Deployment of HMS Queen Elizabeth and Carrier Strike Group will ‘fly flag for Global Britain’ – Sky News

HMS Queen Elizabeth will depart for its first operational deployment next month in a mission that will “fly the flag for Global Britain”.

The £3bn aircraft carrier will head for Asia, with eight RAF F35B stealth fighter jets on board and accompanied by six Royal Navy ships, a submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, 14 naval helicopters and a company of Royal Marines.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “When our Carrier Strike Group sets sail next month, it will be flying the flag for Global Britain – projecting our influence, signalling our power, engaging with our friends and reaffirming our commitment to addressing the security challenges of today and tomorrow.

“The entire nation can be proud of the dedicated men and women who for more than six months will demonstrate to the world that the UK is not stepping back but sailing forth to play an active role in shaping the international system of the 21st century.”

During the 28-week deployment, ships from the group will visit more than 40 countries for more than 70 engagements, including an exercise marking the 50th anniversary of the Five Power Defence Arrangements with Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

SNP government has ‘failed pupils and teachers’ over last 14 years – The Northern Scot

IF parents have learned one thing during Covid, it is how hard teachers work and what a difficult, complex job they do, writes Alison Simpson, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Banffshire and Buchan Coast.

But the 14-year term of this SNP government has failed pupils and teachers.

The Scottish educational system used to be the envy of the world. We’ve slid down the international rankings. One in 10 teachers is on a temporary or short-term contract. No wonder they’re demoralised.

Attainment for children from deprived backgrounds shows significant gaps for reading, writing, and numeracy, from primary through to secondary school.

The SNP set its “defining mission” to close these gaps. At the rate they’re going, it’ll take another 35 years.

Education became a mess as the SNP’s “top priority”. Imagine how bad things will get when it plays second fiddle to a referendum.

Children have missed out on education during the pandemic and we need to help them bounce back.

Liberal Democrats got extra funds in the budget to help education: more in-class support; a guaranteed job for every teacher to cut class sizes; new work with teachers to get literacy and numeracy standards back up; a summer programme of activities to rebuild lost social skills.

We commit to working with teachers to review workloads and pay.

We’ll let teachers lead change in the way we teach the basics – numeracy and literacy – without which the door is shut to all learning, and put teachers at the heart of the SQA and Education Scotland, which have let us down during Covid.

Finally, further education has become the poor relation. We’ll restore colleges to a powerful role in local economic development, training people of all ages in the skills they need to start or change careers.

 

New figures reveal Faslane directly employs over 6,000 people – UK Defence Journal

New figures unearthed by Diedre Brock, MP for Edinburgh North and Leith, reveal that just over 6,000 people are directly employed at Faslane and Coulport.

The figures came to light after Member of Parliament Diedre Brock asked a series of questions relating to employed at HMNB Clyde.

Deidre Brock, MP for Edinburgh North and Leith, asked via a Parliamentary written question:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many and what proportion of uniformed Royal Navy personnel based at (a) Faslane and (b) Coulport are Scottish taxpayers.”

James Heappey MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Ministry of Defence, responded:

“At 1 January 2021, 3,624 uniformed Royal Navy Service personnel were stationed at locations in Argyll and Bute, comprising the Faslane and Coulport sites. Of these, 1,393 personnel were Scottish taxpayers, which translates to 38.4% of the total.”

Brock also asked:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many and what proportion of civilian employees who are not contractors based at (a) Faslane and (b) Coulport are Scottish taxpayers.”

Heappey responded:

“At 31 December 2020, 1,015 civilian employees who are not contractors were employed at Faslane. Of these, 925 were Scottish taxpayers, which translates to 91% of the total. At 31 December 2020, 475 civilian employees who are not contractors were employed at Coulport. Of these, 425 were Scottish taxpayers, which translates to 89% of the total.”

Brock also asked:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many and what proportion of uniformed contractors based at (a) Faslane and (b) Coulport are Scottish taxpayers.”

Heappey then responded:

“At 31 December 2020, 535 uniformed contractors were employed at Faslane. Of these, 470 were Scottish taxpayers, which translates to 88% of the total. At 31 December 2020, 419 uniformed contractors were employed at Coulport. Of these, 370 were Scottish taxpayers, which translates to 89% of the total.”

The figures show that of the 6,068 civilian and military personnel working at Faslane and Coulport, 4,583 are Scottish taxpayers.

Scots gripped by rent crisis as soaring costs leaving families homeless and in poverty – Daily Record

The soaring cost of renting a private home is causing massive poverty and ­fuelling homelessness, the Record can reveal.

A shortage of supply has led to abuse by unscrupulous landlords, who are refusing to meet the cost of basic repairs and are illegally evicting tenants.

Figures show that the average monthly rent for a flat in Glasgow rocketed by £73 in a year, the biggest rise among UK cities.

A three-bed flat in the city now costs tenants £1187 a month.

A similar trend is being seen across Scotland, as a shortage of social housing has sent demand through
the roof.

ECA International (ECA), a global firm providing housing data to major companies, found increases of £20 a month to £1180 in ­Aberdeen and £29 to £1664 in ­Edinburgh, the UK’s fourth most expensive city to rent in.

Homeless charity Shelter has spoken to many people whose standard of living has plummeted this year as they are priced out, with some ending up in temporary lets set aside for ­homeless people.

Alison Watson, director of Shelter Scotland, said: “The shortage of safe, secure and affordable social housing in popular areas like Glasgow and Edinburgh means there is increasing demand for privately rented homes, and landlords can name their price.

“As rents rise, individuals and families are priced out of their chosen ­communities and forced to live in housing which doesn’t meet their needs whether it’s in the wrong ­location, is too small or is in poor condition.

“Some end up priced out of the market altogether and get trapped in temporary housing for people ­experiencing homelessness.”

Watson said a massive building programme is needed to help those affected.

She added: “The last Scottish Government has built the most social homes in a generation but it hasn’t been enough to close the gap between supply and demand.

“We need a more ambitious strategy. Independent researchers say 37,100 social homes are needed between now and 2026 if we’re to reduce the number of people waiting for the home they need.”

Private rents in Scotland for a two-bed property had increased over the last decade by 28 per cent – with a 46 per cent jump in Glasgow.

Sturgeon promises Scotland will be Oz – but it’s a yellow brick lie – Daily Express

IN under two weeks voters will go to the polls. Nicola Sturgeon is trying to convince people that what is really on the ballot sheet is the decision on whether Scotland should face another referendum.

Her logic is simple, if you vote for the SNP and they win a majority then they have a mandate because the people of Scotland will have spoken. Interestingly, the First Minister doesn’t talk about it being a mandate to lead a successful and powerful devolved Parliament. But perhaps that is not too surprising given her personal track record. If voters were just looking at suitability to run a devolved Government the SNP’s popularity would almost certainly take a hit.

After all, you do not normally ride home with a majority if you are steeped in controversy. If you have wasted millions of pounds on failed projects. If you have presided over declining education standards and missed health waiting targets. If you have doubled the drug deaths rather than halving them.

Normally after 14 years of messing up you would face the wrath of the voters at the ballot box. But silver-tongued Nicola Sturgeon understands her audience.

She knows that they do not care about her failures because they are willing to believe that they are simply beyond her control, consequences of the supposed evil regime south of the border.

As long, as she continues to offer the dream, she may yet salvage success at the polls from that legacy of failure.

But the real question is whether the crown she wins is one that will bring adoration or her ultimate martyrdom.

She has played her role with adept finesse to date, offering just enough hope to her acolytes to keep them on side but never quite taking them over the line.

It is the ultimate yellow brick road, and the Wizard of Oz is frantically trying to keep the show on the road.

But Scotland’s Wizard of Oz cannot in reality deliver her promises.

Her sweeping claims about separation lack any substance.

Since the age of 16 she has lived and breathed the dream of separation and yet she is still unable to answer even the most basic questions on how a standalone Scotland would work.

After 34 years of thinking about it, 14 years of which she has been in power with unfettered access to the resources of the Scottish Government, Ms Sturgeon has not come up with any answers she is willing to share.

The best she can offer is that she will commission a working group.

Presumably because they didn’t like the answers the last group gave them, A Growth Commission that talked of years of austerity clearly wasn’t going to sell the dream.

So, after 34 years, one has to wonder if she isn’t just a little bit worried that it is not quite as simple as she wants us all to believe.

But maybe Ms Sturgeon does not need to worry.

After all a leader needs a team and on Wednesday her number one candidate in the South of Scotland Emma Harper gave an interview to a reporter in which she explained that a hard border between Scotland and England was a positive prospect because it would create jobs.

So, apparently, we can stop worrying about that challenge!

The same Emma Harper also explained in a previous interview that currency will not be a problem because we can all use plastic.

I guess when your mantra lacks substance you need disciples that are not embarrassed by their own lack of knowledge.

Sadly, Ms Sturgeons deception has not only fooled her own disciples the opposition at Holyrood has been sucked in and given oxygen to the illusion.

Despite referenda not being a devolved power, they too are campaigning on the idea that the election is about a referendum mandate.

So, as they all dance along the yellow brick road in the hope of returning to Holyrood the voters are asked to decide who has courage, who has a heart and which one has a brain.

Education minister John Swinney’s unminuted meetings spark fears of secret government – Sunday Post

Education minister John Swinney is at the centre of a new transparency row over three unminuted meetings about an important review of what Scots pupils are taught.

No minutes were taken at the discussions Swinney held with the leading international organisation reviewing Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence.

The education ­minister admitted he held the private meetings with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) under questioning from the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

We told in February how the Scottish government had been handed interim findings but was insisting they must stay under wraps until after the election.

Days later MSPs passed a motion demanding Swinney release the draft report but he has yet to do so, saying it is for the OECD to publish its findings. Last month, he released a summary to MSPs on the condition it was not leaked but opposition politicians said it lacked any detail.

An OECD review of the Curriculum for Excellence in 2015 said one in 10 schools was “weak or unsatisfactory” and a fifth were rated only “satisfactory”.

Swinney has now told the Lib Dems he met the OECD three times since September 2019 to discuss the curriculum review but no minutes were taken at any of the meetings because there were no actions.

A series of meetings involving SNP ministers have been unminuted, raising concerns among campaigners for transparent government. The undiaried and unminuted meetings included a number of discussions involving Nicola Sturgeon that featured in the Alex Salmond affair this year.

Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie wants ministers to agree to a new “duty to record” so the public can access accounts of important ministerial meetings and decision-making processes.

Rennie said: “It is astonishing John Swinney has blocked the public from seeing a single word that was said at three meetings he had with the OECD.

“This is the umpteenth time that no minutes have been taken of important meetings. The SNP prefers stitch-ups, secrecy and spin to any kind of accountability.”

Willie Sullivan, ­director of the Electoral Reform Society Scotland, said: “A route back to public trust means the workings of government being as transparent and open as possible.”

The Scottish government said meetings between the OECD Review Team and the coordination team were not routinely minuted as they focused on the practicalities of delivering the review.

Toxic Glasgow burn contaminated by cancer-causing chemical ‘glowing luminous green’ – Glasgow Live

Polmadie Burn is located on the site of the former J&J Whites Chemical plant and runs into the River Clyde.

A burn contaminated by a cancer-causing chemical that resembles a ‘toxic soup’ is now causing increased concern among local residents by appearing to glow ‘luminous green’ as it flows through Richmond Park into the River Clyde.

Polmadie Burn is located on the site of the former J&J Whites Chemical plant – also known as Shawfield Chemical Works – which operated from 1820 to 1967 and produced up to 70% of the UK’s chromate products.

Back in March of 2019, Clyde Gateway demanded urgent action after cancer-causing chromium-VI was found flowing into the river from the burn, warning politicians that the contaminated land posed an immediate risk to human health because of the toxic waste.

Meanwhile back in January, we reported on the increased concern of locals about the contamination, who believe that the problem seems to have gotten worse due to weather patterns or local building work, having first turned green back in February of 2018.

New concerning photos have since emerged in the past few days, taken by local Colin Harkins, showing the burn looking as toxic and dangerous as it ever has been appearing to glow ‘luminous green’.

The photos, which were posted on the Scotland From The Roadside Facebook page, have been met with what could only be described as a wave of shock and anger by Glaswegians, many of whom who have become aware of the problem for the first time.

Back in January Glasgow City Council informed Glasgow Live that they have been working with a range of partners, including Clyde Gateway, to address the historic ground pollution connected to the former chemical works at Shawfield, including work to divert an underground culvert away from the area of pollution and ground remediation.

Sturgeon has no credible answers on economics of Scexit – The Spectator

hat has happened to the SNP’s usually slick media handling during this election campaign? In several recent interviews the famously sure-footed Nicola Sturgeon has struggled to sound credible when asked tricky questions. The bluff and bluster, learned from her mentor Alex Salmond, is still there, but at the same time there is a sense of a previously grounded authenticity slipping away.

In a revealing interview with Channel 4 News last week, Sturgeon was asked if she has conducted any economic analysis on the consequences of independence. Given the UK is now outside the EU (and hence we have clarity on the EU-UK trading relationship) and that Sturgeon wants to use this election as a gateway to independence, you would think this would be of some importance. But apparently not.

‘When we put the choice of independence before the Scottish people in a referendum, we will do what we did in 2014,’ she said. ‘We will set out a prospectus, we will do the analysis at that point, and we’ll let people in Scotland decide.’

This is odd given her administration managed to push out multiple pieces of detailed analysis on the economic impact of Brexit in the build up to the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.

In a separate interview with ITV she was asked how she can justify the enormous spending commitments made in her manifesto when it is also her intention to achieve ‘Scexit’, thus cutting Scotland off from funding levels that come from being part of the UK. She effectively deflected the question, but again came across as unconvincing.

The interviewer, Peter Smith, raised a good point though. How can the SNP credibly make these big spending commitments when they plan to sever Scotland from its central bank and treasury in coming years? More specifically, given the critical importance quantitative easing (QE) has played in financing Covid-19 deficit spending, what are the implications of taking Scotland out of a QE-financed economy?

QE is when a central bank creates money then uses that money to buy assets (overwhelmingly its own government’s bonds). The aim is to boost spending and investment in the economy when interest rates are so low that normal monetary measures — reducing rates — have hit their limit. The Bank of Japan started using QE in the late 1990s, but since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008 it has become something of a central bank phenomenon, with central banks in the most advanced economies deploying it ubiquitously.

It is not an overstatement to say that QE has saved the UK economy from collapse during the pandemic. The chart below from the Bank of England shows the ramping up of QE in the UK over the last 10 years. The onset of the pandemic saw QE explode.

What is more interesting is how the Bank of England’s asset purchases in 2020 perfectly tracked central government borrowing needs, as outlined in analysis by the Financial Times earlier this year.

Why is this important? Because it shows that the central bank, while still technically pursuing a remit of targeting inflation, has been directly or indirectly (this is a key point of contention) doing whatever it takes to facilitate the government’s enormous bond-borrowing programme. Without QE the UK would not have been able to borrow the vast sums it needed to finance the emergency response to coronavirus. It is the Bank of England’s QE that enabled the borrowing that paid for vaccine procurement, furlough and all the rest of it.

And why should this matter to Sturgeon? Because an independent Scotland could not do any QE. In her interviews Sturgeon reiterated her backing for the SNP’s 2018 Sustainable Growth Commission, which made the economic case for separation, although she conceded its numbers are now out of date. That plan envisages Scotland having a central bank but no national currency of its own and not being part of a broader monetary union. That means it could not benefit from any form of QE.

Since the pandemic began a number of countries, such as Croatia, Poland and Romania have started doing QE. If Scotland left the UK it would be the only country in the world to voluntarily cut itself off from QE. What’s more, it would be cutting itself off from one of only a handful of central banks viewed as most credible when it comes to managing large-scale QE — the 2020s will be a test of whether lesser developed new adopters can credibly run QE programmes.

The simple question for Sturgeon then is why does she want to cut Scotland off from QE at a time when other countries are desperate to have it? As with her Peter Smith interview, she will likely have no answer.

Nicola Sturgeon accused of ‘shameful neglect’ as over 50 sports, community & library facilities WON’T reopen in Glasgow – The Sun

NICOLA Sturgeon has been accused of “shameful” neglect over the potential mass-closure of sports venues, libraries and community centres on her patch – while vowing a £6billion spending splurge on other policies.

SNP-run Glasgow – which famously hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2014 – has said a staggering 40 sports venues or pitches, five libraries, and 11 community centres or halls will stay shut following lockdown.

Three museums are also listed as not due for re-opening, including the city’s historic Scotland Street School – though it’s hoped the museum will ultimately be turned into a nursery under plans approved as the second lockdown hit.

The huge cuts to sport and culture facilities – in a pattern feared to be repeated in other parts of Scotland – come despite health experts warning of the importance of getting people active after lockdown.

Opposition leaders tonight slammed the move, which emerged just days after the SNP unveiled their manifesto with a list of freebies and spending increases costing £6billion extra over the next five years.

Following the policy launch, economists warned Ms Sturgeon’s SNP election pledges could mean “trade-offs”.

And opponents said planned closures of facilities showed the poorest communities would be hardest hit.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “Across Glasgow, including in the First Minister’s own constituency, scores of vital facilities such as libraries, gyms and football pitches are being closed due to SNP cuts.

“Glasgow Southside may be Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency – but it is my home.

“As an avid book-reader, Nicola Sturgeon must know the importance of libraries.

“We can’t have communities that have been through the collective trauma of Covid left without vital facilities.

“Scottish Labour has a recovery plan for our communities that will ensure that everyone across Glasgow has access to the facilities they need to learn, socialise and stay healthy.”

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said: “For the SNP to use the pandemic as an excuse to mothball vital community facilities across Scotland’s largest city is shameful.

Soaring NHS waiting lists show need for recovery not independence referendum, say campaigners – Daily Record

The number of Scots stuck on NHS waiting lists for more than a year has soared, according to new figures revealed by Scotland in Union campaign.

Research by the pro-UK group has revealed a fourfold increase in patients waiting for 52 weeks and over for a range of treatments since the end of June.

Scotland in Union issued the figures to highlight how it could take years to tackle the NHS backlog caused by Covid, long after the public health emergency is over.

Pamela Nash of Scotland in Union said the figures demonstrated the need for politicians to focus on health and economic recovery and not another independence referendum.

According to official Information Services Division Scotland figures, at the end of June 2020 there were 8,913 people who had been on hospital waiting lists for a year or longer.

By September that had risen to 20,940, which then rocketed to 39,001 at the end of December.

The figures include new outpatients as well as inpatients and day cases.

According to Scottish Government targets, all new outpatients should be seen within twelve weeks of referral.