🚨🚨 NEW: The Standards Commission is being formally investigated by National Records of Scotland for their destruction of records. The destruction coincided with 3 live court proceedings concerning human rights protections and procedural fairness. heraldscotland.com/news/2657…

Amen to @AlexNeilSNP He is absolutely right! Not on only embarrassing but two disgraceful performances from a Government out of control, no empathy and no solutions. Our citizens die but let’s play the constitution card. They are a pack of 🃏 Let’s have an away day to Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 with a photo call and ride on Sinn Fein coat tails to gain independence, whilst poverty escalates, housing crisis escalates , drug deaths escalates … A national disgrace.

@AlexNeilSNP was a proper and capable politician.

BREAKING: Drug deaths rise 11% as Scottish figures remain worst in Europe bbc.in/4dvoc90

Citizens will continue to die so long as this shameful, irresponsible nonsense is the response. I'd hope there would be some in the SNP who will publicly condemn this disgraceful MSP.

It’s I’ll thought out nonsense Gerry. No preparatory research has been done to provide the evidence as to what works and what doesn’t. We are being ‘governed’ by a bunch of amateurs

How Scotland is run & how power is dispersed matters. The SNP Scottish Govt proposals for reducing local government to potentially six strategic authorities would be the biggest centralisation of power seen in public life. This matters more than today's Scot Parl debate on indy.

A Guardian headline proclaims 'everyone knows we should break the pensions triple lock'. Given that it's the worst state pension in Europe, there's actually a case for doubling it.

The Tories, Reform and the UK right-wing all attack the appointment of TUC head Paul Nowak as a director of the Bank of England. Guess they all think board rooms are just for the rich, powerful & their friends & not representatives of working people. Telling.

The Scottish Government should abandon plans for a home-grown NHS app and simply use the version already in use in England, according to a new report by two former health secretaries 👇

I completely reject the way the BBC has framed this argument, and particularly the suggestion that the triple lock is somehow becoming unsustainable because pensioners’ living standards have improved more quickly than those of working people. That is an extraordinarily narrow way of looking at what has actually happened. There is a rather important part of this story that is being conveniently overlooked. Successive Conservative governments froze the personal tax allowance, and the present Labour Government has continued that policy. The consequence for pensioners is particularly stark. Their State Pension rises, as it should, yet the amount they are permitted to receive before paying income tax remains frozen. They are therefore being steadily dragged into the tax system through fiscal drag, with an increasing proportion of their pension becoming taxable. Indeed, we are now reaching the absurd position where the full new State Pension itself is likely to exceed the personal tax allowance. The Government will increase the pension under the triple lock and then, because it refuses to raise the tax threshold, begin taking part of that increase back in taxation. If we are going to talk about a “ratchet effect”, perhaps that is the ratchet effect we ought to be discussing. Nor are these payments some unexpected act of generosity bestowed upon pensioners by the state. These are people who have worked and paid National Insurance contributions throughout their lives on the understanding that, when they reached retirement, the State Pension would form part of their income. For millions of people, that was part of the social contract between the individual and the state. We should also remember how that contract has already changed. When many of today’s pensioners began their working lives, the State Pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Those ages have since been increased. People have already been required to work longer and wait longer before receiving the pension towards which they spent decades contributing. Against that background, to portray a State Pension of around £250 a week as evidence that pensioners are somehow becoming too prosperous is frankly absurd. Nobody could seriously describe that sum, from which people must meet the ordinary costs of living, as an extravagant retirement income. The triple lock was introduced for a reason. The value of the British State Pension had been allowed to fall behind earnings over many years, while pensioner poverty became a serious national problem. It was designed to prevent that happening again and to ensure that pensioners shared, at least to some reasonable extent, in the rising prosperity of the country rather than being progressively left behind. So the question should not be whether Britain can afford to honour the triple lock. The more pertinent question is why governments believe it acceptable to increase the State Pension while deliberately freezing the tax threshold until that pension itself becomes taxable. After a lifetime of work and contributions, pensioners are not asking for charity. They are asking for the settlement they spent their working lives paying towards to be honoured. That distinction matters.

Cathie Craigie, Labour MSP 1999 - 2011, has sadly died. She was the first woman MSP to steer a Member’s Bill through Holyrood - the Mortgage Rights (Scotland) Act, which provides greater protection for those facing repossession 💜

Such sad news. Spoke with here only a few short months ago as she helped with urgent casework to reunite a family. A lovely woman.

Apologists for SNP failures in education policy ought to read recent book by Professor Lindsay Paterson, 'Lessons for Schools' + much else incl in today's Scotsman. Lindsay has long warned about problems, is Scotland's most sophisticated methodologist and expert in this field.

Hello Alex, I have no idea what you mean 😉😉 Hope you’re well.

This is spot on - the myth I was told was that the committees were the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the parliament - In reality questions are provided by clerks, many MSPs don’t read their papers, the system is heavily whipped and reports often watered down

EXCLUSIVE from @oliver_wright Labour’s pledge to scrap the organisation that runs the NHS is unravelling due to its workers’ high salaries Wes Streeting announced in March last year that the government would abolish the “world’s biggest quango”, NHS England, and bring responsibility for managing the health service back to Whitehall But now ministers have been asked to consider setting up another quango, described as NHS England 2.0, to take on many of the current body’s staff Yvette Cooper, the new health secretary, was warned by officials that the initial plan was unworkable because NHS England staff had far better pay and conditions than counterparts at the Department of Health NHS managers can earn up to £45,000 more than those doing their equivalent role in the civil service Under government finance rules, Cooper would need permission from the Treasury for each staff member’s salary that exceeds the normal civil service pay level She has been advised by officials to set up a new quango that would employ thousands of those currently working for NHS England Cooper is expected to make a decision by the end of the week. The legislation needed to enact the change is due to come before MPs next week A government source insisted that NHS England staff would be brought into the health department but confirmed there were financial issues to work through. They denied a new quango would need to be created thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…

In April, we cut taxes at the pump — lowering your gas prices by 10 cents a litre.     Today, we announced we’re extending that tax cut: canada.ca/en/department-fina…