thread how bad the SNP get because an independent Scotland wouldn't necessarily vote SNP. All those competent unionist parties might win.