November 15th – November 21st 2025
No Scotland, No Party; is Scotland caught in an Economic ‘Doom Loop’? Are No-Limits Abortions and Euthanasia the hallmarks of a Good Country or a Selfish One?…but first ….
Grangemouth Gone, Now Mossmorran
Owners Exxon Mobil have confirmed the Fife Ethylene Plant will close in February 2026, and the UK has absolutely refused to countenance a bailout. Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander says it is an ‘incredibly difficult’ time for the plant, but claimed the closure decision is ‘ultimately a commercial one’. Mossmorran produces ethylene, which is the base material for plastic. The closure will cost 400 jobs, and will ripple out into the community. The UK has only shown support for Scunthorpe steel, recalling Parliament on a Saturday to step in to save it, but Grangemouth, Port Talbot steel and now Mossmorran are not important enough to the UK government.
You have to admit it is an excellent reason to vote Labour. Soon the Proclaimers will have enough new closures for a new ‘Letter from America’.
Rural Roads Trashed by Turbine Traffic
In the rush to net-zero and amid the Scottish government falling over itself to approve virtually any rural development, the fact that rural roads are not designed for the traffic they are enduring seems to be just ignored. These roads were only meant for light traffic, but are currently used for transporting convoys of turbine blades, cranes, cement mixers and lorries with loads of timber and hardcore, loads of up to 200 tonnes. In the Lorg Glen, home to 30 people, one single track road is listed as the access route for up to five windfarm developments.
Carsphairn Is Suffering
The Carsphairn area of Dumfries and Galloway, with 7% of the population, has had to surrender 80% of its land to commercial forestry and wind farms. Sitka spruce plantations cover 52% of the parish, there are nine operational windfarms plus another 6 planned. The remaining 20% of land is all the community gets for farming and all other needs. There have been not infrequent accidents involving cranes, blade failures and turbine fires, and everyday life for the residents now revolves around the windfarm activity. If the roads are damaged or blocked, their ordinary lives come to a screeching halt.
Carsphairn at least has a Renewable Energy Fund (CREFL) which brings the community £350,000 a year, possibly rising to over £1 million by the 2030s. The money has supported education and training grants, the Stroanfreggan community archaeology dig, and a Local Energy Discount Scheme (LEDS) which gives households £600 a year energy discount. Many areas get nothing.
….. and in East Lammermuir, on the east coast, communities have banded together to create an Energy Projects Partnership accountable to a local steering group to ensure the community has a voice when so many developments are going on in tandem all round the country. The extremely heavy traffic involved in these developments, particularly when there are several ongoing simultaneously, may at its worst lead to rural depopulation when people’s lives are plainly second to energy production.
Scotland’s ‘Economic Doom-Loop’
The Common Weal think tank says Scotland has been short-changed by as much as £2 billion over the last eight years, claiming the Scottish government appears to have been ‘completely bamboozled’ during the initial negotiations and also when the financial arrangements came up for review 2 years ago. Instead of renegotiating the deal, Scotland agreed to continue it indefinitely. The ‘doom loop’ works by measuring whether Scotland’s economy grows as much as the UK’s. If it does, Scotland gets to keep any extra tax raised, but if it does not, and extra tax is paid simply because of higher tax rates, part of the extra tax raised must be handed over to the Treasury. Inevitably, as Scotland is not in complete charge of its economy, Scotland’s growth lags behind the UK’s, in common with every area of the UK apart from the south-east.
In the first 3 years the system ran (2017/18 to 2019/20) Scotland only got £170 million out of £900 million raised. This year, of £1.7bn extra tax raised through Scottish income tax, the Scottish government will only get £616 million. The rest is handed over to the UK.
Jim Cuthbert, former head of statistics at the Scottish Office, said the arrangement forces Scotland into a ‘cycle of relative economic decline’, saying the fiscal settlement can and should be revised as is allowed under the Joint Exchequer Committee arrangements.
SNP Review Group Favours Abortion Up to Birth
Following a review commissioned by former FM Humza Yousaf, Scottish government ministers are considering allowing abortion as an automatic right without conditions at any stage of a pregnancy, even up to birth. This would allow abortion on sex selection grounds, or disability, or anything or nothing. It also opens Scotland to the hideous prospect of American-style ‘partial birth’ abortions. How can it be right to kill a perfectly viable foetus a few seconds before it is born? And what about the dangers to women of very late abortions?
Between abortion up to birth and euthanasia (sorry ‘assisted dying’) Scotland is turning into a country where morality has been sacrificed to selfishness.
Police Scotland Can’t Afford to Fight Crime
but can afford a Human Rights Adviser on a cool £1 million for three years’ work. This despite the fact that they already have an Assistant Chief Constable for Policing Together (salary £150,000 a year) whose responsibilities are specifically for equality, diversity, inclusion and human rights. They will also be recruiting 3 more staff to support embedding human rights, diversity and inclusion in Police Scotland, which isn’t needed as Police Scotland are totally in thrall to LGBTY Scotland and any passing trans activist. It’s the legality of gender-critical thinking that they need to embed in their organisation, by unequivocally rejecting trans ideology. And by rejecting the fudge of rightly recording rapists as male, but letting said men pretend they are women while going through custody.
It is so strange that police can file 12,000 actual crimes without bothering with any investigation on grounds of cost, but can fling money hand over fist at diversity posts which got us into the mess we are in now.
Dangerous Revisiting of Rape Convictions
The UK Supreme Court has announced that Scottish courts have been applying the law protecting alleged victims’ sexual history in rape trials too restrictively. Scotland applies sections 274 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 to exclude any mention of a victim’s sexual history or character. Section 275 allows some exemptions to the general
Section 274 rule. The Supreme Court ruling may result in even fewer reports of rape and sexual assault being made, and may result in existing convictions being challenged in court. Already fewer than half of cases brought to court result in a conviction, and victims often allege humiliating treatment by the authorities which some describe as worse than the rape.
Cameron Barracks Controversy
Protests have been held in Inverness over the Home Office’s plan to house more than 300 asylum seekers in the former Cameron Barracks. But not everyone is against mass immigration, despite the experience of Germany and Sweden, with ethnic divisions transplanted from their countries of origin with disastrous consequences.
Were the Inverness protesters racists? Or were they just residents concerned about the inability of local authorities to provide services to residents as it is, without adding thousands more to a system which cannot cope?
McAllan casts doubt on Affordable Housing Plans
Scottish Housing Minister Mairi McAllan is warning that she may be unable to provide the £4.9 billion (over 4 years) which she only promised in September. This is due to the UK appearing to go back on their promise for their own affordable housing, which will have a knock-on effect on Scottish funding through the Barnett formula.
Housing campaigners say Scotland needs almost 16,000 affordable homes every year from 2026 to 2031, more than 3 times the number started in 2024-25.
This comes at a time when campaigners have begun legal action against Glasgow City Council, who are responsible for three-quarters of the illegal breaches which deny homeless people some kind of housing, with over 30,000 breaches recorded over the last 5 years.
Heat Pumps Abandoned
The Scottish government has quietly abandoned its Heat in Buildings Bill for this parliamentary session, although it may revive it if the SNP gains a majority at Holyrood next May (although they won’t use that majority to bring independence). Mairi Mcallan blamed their decision on the delay in the UK’s Warm Homes Plan and a lack of clarity on energy bill costs. She is extending funding for houses to connect to local district heating networks to bring funding into line with the grants for heat pumps.
Finally
Can’t leave this week without congratulating Scotland’s men’s football team for their epic 4-2 win over Denmark in midweek to secure World Cup Finals qualification after 28 years’ absence from the party. Scott McTominay’s overhead kick started it off, and Kenny McLean’s cheeky lob from halfway ensured the match will go into folklore. Manager Steve Clarke is due to leave his post before the tournament, but has indicated he may continue to take Scotland through the World Cup.
It seems now that most of Scotland will be empty next summer, with everyone scrambling to get to the finals which will be held in Canada, Mexico and the USA, although exact locations and dates will not be found out until December 5th.
Good Luck to Scotland when they get there, and hope The Donald doesn’t deport the Scots fans for being too rowdy.