Westminster must now confront the anti-democrats in the SNP/Green ‘alliance’ – CAPx

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Scotland’s new SNP-Green ‘alliance’ comes close to a coalition, which is a conventional way for a minority government to get its business through a parliament. However the SNP and the Greens have incompatible political goals on many fundamental issues, especially oil. The deal is not motivated by parliamentary considerations, but by the desire to force constitutional change on a country divided 50-50 on the issue. How might they be able to do this?

Essentially, by exploiting the peculiar voting system that Donald Dewar devised for the Scottish Parliament in 1998 in order, as he hoped, to keep Labour in power forever. But he was too clever by half. Now this system is being used to keep Nicola Sturgeon in power indefinitely by breaking up the United Kingdom. The system looks fair on the surface, but the devil is in the arithmetic.

About 220,000 people voted for the Greens in May’s Holyrood election, which represented 8% of the votes cast for ‘list’ seats, which are allotted on a proportional representation basis. In the constituencies, the Greens achieved a total vote of 35,000, in the whole country. That was 1.3% of the votes cast. Yet they are now to be in government so they can, as they hope, force the British government to bend to their and the SNP’s constitutional agenda.

Nicola Sturgeon has been complaining for years that Brexit was foisted on Scotland “against its will” because a majority of Scots voted for the UK to stay in the EU. But over a million votes were cast for “leave” in Scotland. Sturgeon says the Brexit result was an abuse of democracy as far as Scotland is concerned. Yet she is happy to use the derisory Green vote here to break up a nation of 65 million people.

Ambulance bosses blame Covid delays after leaving elderly woman to lie in Ayr town centre for four HOURS – Daily Record

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An elderly woman was left lying on a busy town centre street for more than four hours while she waited for an ambulance.

Horrified members of the public rushed to the lady’s aid on Wednesday after her fall in Ayr’s Newmarket Street.

But despite suffering a head wound, she was forced to wait the entire afternoon for a mercy crew.

Shocked eyewitnesses told how it was left to the public to treat the woman while she endured her marathon wait.

SNP-Green deal could be catastrophic for house prices – The Scotsman

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Maybe a Bruntsfield tenement flat, a Victorian semi in Trinity, a neat Borders or East Neuk bolthole, but with inefficient solid walls, draughty doors and windows. Some will have bright skylights above the stairwell through which your central heating can warm the world outside. And having followed the advice of successive TV chefs, it’s likely you’ll have a dual-fuel cooker with electric oven and gas hob.

As this column pointed out last week, the 2019 Scottish government house condition survey indicates Scotland has around 750,000 pre-1945 homes and, as the autumn draws near, their occupants will try not to dwell upon the winter fuel bills to come, while accepting that some warmth escaping through the walls is inevitable. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if it helps keep dampness at bay.

With housing responsible for a fifth of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions, upgrading the stock is at the heart of the new SNP-Green partnership deal unveiled last week, which outlines plans for mandatory requirements for all domestic upgrades and refurbishments to qualify for an energy performance certificate (EPC) C rating, the third-highest, from 2025.