It’s too early for panto season and too late for April Fools’ Day — yet that didn’t stop First Minister John Swinney from spinning another fairy tale.
Having presided over some of the most astonishing, bill-inflating energy policies in recent memory, Swinney now sets out his stall for an election waffle-fest.
His latest fabrication? That energy would somehow be cheaper in an independent Scotland — despite offering no evidence when challenged.
He’s not just being fanciful – he’s being economically incoherent.
His government’s reckless “build, build, build” obsession with wind turbines — and the colossal infrastructure needed to prop up a volatile, intermittent energy source — has driven up bills for consumers across the UK, not just in Scotland. With no guaranteed customers for his over-deployment of wind energy, Swinney is sitting on top of a volcano of constraint payments primed and ready to erupt and blow our electricity bills into the stratosphere.
He and his Big Energy cheerleading English counterpart, Ed Miliband, appear locked in a bizarre race to see who can silence communities and devastate our rural environment fastest — while doing nothing for energy security and everything for unaffordable electricity.
Swinney should be careful. He’s spinning faster than the turbines he’s so keen to spear into our cherished land and seascapes. With factoids flying and his trousers perpetually ablaze, it’s only a matter of time before voters ask whether he’s failed his emissions test.
A branch of our family came from Inverness to America a few generations ago. One of the items that came with them is a sterling plaid brooch hand-engraved on the front with thistles, the initials “D.C.H.F.S.” and the date “1845”.
On the back is hand-engraved in handsome script “To Jas. McPherson for Pibrochs”.
Clearly this is a prize awarded to an accomplished bagpiper at a competition or Highland Games.
I am wondering if readers know what the initials represent, please?
The Highlands’ care sector faces “catastrophic” loss of “swathes of social care provision” due to UK government policies, according to a new report from Highland Council and NHS Highland.
“The care sector is on the verge of collapse as there is too high a demand. Be it in education, like Drummond School, care in the community, sheltered and supported housing it is overstretched. I, from personal experience, find some of the so-called trained social workers to be inadequately trained.” – Jeanette Wallace, Buckie
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