I loathe the Scottish Government

[Dineasair]

I loathe the Scottish Government. I want to see the SNP/Green Party coalition roast in hell! They can take any MSP who voted for the Gender Reform Bill or the Hate Crime Laws with them. Is it now a hate crime for a Scottish Woman to say that?

I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to say they don't mind because: free prescriptions and baby boxes.

£3000 on a £100,000 salary is a lot?! It's really not. Less than £300 a month. Definitely not enough to move country.

I would make an extra £4,000 a year by doing an extra three hours a week and I don't bother. I'm on nowhere near £100,000 either!

I know quite a lot of doctors planning to leave Scotland when their foundation years are over, because to them now it is a lot of money and being factored into their decision making. Chances are that once they're settled, they won't come back.

Yet where I stay, there continues to be a large amount of people moving up and buying houses from down South which obviously affects property prices.

Stamp duty is a bugger!! That is something that needs to change.

When the Ukraine war kicked off, one aid group appealed for baby boxes to take over. They were inundated with ones that had been untouched by the recipients.

It might not be enough to move country, especially if your DC are school age and you have family here; but it would be enough to sway your decisions when you are just starting out and deciding where to go, or weighing up a couple of offers between different places. There will be a cumulative effect over time.
And actually, I think £300 a month is lot - and I earn a decent salary. I am not sure how privileged you have to be to say it’s not.

Well exactly, you're a newly-qualified actuary or doctor or accountant and have to choose between living in Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff or Belfast.

If your children are school age then that might be a reason to move regardless of tax.

Of course it’s a lot- it’s potentially a chunk of a monthly mortgage payment.

It’s the young and educated who will leave.- the very ones we should be encouraging to stay. They have no ties so it’s a good time to go.

Depends on the school, I think. DC are settled, have friends. I am actually really happy with DC’s school and the teachers are excellent. I do have concerns about the formulaic nature of the exam learning, but older DD got into one of the top universities and is doing well.
DS had a notably worse primary experience than older DD, but is thriving at secondary. Given that he was at school refusal stage, I wouldn’t risk moving in case it went wrong again. So I certainly would not talk the entire Scottish education system down.

It's pretty arrogant to tell someone to take £300 off their take home salary for the privilege of living in Scotland - with worse state education & worse health care outcomes. For doctors specifically the consultant salaries are currently lower than in England - so if a Scottish hospital is recruiting they are significantly less attractive than exactly the same post in England or Wales. Given the severe shortages in some specialities UK wide this makes Scotland uncompetitive for recruitment.

I earn well over £100,000. £300 per month just for the privilege of living in Scotland is a lot.

John Swinney is meeting Sir Keir to ask for more money as Scotgov have a black hole too don’t ya know and now don’t have enough for all their progressive policies .
We are a very small country with a higher spend per head than England and our representatives haven’t a clue how to make it all work . I’ve lost sight of the ferry debacle but assume none of the new ones are running yet.

First passengers "possibly in December". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20pgp2rl45o

Remember, Glen Sannox should have gone into service in May 2018.

What are the odds for an ordinary paying passenger in December?

I’d put money on there being no paying passengers until next year. Do you think the bookies would take my bet?

That there will be paying passengers next year? Possibly but you might not get good odds.

They might manage a few passengers in December just to be able to claim the ferry is only six years late rather than at least seven.

They could paint some on?

Cardboard cutouts? Or an SNP team building day doon the watter?

The education funding situation looks desperate looking at the attempted ASN cuts in edin, £145m being withheld from councils over teacher numbers...

This seems bonkers - councils can't fund education so withhold funds? I don't get it at all. And for the love of mike can we unfreeze council tax!!

Neither of my grownup children would consider putting a family through Scottish education now, it’s so bad.
They’ve pretty much stopped inspecting- if you don’t look for problems they don’t exist do they? Schools used to be inspected every 4 years or so, then we were told you could expect one inspection for your child’s time at a school. Heaven knows what it is now. You know things are bad when children are rote learning essays and trying to fit them to the exam questions. And don’t get me started about what they’ve done to science especially chemistry. Something is seriously wrong if children have to “unlearn” things to move forward.

I was shocked how bad the exams were. When I did French I spent the night before revising irregular verbs. My son spent the night before learning a passage of text by heart to regurgitate in exams. And yet when they did a review of qualifications they seemed to focus just on dropping exams and a sort of SQA-endorsed CV but ignore the problems with the exam courses themselves. My DD knows her modern studies inside out but is likely to fail as her ASN means she struggles with remember the exact words and structure required for the answer.