Latest news with #ScottishParliament
Scotsman
10 minutes ago
- Politics
- Scotsman
Edinburgh roads: Miles Briggs launches campaign for Scottish Government to prioritise Sheriffhall upgrade
A Lothian MSP today launched a campaign calling on the Scottish Government to prioritise the upgrade of the most notorious junction on the Edinburgh City Bypass. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Tory MIles Briggs said motorists had been subjected to "countless hours of unnecessary congestion" at the Sheriffhall roundabout because of the long delay in starting work on the proposed flyover. He said: "It's ridiculous that after nearly 20 years of discussion and more than £6m in consultation, Sheriffhall continues to bring the Edinburgh Bypass to a standstill every rush-hour. An artist's impression of the proposed Sheriffhall roundabout flyover. | Contributed Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'From day one it was clear that the roundabout needed a fly-over; 40 years later we have a significantly larger population across the region but have seen no progress whatsoever to improve the roundabout." Funding for he junction revamp was included in the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Regional Deal announced in July 2017. But the £120 million price tag attached to it at that time is certain to have increased dramatically. Ground Investigations were carried out in 2018 and draft road orders were published in 2019. But in 2020 the plans were put on hold to allow a review of the project as part of a Scottish Government budget deal with the Greens. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A public local inquiry was eventually held in early 2023 and the report, delivered to the Scottish Government in early 2024, is still under consideration by ministers over a year later. In a Scottish Parliament debate in 2018, Mr Briggs highlighted the economic value of the City Bypass and warning that gridlocked traffic was putting off potential investors to the area. He cited a report by Inrix which identified the bypass as the most congested trunk road outside London and predicted that the cost of bypass congestion to the economy could reach £2.8 billion by 2025. Now Mr Briggs has launched an online campaign, which will encourage the public to make their voice heard and put pressure on the government to provide a renewed commitment to this project. He said more than 75,000 vehicles used the bypass every day already, but that was set to increase since Lothian has the fastest growing population in Scotland and is forecast to account for 84 per cent of Scotland's predicted population growth over the period to 2033. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He said: 'Sheriffhall is costing commuters and businesses in our region time, money, and pollution from congestion. 'However, due to Green party opposition and SNP complacency, proposals have been left to gather dust while costs increase. 'It is time for SNP ministers to act and provide the leadership needed to get the upgrade back on track. 'That is why I have launched my campaign to upgrade this notorious junction, asking residents across Lothian to make their voice heard. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Edinburgh and the Lothians deserve better than this and I hope my campaign to upgrade the junction will make SNP ministers understand the level of frustration motorists are facing and give the upgrade the priority it deserves.'
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- General
- Daily Mail
STEPHEN DAISLEY: Douglas Ross wants to hold the powerful to account. No wonder the Holyrood clown car mob despise him...
For most people, quitting the leadership of the Scottish Conservative party would be a source of relief, if not unbridled joy. An opportunity to focus on constituency duties, improve your work-life balance, and dislodge some of the knives stuck in your back. A chance to be less political and less combative. For Douglas Ross, things haven't gone quite like that. No doubt he cherishes the extra time he's had to spend with his wife and their two boys over the past eight months. But instead of settling into snoozy, slipper-clad semi-retirement on the backbenches, Ross is like a bulldog finally off the leash. He has grown more political and more combative and is visibly frustrated with the Scottish Parliament, its tameness and mediocrity, its culture of failure and inadequacy, its rotten standards and grimy ethics. Ross spends his days brooding from the backbenches, seething at inept and dishonest ministers, and pouring scorn on their every policy and talking point. This got him into trouble at last week's FMQs when John Swinney tried, bizarrely but predictably, to lay the blame for Scotland's energy woes at the feet of Brexit. Ross started heckling him and the First Minister struggled to keep his train of thought. At which point, the Presiding Officer stepped in. Alison Johnstone reprimanded Ross for disregarding the standing orders, the rules which govern the conduct of MSPs. Rule 7.3 says members must always 'conduct themselves in an orderly manner' and that any who don't can be required by the Presiding Officer to remove themselves from the chamber. That's what Johnstone did, ordering Ross out and telling him not to return for the remainder of the day. Although this sanction is infrequently resorted to, it has been clear over the past few weeks that things were heading that way. Ross has become a thorn in the Presiding Officer's side with his repeated crowing at government ministers. So much so that Johnstone speaks with a special syntax. Every sentence contains a subject, an object, and 'Mr Ross!' Ordinarily I'm a stickler for the rules, but watching Ross gather up his things and traipse out on Thursday, I confess to feeling quite a bit of sympathy for him. If MSPs are scandalised by his impatience and his raised voice, they might want to avoid any future contact with the voters. Because Ross's exasperation is mild compared to the roiling contempt the public feels for Holyrood. The parliament is largely insulated from public opinion, shielded by an Iron Dome of advisors, quangos, third-sector outfits and compliant commentators who encircle Holyrood in left-liberal received wisdom and keep out any discordant voices, especially those of the electorate. It's this self-isolation of Scotland's parliament from the people it is supposed to represent that has left so many insiders shocked by the rise of Reform. As someone who forecast that rise a year ago, I can tell you that some otherwise bright, canny political operatives thought I was mad. The remoteness of the liberal elite from the people is hardly a phenomenon limited to Scotland. The American writer Pauline Kael famously declared after the 1972 presidential election: 'I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know.' Nixon had just won a 49-state landslide. In his post-leadership career, Douglas Ross has dedicated himself to penetrating Holyrood's atmosphere of smug certainty with the concerns and views of ordinary voters. His Right to Addiction Recovery Bill is an obvious example of that. Parliament wrings its hands over the worst drugs death rate in Europe, belated pouring money into support services while at the same time pressing ahead with de facto decriminalisation. Whatever the merits of those approaches, they neglect the importance of giving people a chance to get off drugs altogether. It's an unfashionable notion but one Ross's Bill forces them to confront. That's not the only awkward issue he's hammered the government on. He has interrogated them on the placement of trans-identifying men in women's prisons and the infiltration of gender ideology into the public sector more generally. He's pressed the case of Sandie Peggie, the nurse who is taking NHS Fife to an employment tribunal for allowing trans-identifying men to use the women's changing room. He's taken Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth to task over school violence and for skipping a parliamentary question on attacks against teachers to attend an SNP event in Glenrothes. He has persistently grilled ministers on their failure to keep their promise to complete dualling of the accident-blackspot A96. This is exactly what a backbench MSP ought to be doing: pursuing the government mercilessly on subjects they would rather not talk about. And so what if Ross lets his temper get the better of him sometimes? Many of these issues are emotive and it is only natural that their discussion would be impassioned. If the worst that can be said of Ross is that he fails to respect parliamentary niceties when holding the powerful to account, then I reckon he's doing just fine and, more importantly, I suspect many voters would agree. It underscores just how little scrutiny SNP ministers face that a spot of light heckling would have the delicate little flowers wilting in horror. There is an irony in the SNP making such a fuss over Ross's multiple jobs, telling him to quit one or more and focus instead on his parliamentary responsibilities. After standing down as Tory leader, he has thrown himself into the number one parliamentary responsibility - holding the executive to account - and it turns out they don't like it. Now they have both Russell Findlay and his predecessor turning the screws on their hapless government. When Ross was kicked out of the chamber last Thursday, it was illustrative of the problem - well, one of the problems - with Holyrood. Mouthing off too much when trying to get answers out of the government gets you told to make yourself scarce, but rising from your seat only to pose a softball question or to regurgitate party talking points in a debate is considered the height of parliamentary decorum. There have been six Scottish Parliament elections so far. The seventh will take place next year. The calibre of MSP elected was hardly encouraging in 1999 but it has somehow gotten worse. Every devolutionist should be mortified by the gap between the Holyrood the public were sold and the Holyrood they got. The Scottish Parliament is a national embarrassment. A job creation scheme for party hacks, public sector jobsworths, and multi-lanyarded third sector nuisances. An in-gathering of the useless, the clueless, and the soulless. A clown car that can never seem to get the key in the ignition but still manages to crash into everything in sight. Douglas Ross offends them because he puts in the effort. The man has his flaws but laziness is not one of them. He does the work, tries to get answers, and puts the most powerful people in the country on the spot. You're not supposed to do that in the Scottish Parliament. Most ideological differences at Holyrood are superficial or irrelevant to the real battle, that of political insiders against the voters. That's why Ross doesn't fit it: he fights for the other side.
The National
a day ago
- Politics
- The National
Meet the woman pushing to have Scotland 'decolonised' by the UN
Her years in the trenches fighting the decidedly unfashionable cause have left her exhausted, she tells the Sunday National. But she wouldn't be where she is – at the forefront of an organisation which claims 17,000 members and which she says can raise £40,000 in cash within a week – without drive and optimism. The 67-year-old, a former TV producer who lives outside Dunfermline, Fife, believes that the focus on the Scottish independence movement should be on the international stage. To this end, the campaign group Salvo, which she helped found, has backed a push by Liberation Scotland to present a petition to the UN to have Scotland recognised as a 'non-self-governing territory'. This would open the door to a UN-mandated referendum, in which neither the Scottish Parliament nor Westminster would have any say. (Image: PA) Critics say this is a cop-out which prefers a legal solution to a political problem. But Salyers insists that getting the UN to recognise Scotland as a colony is merely the first step, one which will open the political floodgates. People are divided, she says, into two camps. Either they believe that the international argument is 'irrelevant' and it is about domestic politics or they believe that appealing to the international community is a silver bullet which will make Scotland independent virtually overnight. 'That's completely wrong,' she says. 'In every single case of independence, decolonisation requires a democratic event,' she says. For her and her fellow travellers, the appeal to the UN is the route to that democratic event. 'We will keep going till it happens,' says Salyers. 'We're optimists – if we weren't we wouldn't be where we are now. I'm hoping for a miracle.' It perhaps reveals a sense of the scale of the challenge Salvo and Liberation Scotland have set themselves. During our interview, Salyers refers to her desire to change Scots 'grooves of thinking' about the country. She references the work of the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, who examined the impact of colonisation on the psyches of colonised people. Scots, she believes, have suffered many of the same indignities the Algerians did under French rule. A controversial statement, no doubt, but it is not an argument Salyers shies away from, stressing her profound belief that Scotland is as much of a colony of Britain as was, say, Ireland or Trinidad. It is in reference to the latter country – where she lived with her father who ran a power plant during that country's passage to independence – that one of Salyers's most provocative arguments arises. Trinidad and Tobago became independent through negotiation with the UK Government, but had it been down to a referendum, Salyers argues, her father should not have had a vote as he was not from there. (Image: Colin McPherson) So must it be for 'passers-by and temporary residents or people with two homes who happen to come up to Scotland sometimes', she says, in the event of a second Scottish independence referendum. Salyers would prefer the template provided by the New Caledonia referendum, where voters had to prove they met one of eight criteria to cast a ballot for or against remaining part of France. That cast a fairly wide net, though did require voters or their parents to have been born in the territory. If Liberation Scotland's push at the UN is successful, the path to independence is still by no means clear. But if it is rejected, Salyers seems unlikely to want to throw in the towel. 'We're kind of conditioned by a referendum that you win or lose, to see everything in those terms,' she says. 'It's not always like that, in fact, it very rarely is. It's very rarely like the verdict in a court or a black-and-white outcome.' Salyers says that neither she nor her colleagues draw a salary from their campaigning work, 'and nobody gets expenses, I'll tell you that'. Their motivation comes down to a sense of hope that she says is absent from the mainstream Scottish independence movement, who have 'packed up their bags and gone home', in her words. Instead, they hope to offer an alternative to the arguing with 'that big, blank wall of Westminster', says Salyer. At the moment, much 'stock' is being put in the UN General Assembly meeting in New York this September, which may provide the point at which Liberation Scotland hands over their petition to officials to have Scotland recognised as a colony. (Image: NurPhoto) Salyers is hoping that things fall into place once that hurdle is overcome. Labyrinthine bureaucracy at the UN means that something as simple as changing the mineral water sold in its Manhattan headquarters can take 'four years', says Salyers. 'However, it can also turn on a dime.' The grandmother-of-one certainly hopes that Scotland's case will be a sea change moment. 'My ambition is to have done my part, seen this happen and sit back and actually be retired and spend some years of my life learning to keep bees and go for walks and being able to stop,' she says. 'I'd be very discouraged if I thought this was going to take a decade.' Salyers may be waiting some time. In her New Caledonia example, the territory had been on the UN's decolonisation list since 1986. To date, the South Pacific islanders have had four independence referendums, the first in 1987. At the most recent, held in 2021, New Caledonians voted by 96.5% to 3.5% to remain part of France.
Times
a day ago
- Business
- Times
Out with Reform as it dares to dream of Scottish by-election shock
'When the campaign started, we thought we'd beat the Tories into third and put a bit of pressure on them,' says Ross Lambie, the architect who now dares imagine he might become Reform UK's first member of the Scottish parliament when voters in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse constituency cast their ballots in the most keenly watched Holyrood by-election in years. 'But after we started canvassing, we realised how super-angry the Labour voters were. They feel betrayed. The depth of anger took us by surprise, and they were also really open to Reform. Particularly now we're putting flesh on the bones of our policies, like scrapping the two-child cap and on the winter fuel allowance.' On the streets of Larkhall, a staunchly Unionist working-class town where Glasgow Rangers FC is the established church, former Labour voters are easily found. Sir Keir Starmer is 'sending the country down the Swanee', says one man who claims to have already voted by post for Reform. 'I don't think any of them are fit to run the country,' says another woman, citing — like many voters here — Labour's benefit cuts and the abolition of winter fuel payments as evidence of the party's willingness to betray those it ostensibly exists to support. The by-election, necessitated by the death of the popular sitting MSP Christina McKelvie, should notionally have been a straightforward contest between Labour and the SNP. McKelvie won the seat with 46 per cent of the vote and a majority of 4,582 in 2021. This is the kind of constituency upon which Labour's hopes of wresting power back from the SNP for the first time since 2007 depend. If Labour cannot win Hamilton, it cannot win Scotland. As such, the by-election is a vital test for the party's Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar. The campaign's 'air war' has been dominated by Reform, most notably via the attention and controversy generated by an advertisement placed on Facebook and Instagram in which the party claimed that while it would always 'stand up' for the people of Hamilton, Larkhall, and Stonehouse, Sarwar would 'prioritise' Scotland's small Scots-Pakistani community. This was, at best, a misrepresentation of remarks Sarwar made at a dinner celebrating the greater presence of south Asian and ethnic minority politicians in Scottish public life. The rumpus generated by what Labour and the SNP agree was an 'openly racist' pitch for nativist votes in a constituency that is almost entirely populated by white people has continued. When Farage declined to apologise for, let alone disavow, the ad, Sarwar labelled him a 'pathetic little man'. Rather than pull the video, as opponents demanded, Farage played it at a press conference being broadcast live on TV. He went on to claim Sarwar had 'introduced sectarianism into Scottish politics' — a suggestion that suggested Reform's leader is not intimately acquainted with the history of Lanarkshire politics — and then released another attack ad, with implied questioning of whether the Scottish Labour leader, born in Glasgow to immigrants from Pakistan, shared British 'values'. Following the Scottish cabinet meeting on Tuesday, senior ministers and special advisers held a special session to discuss how the SNP should approach the final ten days of campaigning. A source close to John Swinney, the first minister, acknowledged the 'risk' in 'talking up' the threat posed by Reform. Some ministers believe focusing on Reform lends Farage's party an unearned legitimacy. SNP insiders believe three outcomes remain possible: a tolerably comfortable SNP victory, an uncomfortably close SNP win, and, less likely but still plausible, a stunning Reform victory. 'Three-way fights in a by-election with a new kid on the block have never been a thing in Scotland so it is difficult to call,' said one veteran SNP campaigner, 'especially when the electorate has deserted its old allegiances.' Even SNP sources allow, however, that voters unhappy with Labour's performance at a UK level are not necessarily enthused by the SNP's record in government in Scotland either. However improbable, a Reform victory would arguably be the biggest shock in a Scottish by-election since Winnie Ewing won Hamilton for the SNP in 1967. That result marked the birth of the modern SNP and is the moment from which its long rise to prominence and power may be dated. Coincidentally, this week's Holyrood by-election covers some of the same territory as Ewing's Westminster triumph. Reform's rise is remarkable. In 2021 the party's candidate won only 58 votes in the constituency; next week everyone agrees the party will win thousands. Opinion polls, meanwhile, suggest that on current trends the party could win about 18 seats in next year's Holyrood election. Any outcome on anything remotely like that scale would be understood as a thundering rebuke to a Scottish political consensus that has hitherto seen Reform as a party of cranks and losers and, still more significantly, as a purely English political phenomenon. Wider — and perhaps grubbier — political considerations are also at play in Hamilton this week. Just as Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's closest aide, sees the upside in framing the next general election as a battle between Labour and Reform as a means by which Labour can destroy the Conservative party, so the SNP appreciates how useful Reform's rise is to their own ambitions. Reform, which has pledged to bring fiscal restraint to local government, has now unveiled plans to reduce the generosity of council staff pension schemes south of the border. Richard Tice, the party's deputy leader, told The Telegraph that councils controlled by Reform would axe final salary schemes and stop offering the perks to new recruits. Staff on existing contracts would also be awarded lower annual pay rises to offset the costs of pension schemes. A new poll for The Sunday Times reveals that support for Scottish independence has risen to 54 per cent, largely as a result of voters' disillusionment with Labour in government and the rise of Reform who, for all their current and recent success in Scotland, are still seen as unwelcome interlopers by many Scottish voters. Independence may be a largely hypothetical issue at present but SNP strategists believe the threat of 'prime minister Farage' can be used to concentrate Scottish minds. Even so, the same poll finds that voters are unenthused by the SNP as it seeks a third decade in power in Edinburgh. Only 33 per cent of Scots are inclined to support the Nationalists, a far cry from the 48 per cent who backed the party at the Holyrood election in 2021. Moreover, today's poll reveals that although Farage, who is due in the country on Monday, has an approval rating in Scotland of -25 he is significantly less unpopular than the prime minister whose rating is -39. • Hamilton by-election result will set the mood for Holyrood 2026 Charlie the labrador joins the Hamilton campaign JEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse is precisely the kind of seat Labour would need to win if the party is to have any chance of repeating its stunning successes at last year's general election. Coincidentally, much of the Holyrood constituency is represented at Westminster by McSweeney's wife, Imogen Walker. Conversely, if Reform takes more votes from Unionist parties than from the SNP — and polling strongly suggests this will be the case — then the further fragmentation of the anti-SNP vote can only benefit the nationalists. Senior Labour sources outwardly at least insist they are still 'neck and neck' with the SNP and 'there is not a chance we will finish third'. Some even see some advantage in the race-based controversies that have come to dominate the campaign. 'The absence of this sort of explicit racism in mainstream Scottish politics was, obviously, previously a good thing,' a senior Labour strategist claims. 'But if Reform are going to do it, it means Anas gets to respond to it strongly and to take Farage on. 'A lot of people who were maybe tempted by Reform as a protest vote are now thinking, 'That's racist and I don't want to have anything to do with that'.'
The National
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Edinburgh Pride 2025: All to know on date, route and line-up
Organisers are hoping that this "milestone" event will "build on the success of previous years" and bring the community together at a difficult time. Discussing the event, Brett Herriot, chair of Pride Edinburgh, said it "comes at a time where many within the LGBTQIA+ community are under threat and persecution simply for being who and what they are." He added that "standing together has never meant more" and that this gathering would be a "clear statement" to the world. When is Edinburgh Pride 2025 taking place? This year's Edinburgh Pride will take place on Saturday, June 21, with the attendees gathering for the march from around 12.15pm. It will set off at around 1pm following the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence's minute of noise and minute of silence. What is the route for Edinburgh Pride 2025? The route for the Edinburgh march will start at the Scottish Parliament before going past Canongate, High Street, George IV Bridge, Bristo Place, Potterrow, Crichton Street and Charles Street. See the full line-up for Edinburgh Pride 2025 The Pride march in Edinburgh will start at the Scottish Parliament. (Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire) At around 2pm, there will be a main stage event featuring a number of big names, including pop icon and X Factor star Diana Vickers. X Factor star Diana Vickers GRAMMY-nominated vocalist Kelli-Leigh Drag Race UK finalist Ellie Diamond Drag favourite Chanel O'Conor Recommended Reading: Local drag talents Sissy Scorpio and Rozie Cheeks DJs Sylva, Darran Glasgow, and Lezzer Quest The main stage will be hosted by Edinburgh "drag queen royalty" Blaze. They will be accompanied by Blazin' Entertainment.
