A thread outlining some of the SNP government’s financial and economic failures.
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1️⃣ Remember Fracking?
“Fracking is being banned in Scotland, end of story,”- Nicola Sturgeon
But it later turned out she squandered £175,000 to plead in court that she hadn’t actually banned fracking at all...
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2️⃣ That publicly owned energy company...
Four years ago Sturgeon pledged “energy would be bought wholesale or generated here in Scotland...and sold to customers as close to cost price as possible”.
Despite £400,000 spent, no company was ever established
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3️⃣ Air Passenger Duty (APD)
The SNP promised to reduce APD “to boost Scotland’s economy” if ever devolved.
It has been devolved. Still no sign of any APD reductions
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4️⃣ VAT
Sturgeon (who claims Scottish independence can be delivered in just 18 months) postponed accepting key VAT powers.
Holyrood was offered control over half share of VAT collected in Scotland. Sadly Sturgeon has been declining this power since 2014 Smith Commission
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5️⃣ Disastrous interventions
The SNP has wasted more than £400 million of tax money on a series of catastrophic interventions.
Prestwick Airport, BiFab, Ferguson Marine.
No jobs. Zero profits. No business prospects improved.
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6️⃣ First Home Fund
The SNP flagship policy originally pledged £200m for the First Home Fund. Designed to help hone buyers with deposits.
It shut down days after launching, after running out of money. Sturgeon had slashed the £200m to just £60m this year
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7️⃣ £700m
Kate Forbes was given an extra £700m of Covid related Barnett Formula cash.
Institute for Fiscal Studies, reveals that a large chunk of that money was not spent on Covid related support. It was used to pay for SNP election bribes like free bus travel for youths
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8️⃣ Where’s the business?
Scotland has the smallest number of businesses per head of any part of the UK, with the only exception being the northeast England.
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None of that is a record for an incumbent party to be proud of.
Scotland’s post-covid recovery cannot be left in the incompetent hands of this SNP government.
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Sources:
‘SNP should pay for financial and economic failures’
A recent poll has made a big splash about the potential of this #Supermajority. But if we take a moment to just look at the polling trend lines, it's far too early to be making any sort of prognostication about any such thing.
Plus SNP majority? What SNP majority?
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➡️Trend line since January 2021 - early April
Even to a layman's eyes, the downward trajectory of SNP support in regional polling is obvious.
If anyone is interested, the trendlines are local regressions (LOESS)
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Here the same downward trajectory can also still be seen with SNP constituency polling; albeit their support on the constituency has a higher upper level it's declining from.
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A fourth thread in my series calling out #Holyrood2021 election half truths, misleading nonsense & lies.
I'm focusing on a misleading claim by @theSNP about 'ending period poverty' for women. Also questioning just how 'committed' they are to improving the lives of women.
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I want to focus specifically on the highlighted claim, where the SNP are claiming credit for 'ending period poverty' for women.
This features as part of a wider claim about 'improving the life chances of women' more generally.
Date of their tweet was April 2nd 2021.
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➡️On ending period poverty for women
The heart of this boast by the SNP is the 'Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Bill'; which was unanimously passed into law in November 2020.
Unanimous! Great, so the SNP deserve the credit you might think...but wait...
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So far we've seen the SNP being told to repay £20,000 in #Covid19 support grants. Money originally intended to support small businesses, instead used to support nationalist politicking.
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It's clear that Tim Rideout was teaching SNP supporters ways to 'game' the Covid business support grants.
But not just that, proceeding to also encourage a diversion of funds to his own group.
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And his facebook boast "I have made over £50k for the indy cause today" stands ingloriously out there for all to see.
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Also: constituency vote indicates that the SNP have not managed to turn the Hamilton Report moment into a strategic reset. Instead this poll, much like the general trend since October last year, suggests a continued slow unravelling of SNP support in the constituency numbers.
Only question is, will SNP support unravel fast enough to have an impact in the election in five weeks time? That I don't know.
FM spoke of the importance of equality of opportunity in her 2016 priorities for Gov speech: “It will help to create not just a fairer nation, but one that is wealthier, healthier and happier”
Let’s look at food insecurity & childhood health to see if she delivered.
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📈 Food Insecurity Rising 📈
The 2019 Scottish Health Survey showed that 9% of adults experienced food insecurity in the preceding 12 months.
While this is bad, it’s actually worse than you think.
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The percentage food insecurity was 8% in 2017. It actually increased to 9% in 2018 and has stayed there through 2019. So food insecurity got worse under the SNP 2017-2019.
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