SNP sleaze....

Yesterday the SNP dropped its legal challenge which attempted to stop details of its so-called Local Income Tax becoming public. A total of £100,000 of public money has been wasted in the courts to prevent the Scottish people finding out that the LIT would create a shortfall of £400 million if introduced this year.

FOIs from opposition parties were blocked by John Swinney to prevent the information becoming public during the Scottish election campaign. Now the campaign is over he has cynically removed his objections to publication. But we still pay the bill for the Nationalists preventing us see the information in time to influence our votes. 

During the Major administration "sleaze" became the media word of choice to describe any politically related misdemeanour. It grew out of the "back to basics" sloganeering of the Major government, and moved in meaning from describing personal/sexual laxity of prominent people to being attached to almost any dodgy moves by the Tory government in any sphere, including the spending of public money in inappropriate ways.

Does this cynical ploy to spend our money to stop us seeing the truth qualify as "sleaze" in the accepted sense? Mebbes aye, mebbes naw.

What I do know is that if a Labour administration behaved in this way the newspapers and blogs would be humming with the buzz of Nationalist fury at yet another example of the degeneracy and corruption the politics of the union. Will we see the letters pages and the blogs flooded with cybernat discussion of this particular piece of Nationalist corruption?

My advice: don't hold your breath.