Scotgov have spent £24m on polling.

[GargoylesofBeelzebub]

I actually feel quite sick at that amount of money being spent. Think what could have been done with it.

While I understand the need for some money to be spent on polling this seems excessive. And I bet was mostly about independence or gender shite. 🤢

https://www.thetimes.com/article/854e1589-f7d2-41e2-93e5-e2895696c316?shareToken=d2ebfb138e2dbfcce5cd604d5cf4c014

Not surprised. Yet another area they've wasted money. The sooner they're out the better

They fritter money away all over the place. £24m wasted on PR when the only action they’ve taken on violence in schools is this:

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/funding-to-tackle-scottish-classroom-violence-amounts-to-360-per-school-eis-says

£900,000 to tackle it. £360 per school. There’s a reason why our public services are shite.

I suggest slogan for the opposition parties at election time: SNP spent 24 million your money on opinion polls:
Tell them what you think for free when you vote!!

How many nurses or teachers could have been paid for with that money? Or hip replacements? (mum having just paid £15k for a private hip replacement, that would be 1,600 hip replacements) Or how many roads upgraded, etc etc etc.

Idiots. And the people who keep voting for them are just as bad.

The Scottish government are peerless when it comes to spending money on “consultations”
nothing meaningful or of value ever comes out of them. Such an industry built from rinsing public money.

It's only spent on training it seems.

So, we have a child who is attacking and strangling others.

Don't worry, we'll give the teacher more training.

Erm, they've been a teacher for twenty years.

Well, more training will stop the child wanting to attack others.

It's actually unbelievable.

Indeed! The teachers don’t need more training. They need the child chucking chairs to be removed from the class. The thing that annoyed me about this is it funds nothing useful while putting the blame for the current situation on the teachers!

Excellent!
You could have a career in PR yourself with slogans like that!

And you just know that if it tells them what they don’t want to hear they’ll just ignore it too! Pointless as they’ve made their minds up and will “take no lessons”.

Perhaps if the SNP MSPs hadn’t blocked people on Twitter who disagree with them even in the mildest manner they’d have a better idea of what the public think.

@GargoylesofBeelzebub 100% the SNP like to operate in their own little echo chamber.

but then again no dissent or disagreement is actually built into the party constitution, they can’t comprehend or deal with criticism at all.

£24m is a disgrace. I second @EvelynBeatrice being hired as a PR for all opposition parties! That's an excellent slogan.

Who keeps voting SNP?? I don’t get it

Ha 😄 my daughter said it was duff and not very catchy. But sure someone could work the sentiment into something more focused!

Couldn't agree more.

I'll never vote SNP again.

They need clear requirements eg if children are physically hurt in a series of incidents, the child or young person hurting them is removed to another education establishment ( ie one for violent young people).

This used to happen.

How much do you think Labour UK is spending on polling, across the board?

Stop asking awkward questions, this is meant to be another "SNP BAAAAAAAD!!!!" thread so there's no place for context or counterpoint.

Probably people who have looked at the alternatives, laughed, and gone on with their day.

But they’re utterly, utterly shite! There is no public service they haven’t completely and utterly wrecked. My grandparents are more competent and they’ve been dead 30 years.

Hyperbolic nonsense.

Even if it were the case, the alternatives have made an even bigger mess of services elsewhere in the UK, so there is no argument whatsoever for handing them the controls either.

I think if you are in the central belt you are reasonably looked after but the rest gets ignored

That's not true for education- Scottish outcomes are lower than England and falling. Hard to directly compare the NHS in Scotland and England but it's certainly no better in Scotland. Drug and alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity are worse in Scotland.

and then we have the failure to dual the A9. It was supposed to be completed this year, they said. They have dualled a paltry 11 miles! Only approx 80 to go.

And their farcial stance on trans rights will will result in the government being repeatedly sued, spending taxpayers money on defending the indefensible then on compensation and costs.

The SNP wanted to begin the A9 project back in 2007 and were proposing to halt the Edinburgh trams project in order to fund it, but no, opposition parties threatened to outvote the minority govt and insisted the trams went ahead.

What about the NHS in Labour-run Wales, the worst performing in the UK.

Scotland's drug death problem is entirely a remnant from the heroin epidemic of the 70s and 80s, it's really no wonder that life-long addicts who are now hitting pensionable age are keeling over. Drug deaths in Scotland in under-25s are a fraction of those in E&W.

Anyway, drugs, smoking, and obesity are social and societal issues and not indicative of "wrecked services" which is what the original post was about.

What about the SNP refusing to listen to experts in drug rehabilitation such as Annemarie Ward? Drugs rooms and methadone are the opposite of what is needed, and the constantly terrible drugs deaths numbers are just ignored. There has been zero progress here.

The state of Scottish education is abysmal. I pulled my child out of state school after seeing how appalling her state school was. This was supposed to be one of the best schools in Scotland and 1/4 ofvevery lesson was the teacher trying to control totally out of control kids. The difference between private and state is truly astonishing. All down to behaviour. State schools aren’t allowed to remove violent and persistently disruptive kids from schools (SNP policy), private schools are. Failure to address this is a HUGE problem and is destroying state schooling in this country.

If the SNP want to raise attainment, removing these kids from state schools and leaving those who want to learn in peace would bring the average grades of a state school child up by at least 10% in my experience. The difference is that stark. And yet the SNP stand back and let the violence and disruption roll on, all in the name of ‘inclusion’. Teachers are telling them it’s not working. The time to reflect, admit it’s not working and change course passed about 10 years ago, but the SNP would much rather stick its head in the sand. It’s criminal.