SNP Delusion..

....or should that be lies?

 There have been two SNP party political broadcastss in the last two weeks. One is an all-women presentation and another features a "what has the SNP ever done for us" skit based on the Monty Python  "what have the Romans ever done for us" scene from The Life of Brian. In both of these broadcasts the claim is made that the SNP has built 330 new schools in the last four years.

Common sense tells us that cannot be true: in my own area, after having built five new schools between 2003 and 2007, there have been no schools built in the last four years.... Surely, if hundreds of schools were being built, we would have been allocated at least one... and surely if hundreds of new schools were being built we would not have the employment problems in construction that we do have?

From 2001-2007 Labour (and Lib Dems) at Holyrood provided matching funds to councils to build schools. Holyrood supplied 60% of capital costs of these projects, with councils raising the other 40% usually (I cannot swear for all of them) using PPP.

Under that dispensation, hundreds of schools were built and contracts for signed to design and build new schools .

In the 2007 manifesto Labour promised to build 100 more schools using the same mechanism. The SNP opposed PPP, but promised to match Labour's programme "brick for brick" using the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT). SFT is a proposed new mechanism that the SNP would create for funding and managing large capital projects. It is necessary because the SNP hates PPP, and refuses to use it to fund and manage new contracts.

However the SFT never materialised. There is no new funding mechansim for large capital projects. It never really existed other than an empty manifesto promise. So three years pass and, as the SNP refuses to use PPP and they have no SFT, no matching funds are available from Holyrood and therefore no new schools are commissioned from Holyrood. None. Not one. In all of Scotland.

Any schools "completed" since 2007 already had authorisation and/or funding and/or contracts in place before the SNP came to power, or some may be financed by councils out of their own capital funds. But none are due to the SNP at Holyrood.

In 2010 Holyrood says councils can put 14 secondary and 21 primary schools (approximately, I don't have the exact figures to hand) in their capital plans. That's a total of 30 odd schools for all of Scotland. The matching funding will only be 50% and will not include extraneuos items such as new road formation, school crossings etc that were typically included in the previous allocations.

In December 2010 councils which had been planning to start a school got a letter from the SNP administration saying that the money would no longer be in their capital budget, but instead would be allocated from revenues. And, btw, you have to use PPP to design, build and maintain them!!!!

Councils are still not clear what the switch means, what impact it will have on design and build timetables etc.

The result is that only one (that I know of) schoool has been started with Holyrood money  authorised by the SNP administration (remember brick for brick?). And none will be completed before the May 2011 elections.

The question is: were the 330 schools that the SNP claim to have "completed" (weasel word) since 2007 all authorised before the SNP came to power?  I.e. did the prevous administration authorise the schools, authorise the funding and the contract mechanism, have the project in place and started or ready to go before the SNP stopped all new PPP contracts?  It seems likley that this is that case.

It is clear that none of the 330 schools that have been "completed" since 2007 have been due to anything the SNP at Holyrood did. There was no matching funding from Holyrood between 2007 and 2010, how can there have been new build?

The SNP might say that their claiming to have "completed" these schools is sort-of true. Some of them have been getting built while the SNP has been in Holyrod, but in claiming the credit for "building" these schools, it becomes, in my opinion, a direct lie.

Of course I  might be barking up the wrong tree. Maybe the SNP has built 330 schools since 2007. Maybe the evidence is just not clear and they're too shy to put it into the public domain. Who knows?

So if anyone out there  has a list of these projects, their timeline and funding, then maybe they could send it, or point us to the source. Then we could get to the bottom of the mystery of the mysterious "330 new schools completed" claim. That'd be nice.

UK Underwrites Glasgow - Edinburgh Rail Upgrade

The headline in the Herald says "Edinburgh to Glasgow in 35 Minutes". The story, which is good news in itself, tells how Minister at Holyrood are "relieved" that the money has been found to finance an improvement to the railway line between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and that the key financial element is that the money can be borrowed against the security of the value of UK Rail Network (my italics and emphasis).

So. It's the value of the UK network that allows a vital upgrade to go ahead in Scotland. Is this a benefit of the union or what?

Also, just a passing thought: why is this top-notch-high-grade-really-really-vital infrastructure development not being financed using the wonderful-marvelous-better-than-anything Scottish Futures Trust? Could it be because the SFT is a duck which can now be clearly declared as a dead and buried duck? Isn't it time to give the SFT a solemn sending off, along with the LIT, the abolition of Student debt, the 18 class sizes, the brick-for-brick school building programme and all the other fantastical elements that padded out the SNP's 2007 election "manifesto"?