Scottish National Party

Different times zones all over the world can prove a business stumbling block

Unless you’ve got a fancy DAB radio or new-fangled mobile phone, then you will be given a nice little surprise when you wake up, as the clocks went back this morning from 2am back to 1am, marking the end of the British Summer Time (soon to be renamed British Mild And Cloudy, But At Least It’s Not Raining Time). You may live to lament the wasted opportunity of an extra hours sleep…

Hearing that the clocks are going back evokes a similar reaction to most people – the dread of colder days, darker mornings and less sunshine.

In this modern day and age, is there any need for the BST/GMT alterations at all? There has been calls at Westminster to scrap the annual procedures altogether. However, the Scottish National Party remains against the ideas, as many parts of Scotland would be plunged into darkness for much of the day if the clocks were not altered, as was seen between 1968 and 1971 when BST was maintained all year long. The UK saw a reduction in road-traffic accidents by the thousands, and it has been forecast that the economy would see a boost of one billion pounds if the experiment were tried again. Conservative MP Tom Yeo believes that the public opinion is “Strongly in favour” of the change. Research has also shown that leaving BST helps people sleep much easier.

Dr. Ian McKee MSP is, in his own words ‘old enough to remember’ when the three-year long experiment took place, and described the time-alteration in a recent interview as “absolutely devastating…we have tried, the experiment failed, we must carry on as we do now.”

SNP refuses Treasury financial advice

By Domenica Goduto

The Scottish National Party has refused offers of financial advice from the Treasury, despite concerns about the Scottish Government‘s ability to make appropriate spending cuts in the face of the recession.

Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy claims that the SNP Administration is “the least efficient of all four UK governments.” He offered First Minister Alex Salmond the services of top Treasury advisers and civil

SNP's Jim Murphy courtesy of daylife.com

servants in an attempt to improve the Scottish Government’s efficiency target, which Murphy said is “the lowest efficiency target of them all”.

“If it hit similar targets to those the rest of the UK is chasing, it would be able to find the relevant efficiencies and be able to help real people through the global recession. It cannot be exempt from tightening its belt along with the rest of us.”

The SNP’s refusal has created further tension between the Labour and SNP administrations . Labour claims that the 2% efficiency savings proposed by SNP finance secretary John Swinney does not measure up to the 3% savings to which Westminster, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly aspire.

A spokesman for John Swinney argues that “The very last people to advise Scotland about efficient government would be the very Treasury who have presided over a financial disaster, racked up £1.4 trillion of debt and whose forecasts aren’t worth the paper they are written on.”

This is not the first time the SNP Administration has turned down offers of assistance or otherwise refused to cooperate with Westminster. Last month John Swinney turned down the Treasury’s offer of £1 billion to be put towards the construction of the new Forth Bridge on the grounds that the money would simply be siphoned off from other sections of Scotland’s budget. First Minister Alex Salmond also faced criticism later in March for refusing to enter into discussions with the Calman Commission – an independent group set up to review the Scottish Government’s devolved powers – because Scottish independence would not be considered as part of the review.