We're Agin' it!

There's a story about the old time minister of religion who, when asked his opinion on sin, replied "I'm agin' it!".

Older readers (not so old actually) will remember when the SNP was agin' Devolution. They said it wouldn't work, and it wasn't what the people wanted. Only after everybody else had worked through the Constitutional Convention for ten years, preparing the ground and grinding out the detail, creating the consensus and writing the bills and laws that enabled Devolution to go ahead, did the Nats deign to come aboard the Devolution train.

Even the YesYes campaign divided the SNP, with some SNP politicians and members campaigning in favour and many not (they were agin' it!). Once everyone else worked to make it a fact, the whole of the SNP accepted it.

Well, now the Parliament in Holyrood is due to get more powers in the Scotland Bill which is getting a 2nd Reading today. And you know what? The SNP is agin' it!

They have tabled a motion that states the new powers are unacceptable.. the Commons Order Paper reads;

SCOTLAND BILL: Second Reading

Angus Robertson Stewart Hosie Pete Wishart Mr Mike Weir Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil Dr Eilidh Whiteford That this House, while recognising the need to further enhance the powers of the Scottish Parliament, nevertheless believes that the measures the Scotland Bill seeks to devolve are inadequate to meet the ambitions of the Scottish Government for the people of Scotland; considers the measures relating to air weapons, road safety and drink driving to be incomplete; regrets that the Calman Commission’s recommendations to devolve the aggregates levy and air passenger duty, and to devolve responsibility for the marine environment to match the Scottish Parliament’s responsibility for fisheries, as well as its proposal for a Scottish role in welfare benefits, have all been abandoned; regards the proposals for the Crown Estates Commission as inadequate; deplores the proposals in the Bill to re-reserve already devolved responsibilities; concludes that the tax varying provisions would embed a long-term deflationary bias in Scotland’s budget and that the proposed borrowing powers remaining subject to HM Treasury controls and limits render them insufficiently flexible; and therefore considers the Bill as a whole to be unacceptable.  For the life of me I cannot understand why we put up with this bunch of chancers. The SNP adds nothing of value to Scottish politics, they oppose everything that anyone else suggests and, when there is actual work to be done, they let other people do it. Even when they get hold of power, as they did in 2007, they manage to achieve virtually none of their main manifesto pledges. They are intellectually and physically lazy and monumentally incompetent. On top of that they blame everybody else, Westminster, Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, for any problem they can't solve (quite a lot of problems in that category BTW). The bet must be that, when this bill passes into law, when others have done the work and laid the foundations, the SNP will be queuing up to use whatever powers it transfers to Holyrood, and criticising any other politician that doesn't meet their "exacting" standards.... They won't be agin' it then.....