August 30th – September 5th, 2025
Rental Crisis Deepens; Is Scotland a Safe Place? Government still paying Trans Lobbyists; …. but first ….
Scottish Fire Service in Crisis
The service is currently facing an £800 million shortfall in its infrastructure budget and a £600 million real term budget cut and is consulting until September 16th on options to save money. The lack of running water in some stations increases the danger to firefighters from toxic smoke which can cause rare cancers as they cannot quickly decontaminate from a fire scene. The service has cut 1253 firefighter jobs since the advent of the single service in 2013. Response times are up 17.5%, with the budget and headcount correspondingly down by 17%.
Longer response times can be the difference between a major fire destroying several properties and an easily-contained bin fire; or between life and death in saving persons within a property. Only 74 of 356 Scottish fire stations are currently ‘wholetime’, that is, staffed 24/7, with nearly 46% of firefighters working full-time.
Scottish Apprenticeship Funding
Scottish employers paid at least £875 million through the UK-wide Apprenticeship Levy between 2020 and 2024, but spent only £704 million on graduate, foundation and modern apprenticeships in three quangos, Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Funding Council and student Awards Agency Scotland.
Some claim the £171 million shortfall has just been used to plug budget gaps elsewhere. The Scottish contribution is paid directly to HMRC and then returned to Scotland as part of the block grant, and the aim is to have 30,000 apprenticeships start annually. The Scottish government countered that it invests over £2 billion annually in training through colleges, universities, apprenticeships and other skills systems.
Scotland pays £20 million supporting self-ID supporters
And not just one or two. A total of fourteen lobbying groups have been given public cash since 2017, and all are groups who have aligned themselves with gender self-ID. Scottish Trans advised the Scottish government on prison rules which allowed double rapist Isla Bryson to be sent to a women’s jail, a move later reversed. Another big recipient is LGBTY Scotland, to the tune of over £2 million. Dr Lucy Hunter Blackburn of policy collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie says many of the groups have ‘systematically misrepresented the law’, caused chaos and incurred extra costs to put things right again, a process as yet barely begun.
Some of these groups insist trans-identifying males can access their services if they say they are women, such as the Scottish Women’s Convention, who got nearly £1 million. Other beneficiaries of the Scottish government’s largesse include YWCA Scotland (£625,215), Inclusion Scotland (£3,737,500) and Engender (£2,280,073).
Sanquhar II Go-Ahead
Work has begun on a 44-turbine windfarm which will be the UK’s fourth-largest onshore windfarm when it opens next August. It will supposedly bring more than £800 million local investment over the 40 years of its working life, generating ‘hundreds of jobs’, with ‘almost 50%’ going to local people.
An immediate investment of £400 million will boost local authority coffers and deliver community benefits. CWP Energy said the UK’s recent abandonment of zonal energy pricing was what allowed the project to go-ahead.
Rental Properties Plunge
Over 30,000 private landlords in Scotland have quit since May last year, or 350 a month, with the loss of over 12,000 rental homes since Covid. The Scottish Tenants Organisation (STO) accuse the Scottish government of a major fail. Glasgow has spent over £300 million paying for homeless accommodation since 2020, and landlords blame ‘anti-landlord rhetoric’ from some politicians, with 53% of landlords now considering reducing their property portfolios.
In September 2024, 16,634 households and 10,360 children in Scotland were in temporary accommodation. The Scottish government claims the figures are misleading, that accounting systems changed in 2018-19 at the Registers of Scotland, resulting in some duplication and double-counting of numbers, making the later fall look bigger.
What has Caused the Housing Shortage?
Landlords blame the SNP’s rent controls, tenants say the government has not gone far enough to control rents. We plainly do not have enough homes, either for rental or purchase. If landlords sold the houses they think are no longer worth renting out, over time house prices would fall to realistic levels. But we can do other things – bring empty houses back into use; repurpose former commercial properties, particularly in town centres; not approve so many build-to-rent estates, which are out of reach of social housing tenants; end Buy-to-Let mortgages. Housing should be a home, not an investment.
£5 billion pledge for Affordable Housing
Scottish Housing Secretary Mairi Mcallan has pledged £5 billion over the next five years to build 36,000 affordable homes. This is not all Scottish government funding, but a mix of public and private funding. Opinions differ as to how many houses are needed. Mcallan aims to increase properties over all parts of the housing sector by at least 10% every year, while housing organisations including Shelter Scotland and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) say the number of affordable housing units has to ‘almost double’ to meet the need, which would cost up to £9.2 billion.
The Scottish government will also double the funding to councils to acquire 1200 properties over 18 months. Mcallan promised the implementation of ‘Awaab’s Law’ from March 2026, obliging landlords to deal promptly with hazards to tenants. She will establish a ‘fund to leave’ of £1 million to help up to 1200 women and children to leave an abusive relationship; and £4 million this year to expand the Housing First Tenancy programme which provides permanent homes with support for those with multiple and complex needs.
Public Works Loans Board
We are constantly told that all debt is bad, but it really does depend what kind of debt. Local councils mostly are not allowed to borrow to balance their budgets. Previous debt instruments like Private Finance Initiatives have been discredited, largely because councils ended up repaying to private builders 5 times the original cost. Some are still ongoing, some demand an extra payment at the end of the ‘lease period’, and they are generally not good value for money.
In contrast, money borrowed from the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB), a lender run on behalf of the Treasury, allows authorities to take out long-term loans at more favourable rates. The interest on these loans does come out of their resource budget, but is at a lower rate than ordinary loans.
Soft Touch Justice?
A third of those who reject the offer to pay a fine and instead opt to be prosecuted actually end up not being punished at all, with 57 out of 170 suffering no penalty of any kind. The Crown Office defended this stance, saying that it was not a case of not being punished at all, although they could not explain why.
Is Scotland Safe?
Crime figures are up quite alarmingly in Scotland, according to figures up to the end of June this year. Almost 490,000 crimes were recorded, up 10,000 from the previous year, with an alarming rise in violent crimes such as rape and attempt rape (up 15%), some in schools, and domestic abuse (up 26%). Non-violent crimes rose 12% from the 2020/2021 figures, and shoplifting is up 20% in the last year. Rape and attempt rape have the lowest conviction rate of any crime type in Scotland.
Police Scotland’s ‘proportionate response’ to crime investigations meant that 13,445 crime reports were ‘directly filed’ – effectively written off – in 2023/24, but Justice Secretary Angela Constance still insists Scotland is a safe place to live.
Should ‘Sex’ be a Hate Crime?
The Scottish government has launched a consultation on whether ‘sex’ should be added to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. Women were left out of protection because there was to be a stand-alone misogyny offence, which was later abandoned. The consultation runs until October 10th. The draft includes a definition of sex as ‘biological sex’ with a note alongside saying this was due to the Supreme Court decision in April.
GP Pledge Broken
The SNP promise to add 800 GPs remains unfulfilled, with only 200 added in 8 years, and the BMA says the target was unlikely to be met until 2050. Waiting lists in A&E grew to 880,000 people, and 14% more people are waiting for a care assessment.
Mull’s New School on Hold
A legal challenge to the council has halted the work on a new school campus intended for Tobermory, which Argyll and Bute Council chose as the preferred site despite it meaning that children living in the south of the island would then have to board on the mainland. The challenge states that potentially viable sites in the centre of Mull were overlooked by councillors. A hearing is now due in October at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, although the council is warning that court costs will be taken from the school project’s budget of £43 million.
Finally,
‘Mythical’ White Deer spotted at Dunkeld
Viewed in Celtic mythology as messengers from other worlds, a rare all-white deer has now been spotted at a rural beauty spot at Loch of the Lowes wildlife reserve at Dunkeld. They can supposedly never be caught, and some say they only appear when someone is breaking some sort of taboo. The Native American culture among others regards them as a symbol of good luck and Dutch tourist Jose van Hell was happy to spot the white fallow buck while on holiday in Scotland.
Their pale colour is due not to any other-worldly cause but to a rare genetic pattern called leucism, which reduces pigmentation through under-production of melanin. They are not albino and have normal eye colours and will definitely add an ethereal element to an otherwise mundane scene.