Frozen out 

SNP FINANCE Secretary Kate Forbes has been getting it in the neck all week from unions and opposition parties for her spending review. There are eight per cent real terms cuts to budgets in many departments and plans to hack up to 30,000 jobs from the public sector workforce. Unspun hears there is now a recruitment freeze across the Scottish Government, but bosses are so squeamish about the term that staff have been told not to use it. Instead, officials must refer to a “recruitment pause”, as if it'll end soon. However most think hell will pause over first.

So taxing

THE Scottish Tories pride themselves on being the party of business at Holyrood. So you’d think their MSPs might know a bit about invoices. Alas, Scottish Tory chair Craig Hoy forgot VAT would be added to the printing bill for his annual report to voters in South Scotland, resulting in an overspend. After an “exceptional expense application” to parliament bosses, he was given a £1,126 bail out. He has now “accepted an error was made” and promised his expenses will be “more closely monitored in future”. We trust he’ll include all the details of the episode in his next annual report.

Chop shop

WITH the First Minister promising the first of her independence papers within days, Unspun had flashbacks of the 2014 campaign. Remarkably, Yes Scotland is still on the go, albeit an SNP-run zombie company. Better Together was wound up. But could its spirit live on? Canadian furniture makers Natural Pod have just launched a “Better Together Collection” made from old lumber, linen and tens of millions of “recycled chopsticks”. With the same old arguments about to be trotted out again, banging your head on a table of recycled chopsticks certainly gets our vote.

Ferry odd

REMEMBER Chris Grayling? The hapless Tory booby whose time as UK transport secretary included signing a ferry contract with a company with no ferries? Nicola Sturgeon was scathing about “failing Grayling” in one conference speech. “In the not-too-distant past, any Minister would have been sacked for such shocking ineptitude,” she thundered. This week, we learned the Scottish Government had signed a deal with Abellio for replacement bus services for ScotRail only to find out it, er, doesn’t have enough buses. “Securing rail replacement buses has proved to be significantly more challenging than it was prior to the pandemic,” transport minister Jenny Gilruth told MSPs, with “less availability across the country”. Oddly enough, despite such shocking ineptitude, she remains firmly in post. 

Railly bad

BUT is the strain starting to show? Answering questions about the latest ScotRail muddle on Wednesday, Ms Gilruth exhibited a weird verbal tic, chucking the phrase “to that end” into half a dozen sentences to no particular end at all. Accused by Tory Liam Kerr of abdicating accountability, she then abdicated her cool, launching into such a heated denial deputy PO Annabelle Ewing told her to sit down and be calm. Rail travel used to be sold with the slogan Let the train take the strain. How the transport minister must wish, to that end, it were true. 

Ferry sorry

Finally, a correction. Last week we ran an item titled ‘Island Strife’ which said state ferry operator CalMac is hiring a new PR agency. It is in fact CMAL, the state ferry procurement body. We apologise for the error.