Now will the small minds of the SNP twig what voters care about?
Time to trim constituency
Yet another bright light in Holyrood is dimmed, as Deputy First Minister [[Kate Forbes]] announces her intention to stand down from politics in 2026.
Ms Forbes certainly lit up the Chamber back in 2020 as the first female to deliver a Scottish Budget (incidentally at short notice) and she brought great ability and commitment to her new-found position.
To be an MSP in such a rural and geographically taxing constituency as Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch would be difficult for anyone, but for a mum with a young child it presents a scenario which raises questions. Should the Boundary Commission be considering geographically halving the constituency to make it manageable? Should Parliament be looking for options for such a widely-spread constituency? The make-up of constituencies should be manageable in the interest of constituents and their representatives.
Catriona C Clark, Falkirk.
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How much did Sturgeon cost us?
In her paean of praise for Nicola Sturgeon's 'many achievements', Ruth Marr (Letters, August 2) draws a veil over the costs to the public purse of these policies. With regard to the SNP's abolition of prescription charges, perhaps one example will suffice to illustrate the financial impact of this policy. The cost to NHS Scotland in 2023-24 for paracetamol prescriptions alone was £14 million. Adding pharmacy dispensing charges of £7m brings the total cost to £21m.
A Google search reveals that a pack of paracetamol can be bought for around 90p in any supermarket.
Alan Ramage, Edinburgh.
• It is notable that the list of "achievements" by Nicola Sturgeon given by Ruth Marr all involve her spending other people's money.
I wonder if Ms Marr can come up with an example of Ms Sturgeon making a positive contribution to achieving economic growth in Scotland.
She certainly made many negative contributions like destroying the ferry service to Arran and allowing her erstwhile allies in the Green Party to introduce measures like National Planning Framework 4 that are strangling economic development all over Scotland.
I also wonder if Ms Marr is aware that her hero's actions in relation to the ferries, including having the Glen Sannox launched on her direct orders six months before the ship was ready so that she could upstage the Conservative Defence Secretary when he was announcing new jobs, and her contribution to the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery by further high-handed actions, have resulted in the new "greener" ferries actually being responsible for more emissions of carbon dioxide than their conventionally powered predecessors.
This is because the diesel fuel that the conventional ferries use can be brought to Ardrossan by electrically powered railway trains but the Liquefied Natural Gas needed to make the new ferries "greener" has to be transported from Essex on diesel-powered lorries.
You couldn't make it up.
Peter Wylie, Paisley.
Indy target should be two-thirds
As GR Weir (Letters, August 2) has not answered my simple question as to how he would define his 'stable majority" for independence, allow me to propose two-thirds for consideration.
In my view, irrespective of how, when and by whom the decision to hold another inevitably divisive referendum on independence is taken, the stable polling majority sufficient to justify it must be understood in advance, and to achieve independence the actual voting result must at least confirm that polling majority. That result can then be taken as the settled will of the people at that time. The same requirements would apply to any subsequent calls for a rejoin referendum.
As Mr Weir will know, to change the constitution of the [[SNP]], the principal advocate of independence, requires at least a two-thirds majority (Article 27), so nationalists should have no difficulty in supporting my proposal.
Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.
Why can't they admit mistakes?
Kevin McKenna's interview with Jackie Baillie on Saturday (''I hated how Sandie Peggie's daughter was used', says Scottish Labour deputy leader', The Herald, August 2) highlights an uncomfortable but increasingly familiar feature of our politics: an unwillingness to accept responsibility for past decisions.
In December 2022 Scottish Labour gave full support to the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The party whipped its MSPs to vote in favour and, with their backing, the legislation was passed by the Scottish Parliament.
Since then, the well-publicised cases of Isla Bryson and Sandie Peggie have shown that public concern is widespread – particularly about allowing individuals to legally change their gender through self-identification, thereby acquiring all the rights of their preferred gender. Labour now appears to be pivoting in response to that unease.
Jackie Baillie attempts to distance the party from the fallout by suggesting Labour's support of the bill was dependent on key amendments and a future consultation with the UK Government. This rings hollow.
If those amendments were so crucial, why did the party not withdraw its support when they were not accepted? And what purpose does consultation serve after a bill has been passed?
This kind of political hedging only deepens public distrust in the integrity of politicians. Would it not be more honest and more effective to simply say "Sorry. We got this wrong"?
George Rennie, Inverness.
How will Nicola Sturgeon be remembered? (Image: PA)
Let the media into Gaza
The first and continuing victim of war is truth. Despite evidence from non-Palestinians, western doctors among them, about the near-famine conditions in Gaza, it has not come as a surprise to watch and listen to Israeli officials claim it is a lie that Palestinians are facing starvation. From what I have seen from interviews with [[Israel]]i citizens, they too believe the world is subject to Hamas propaganda.
There is a way for the world to see, without bias, the actual conditions under which Palestinians are now compelled to live – reverse the present [[Israel]]i policy and let the world's media into [[Gaza]] so that we can all see for ourselves from objective reporting. If not, why not, is the question Keir Starmer should put to his [[Israel]]i counterpart.
As for Hamas, is it not past time for those in its leadership languishing in the safety of Qatar to be asked why, given its ability to construct miles of tunnels in Gaza, it did not build shelters for the population when it must have known that Israel would respond to the atrocity of October 7 with a fury not seen before?
Jim Sillars, Edinburgh.
Shame on Ian Murray
The Secretary of State for Scotland's antipathy towards the Scottish Government is persistent, but surely reached a new low when he castigated Public Finance Minister Ivan McKee for using the word 'genocide' during a BBC broadcast discussion about recognising the state of Palestine ("Minister confirms Scottish Government 'genocide' in Gaza position", heraldscotland, August 3).
Ian Murray wants the courts to decide what is genocide, presumably before the UK Government acts, and despite the fact that the UN Special Committee, Amnesty International and Médicin San Frontières have all used the term to describe the continuing Israeli actions in Gaza. In addition, reports from the front line bring us daily reports of massive fatalities, destruction of infrastructure, displacement of communities, murder of aid workers, and human rights abuses, all of which meet the criteria for genocide.
But Ian Murray wants to wait on the courts, and by doing so extends the United Kingdom's complicity in the despicable acts of the Israeli state. Shame on him.
Graeme Forbes, Edinburgh.
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North Wales Chronicle
15 minutes ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Truss ‘carries quite a lot of blame' for Tory record, Badenoch claims
The current Tory leader said she was 'very focused on what the Conservatives are going to do now', after former prime minister Ms Truss accused her of 'repeating spurious narratives'. Speaking on a farm near Saffron Walden in her constituency, Mrs Badenoch also described herself as an 'Essex girl', and added that people from the county 'are grafters; they work hard'. The Leader of the Opposition faced questions about Ms Truss's claim that under the Conservatives, 'the economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by (Rishi) Sunak' and that 'the huge increase in immigration has been a disaster'. Mrs Badenoch told ITV Anglia: 'I know that, as a former prime minister and a former foreign secretary, (Ms Truss) carries quite a lot of that blame. 'The party's now under new leadership. 'I wasn't in charge during those 14 years; she was. 'That's a criticism she's probably levelling at herself.' The Tory leader also said she was 'telling the truth' about her party's record. 'I'm telling the truth that immigration was too high – that's why we have much tougher policies to fix immigration,' she continued. 'I am telling the truth that taxes were too high, that we were putting a lot of regulation on businesses, and what we're seeing is Labour making every single thing worse. 'They're doing that because they haven't learned many of the lessons that we learned. They haven't learned from our mistakes. They're making worse mistakes.' The Labour Government's mistakes include making 'no cut in spending at all – the books were not balanced', Mrs Badenoch claimed. 'We're spending more on welfare than we are on defence – that cannot continue,' she said. Mrs Badenoch had previously told The Telegraph that 'for all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-budget and are making even bigger mistakes'. Ms Truss, who spent 49 days in Number 10, hit back when she said that 'instead of serious thinking', Mrs Badenoch was 'repeating spurious narratives'. She continued: 'I suspect she is doing this to divert from the real failures of 14 years of Conservative government in which her supporters are particularly implicated. 'It was a fatal mistake not to repeal Labour legislation like the Human Rights Act because the modernisers wanted to be the 'heirs to Blair'. 'Huge damage was done to our liberties through draconian lockdowns and enforcement championed by Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings. 'The economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by Sunak. The huge increase in immigration has been a disaster.' Mrs Badenoch also took questions about her identity, after she told the Rosebud podcast: 'I have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s. 'I don't identify with it any more, most of my life has been in the UK and I've just never felt the need to.' The North West Essex MP told ITV Anglia: 'I am definitely an Essex girl, that is a fact.' A London Assembly member before she took her Commons seat in 2017, Mrs Badenoch said: 'I represent an Essex constituency, these are my people. 'I was a Londoner, but Essex people asked me to be their MP, and I want to make sure that I do them proud. And I love this part of the world. 'It's fantastic being here. It's a rural community, and I've been talking to the farmers here. I talked about how my grandfather was a farmer, it's very hard work. 'The people of Essex and East Anglia – they are grafters. 'They work hard, and I want to make sure that we do right by them.' Mrs Badenoch spent Tuesday morning at a farm in Little Walden, where she tried her hand at harvesting wheat using a Claas Lexion combine harvester. She told farmers: 'A lot of farming just feels like constant interference. 'Everything is interfered from the minute you wake up.' Examples of interference included 'chemicals and insecticide, people you're hiring, how much you've got to pay them', plus changes to 'employers' NI (national insurance), then somebody wants to put pylons on, there's compulsory purchase, it's impacting the cost of the land, if you want to add a new farm building, there's planning applications', she said. 'It's just endless constant Government saying, 'You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't move forwards'. 'And the burden in my view has now crossed the threshold.'
The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Tech's trillion-dollar binge, Palantir's empire and women's privacy under attack
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, tech companies are spending amounts of money that stretch the limits of the imagination. Donald Trump's administration is spending more money with data analytics and surveillance firm Palantir. And women on both sides of the Pacific face the extreme difficulty of keeping intimate moments private online. In last week's edition of the newsletter, my colleagues wrote about the upshot of Google's earnings call: lots of money earned, but, more importantly lots of money spent on AI. Even more money shelled out than previously expected: Google revised its predictions for how much it would invest in building up its AI capacity upwards by billions. Investors loved it. Shares up. In the ensuing week, three more tech giants reported their quarterly earnings – Meta, Microsoft and Amazon – and disclosed that they have collectively spent $155bn. Investors expressed elation at the colossal sums. Meta's market capitalization shot up by more than $130bn. Microsoft's valuation soared past $4tn, making the software giant the second publicly traded company to reach that stratospheric milestone. Amazon's financial outlook was murkier, and its shares went down. What a bummer to miss out on the AI stock party. The $155bn sum represents more than the US government has spent on education, training, employment and social services in the 2025 fiscal year so far. One economics research firm claims AI spending has contributed more to the US economy over the past two quarters than consumer spending, traditionally the biggest factor in economic growth. For the coming fiscal year, big tech's total capital expenditure is slated to balloon enormously, surpassing the already eye-popping sums of the previous year. Microsoft plans to unload about $100bn on AI in the next fiscal year, CEO Satya Nadella said. Meta plans to spend between $66bn and $72bn. Alphabet plans to spend $85bn, significantly higher than its previous estimation of $75bn. Amazon estimated that its 2025 expenditure would come to $100bn as it plows money into Amazon Web Services, which analysts now expect to amount to $118bn. In total, the four tech companies will spend more than $400bn on capex in the coming year, according to the Wall Street Journal. Read more about the gargantuan sums of money being spent on AI. Last week, the US army announced a new agreement with Palantir, the Peter Thiel-founded, Alex Karp-run technology company. The agreement combined 75 separate, existing contracts between the army and Palantir into one, and allows for the possibility to purchase goods and services up to $10bn. It's just one of dozens of agreements between the company and the US, a relationship that's only been growing rapidly in the second Trump administration, though it had been on the rise before then. Palantir brought in $373m in revenue from US government contracts in just the first quarter of 2025 – $151.6m more than a year prior. The vast majority of that increase – $148.7m – came from government customers who were already working with the company, according to its earnings reports. Department: Defense Worth: The Department of Defense lists its 'obligations' to Palantir as $1.66bn in the government, which can encompass current and future spending, according to the US government's database of its own spending. Financial analysts estimate Palantir earns $400m in annual recurring revenue from the DoD. The details: The DoD remains Palantir's biggest and oldest customer within the US federal government. The first contract between the two dates back to 2008. The army has made no commitment and is under no obligation to purchase anywhere close to the $10bn figure listed as the value of its new agreement with Palantir, which represents the 'maximum potential value of the contract', according to the press release the government published. The number is not exactly money in hand for Palantir, but analysts seem encouraged it could represent a major source of revenue and more business from the US government. 'It's no obligation but we believe the army will spend billions with Palantir with this contract,' said Dan Ives, managing director at the wealth management firm Wedbush Securities. Department: Homeland Security Worth: $256.7m in obligations Details: The company has been working with the homeland security department since 2011. The vast majority of Palantir's contracts with DHS are to provide services to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or Ice. These amount to $248.3m in obligations. The company's most recent contract with Ice was for $30m to make the deportation process more efficient. Department: Health and Human Services Worth: $385m in obligations Department: Treasury Worth: $140.9m Department: Justice Worth: $204.5m Department: Energy Worth: $91m Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion Department: State Worth: $56.1m Department: Transportation Worth: $55.92m In the UK, Palantir has won a £330m contract with the National Health Service. On both sides of the Pacific Ocean, women are being confronted with the difficulty of keeping their most personal moments private online. In the US, an app that pledged to make IRL dating safer has suffered a breach that may imperil its users. In China, hundreds of thousands of men are sharing explicit pictures without the consent of the women in the photos. The app in the US, Tea, offered a forum for women who subscribed to share past experiences with men so that other women could conduct DIY background checks on their prospective dates, highlighting negative 'red flags' and positive 'green flags'. Tea's owners bill the app as 'the safest place to spill', in reference to the English slang term for gossip. It has topped US download charts in recent weeks, and the company has boasted about a user base of 1.6 million women. It is only available in the US. The app promised 'dating safety tools that protect women'. but in late July, the company discovered that hackers had breached its systems and leaked users' driver's licenses, direct messages and selfies. Users of the noxious message board 4Chan screenshotted and spread Tea users' personal information, according to NPR. A second breach exposed more than a million messages sent by Tea's users, including ones about sensitive topics like abortions or cheating, per 404 Media, which first reported both breaches. The company claimed in a statement that the first breach only affected users who had signed up before February 2024, but the second one was much more recent, 404 reported. In response to the hack, the app has suspended messaging entirely, the BBC reported. Most data breaches inspire little public uproar. The exposure of an email address here, a birthday there can feel commonplace. The breach of Tea is different. The app promised safety as a core feature. It delivered the opposite. The sine qua non of a whisper network like Tea is privacy, the ability to share damning information in secret, which the app failed to protect. Exposing users' identities and messages is the most basic type of failure, one that can be fatal to a product's reputation. To make matters worse, the breach offers red meat to the male-dominated 4Chan forum, a node of incel culture and men's rage in the US. 'Our team remains fully engaged in strengthening the Tea app's security, and we look forward to sharing more about those enhancements soon,' the company said in a statement to the BBC. 'In the meantime, we are working to identify any users whose personal information was involved and will be offering free identity protection services to those individuals.' In China, women are facing down an online legion of men dedicated to invading their most private moments with spy cameras and sharing the results on the internet. My colleague Amy Hawkins reports: Anger is growing on Chinese social media after news reports revealed the existence of online groups, said to involve hundreds of thousands of Chinese men, which shared photographs of women, including sexually explicit ones, taken without their consent. The Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily published a report last week about a group on the encrypted messaging app Telegram called 'MaskPark tree hole forum'. It said it had more than 100,000 members and was 'comprised entirely of Chinese men'. Men reportedly shared sexually explicit images of women either in intimate settings or with so-called 'pinhole cameras' that can be hidden in everyday items such as plug sockets and shoes. Read the full story. In an influential 2014 essay, 'Why women aren't welcome on the internet', the writer Amanda Hess said that receiving countless graphic death and rape threats in response to her work did not make her exceptional: 'It just makes me a woman with an internet connection.' Events of the past week indicate that Hess's headline still holds true. Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the world wide web, told the Guardian in 2020 that the internet 'is not working for women and girls'. The same year, a Unesco report found that 73% of women journalists endured online threats to their safety. Other UN reports have found that significant portions of women across the world, somewhere between 16% and 58%, face threats of gender-based violence online.
South Wales Guardian
an hour ago
- South Wales Guardian
Truss ‘carries quite a lot of blame' for Tory record, Badenoch claims
The current Tory leader said she was 'very focused on what the Conservatives are going to do now', after former prime minister Ms Truss accused her of 'repeating spurious narratives'. Speaking on a farm near Saffron Walden in her constituency, Mrs Badenoch also described herself as an 'Essex girl', and added that people from the county 'are grafters; they work hard'. The Leader of the Opposition faced questions about Ms Truss's claim that under the Conservatives, 'the economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by (Rishi) Sunak' and that 'the huge increase in immigration has been a disaster'. Mrs Badenoch told ITV Anglia: 'I know that, as a former prime minister and a former foreign secretary, (Ms Truss) carries quite a lot of that blame. 'The party's now under new leadership. 'I wasn't in charge during those 14 years; she was. 'That's a criticism she's probably levelling at herself.' The Tory leader also said she was 'telling the truth' about her party's record. 'I'm telling the truth that immigration was too high – that's why we have much tougher policies to fix immigration,' she continued. 'I am telling the truth that taxes were too high, that we were putting a lot of regulation on businesses, and what we're seeing is Labour making every single thing worse. 'They're doing that because they haven't learned many of the lessons that we learned. They haven't learned from our mistakes. They're making worse mistakes.' The Labour Government's mistakes include making 'no cut in spending at all – the books were not balanced', Mrs Badenoch claimed. 'We're spending more on welfare than we are on defence – that cannot continue,' she said. Mrs Badenoch had previously told The Telegraph that 'for all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-budget and are making even bigger mistakes'. Ms Truss, who spent 49 days in Number 10, hit back when she said that 'instead of serious thinking', Mrs Badenoch was 'repeating spurious narratives'. She continued: 'I suspect she is doing this to divert from the real failures of 14 years of Conservative government in which her supporters are particularly implicated. 'It was a fatal mistake not to repeal Labour legislation like the Human Rights Act because the modernisers wanted to be the 'heirs to Blair'. 'Huge damage was done to our liberties through draconian lockdowns and enforcement championed by Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings. 'The economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by Sunak. The huge increase in immigration has been a disaster.' Mrs Badenoch also took questions about her identity, after she told the Rosebud podcast: 'I have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s. 'I don't identify with it any more, most of my life has been in the UK and I've just never felt the need to.' The North West Essex MP told ITV Anglia: 'I am definitely an Essex girl, that is a fact.' A London Assembly member before she took her Commons seat in 2017, Mrs Badenoch said: 'I represent an Essex constituency, these are my people. 'I was a Londoner, but Essex people asked me to be their MP, and I want to make sure that I do them proud. And I love this part of the world. 'It's fantastic being here. It's a rural community, and I've been talking to the farmers here. I talked about how my grandfather was a farmer, it's very hard work. 'The people of Essex and East Anglia – they are grafters. 'They work hard, and I want to make sure that we do right by them.' Mrs Badenoch spent Tuesday morning at a farm in Little Walden, where she tried her hand at harvesting wheat using a Claas Lexion combine harvester. She told farmers: 'A lot of farming just feels like constant interference. 'Everything is interfered from the minute you wake up.' Examples of interference included 'chemicals and insecticide, people you're hiring, how much you've got to pay them', plus changes to 'employers' NI (national insurance), then somebody wants to put pylons on, there's compulsory purchase, it's impacting the cost of the land, if you want to add a new farm building, there's planning applications', she said. 'It's just endless constant Government saying, 'You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't move forwards'. 'And the burden in my view has now crossed the threshold.'
