FOR half a century the SNP has been a huge part of life.
Leafleting for my dad Stewart, who was a councillor for Summerston in Glasgow.
Canvassing for my mother Winnie in her four successful European campaigns in Highlands and Islands and supporting my late wife Margaret as MP for Moray.
I even sang Scots Wha Hae at the close of each annual conference.
That was how short of talent they were in the old days when few candidates ever honestly expected to win - outside my family that is!
So the decision that I could not stand for the seventh time as SNP candidate for Inverness - having served the people there for 26 years since 1999 - was tough.
But it has been a long time coming.
The serious, self-inflicted damage to the party began with the obsession on gender matters.
But it became deadly serious that fatal day we tied ourselves to the Green Party in the so-called “cooperation pact”.
At the key SNP MSP group meeting where Nicola Sturgeon forced this through, I was the sole and lone voice arguing that associating with them would tarnish us.
They would shut down the North Sea; our chemical industry; prevent our farmers from producing food and ban our fishermen from the sea, with their Highly Protected Marine Area policy.
The low point was, however, the bottle return scheme. It was so ill-thought out that an unprecedented 600 businesses signed a letter to the FM calling for it to be binned.
Much earlier on, I had warned several Ministers it was a disaster and to implement it would be a catastrophe.
It would put shop prices up and put businesses under.
But they knew better. Well - guess what?
Now it's ended up in the law courts with Biffa waste services suing the Scottish Government for £160million, in a case to be heard in June.
The hapless Lorna Slater was put in charge of a multi-billion-pound scheme despite being a rookie MSP and Minister.
Meanwhile, the other Green Minister, Patrick Harvie, said we must install heat pumps in one million homes by 2030. Since 2019, only 9000 have been put in.
I'm told there are only about 200 suitably qualified engineers in Scotland and it takes two to four days to put one in.
Do the maths. Half-baked pie in the sky. Utter tosh. Dud policy eventually put into the policy recycling bin, only weeks ago. What were they thinking of?
In rural Scotland, during power cuts, many like us rely on our wood fire or stove for heat.
Harvie wanted to ban them. In Sweden they are compulsory to provide ba...
Leafleting for my dad Stewart, who was a councillor for Summerston in Glasgow.
Canvassing for my mother Winnie in her four successful European campaigns in Highlands and Islands and supporting my late wife Margaret as MP for Moray.
I even sang Scots Wha Hae at the close of each annual conference.
That was how short of talent they were in the old days when few candidates ever honestly expected to win - outside my family that is!
So the decision that I could not stand for the seventh time as SNP candidate for Inverness - having served the people there for 26 years since 1999 - was tough.
But it has been a long time coming.
The serious, self-inflicted damage to the party began with the obsession on gender matters.
But it became deadly serious that fatal day we tied ourselves to the Green Party in the so-called “cooperation pact”.
At the key SNP MSP group meeting where Nicola Sturgeon forced this through, I was the sole and lone voice arguing that associating with them would tarnish us.
They would shut down the North Sea; our chemical industry; prevent our farmers from producing food and ban our fishermen from the sea, with their Highly Protected Marine Area policy.
The low point was, however, the bottle return scheme. It was so ill-thought out that an unprecedented 600 businesses signed a letter to the FM calling for it to be binned.
Much earlier on, I had warned several Ministers it was a disaster and to implement it would be a catastrophe.
It would put shop prices up and put businesses under.
But they knew better. Well - guess what?
Now it's ended up in the law courts with Biffa waste services suing the Scottish Government for £160million, in a case to be heard in June.
The hapless Lorna Slater was put in charge of a multi-billion-pound scheme despite being a rookie MSP and Minister.
Meanwhile, the other Green Minister, Patrick Harvie, said we must install heat pumps in one million homes by 2030. Since 2019, only 9000 have been put in.
I'm told there are only about 200 suitably qualified engineers in Scotland and it takes two to four days to put one in.
Do the maths. Half-baked pie in the sky. Utter tosh. Dud policy eventually put into the policy recycling bin, only weeks ago. What were they thinking of?
In rural Scotland, during power cuts, many like us rely on our wood fire or stove for heat.
Harvie wanted to ban them. In Sweden they are compulsory to provide ba...
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Daily Record (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 22, 2025