Scottish Government

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they supercharged them after COVID with all the money [laughs] they got from the Scottish Government and then the, uh, and CVC, and the squads have been, but I've not checked it.

Well, this is hypothetical really.

It's, it's kind of general question this, so we'll c- call it 56.

And no NI contributions, Willie, absolutely.

So my plead to the Scottish Government is it was a political move to tinker with these rates.

It was never going to raise that much more money.

It looks as if it's raising less money.

And listen, you kind of caught me off guard last week when you said that you, because you care so much about your city, would run for mayor.

Is there anything coming down the line that will put a mayor into Glasgow or Edinburgh, Willie, or...?

Well, there is a lot of talk from the UK government, and I think that what they'd need to do, I don't know how workable it is, Tom, that would need to be a decision that the Scottish government think it's a good idea.

But what John Swinney has cleverly done in order to kind of hit that off at the pass, he started to talk about maybe changing the structure with the local authorities.

From The National

politics section friday the 4th of september smp official hits out at scottish government's ai data center position written by james walker an smp official has hit out the scottish government's current position on ai data centers branding it undemocratic and politically questionable Bill Ramsey, who is the convener of the SNP trade union group TUG, highlighted how the party's National Council voted to support a moratorium on hyperscale data centres earlier this year.

But in the face of mounting pressure from MSPs and campaigners, the SNP leadership haven't followed suit.

Ramsey told the National that the First Minister, as well as other SNP ministers, were present in the room earlier this year when the party's National Council voted through a motion calling for a moratorium.

The motion was passed rather uncontroversially, There were no speakers against, if I recall, so the question is, what has happened between then and now? In August, the Scottish Government announced planning authorities would be required to notify ministers of data centre applications within seven days of validation.

The new direction applies to data centre developments exceeding 50 megawatts of power capacity and will support strategic monitoring of the pipeline of such planning applications and of the implications for wider infrastructure.

But Swinney has stopped short of calling for a full moratorium on new developments.

Scottish Greens MSP Patrick Harvey said his party fought hard for the introduction of the £2 bus fare cap, adding that he is delighted that it will be making a real difference to people and families in Strathclyde.

Uh, some of the other, eh, eh, measures that we've brought in, such as the, um, the, the measures on book bag work for, uh, for babies and families to make sure that children and families have the opportunity to engage in literacy from the earliest possible stages, all of it, uh, justified by international evidence.

These are just some of the steps the Scottish Government is taking to support families to make sure that we close the attainment gap and, most of all, to make sure that every child in our country has the best start of life.

That's what children will get from an SNP government.

[clapping]

And the UK...

We also have to accept that as we undertake, as we utilize oil and gas in the years to come, the question the UK government has to, uh- To assess is whether the development of these fields will contribute more to the carbon emissions that would, that would be realized as an alternative to the importation of oil and gas from other jurisdictions, and that is the assessment that has to be made.

Of course, in all of this, the Scottish Government is absolutely focused on making sure that we make the transition to, uh, to clean fuel.

I was in Aberdeen yesterday to set out more grant funding to support the transition to net zero in Scotland, and that will remain the focus of the Scottish Government.