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Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday 12 February
The Scotsman
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12/02/2025
Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday 12 February
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News
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00:00
Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Wednesday.
00:11
My name's Dale Miller.
00:12
I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman.
00:15
I'm joined by Rachel Amory, our political correspondent.
00:18
Rachel, we'll get to talking about all things politics first, but just want to mention the
00:24
front page of today's Scotsman.
00:27
And we've led on a story from Callum Ross, there is a consultation that is being launched
00:33
by the Scottish Government.
00:35
And it covers a variety of things around the school sector or school set up, but as part
00:41
of it, it will look at the rule around or the rules around toilets and gender specific
00:48
toilets.
00:49
Currently, there is legislation that exists around providing a certain percentage, roughly
00:55
50-50, of specifically male and female toilets.
01:00
That is up for consideration to update that bit of legislation.
01:06
There are some campaign groups, including the Scottish Tories, that are concerned that
01:10
there may be pressure around schools having more gender neutral school toilets introduced.
01:16
It is a hot topic, as we know, and that leads the front of the Scotsman today.
01:22
So, a picture there, farewell to the King, Dennis Law, who was said farewell to the Manchester
01:29
United and Scottish football greats yesterday.
01:32
Rachel, I know it's recess time, but it doesn't feel like it, there's plenty still happening.
01:41
Council tax, firstly, reform's been bounced around a lot over recent years, but against
01:48
the backdrop of some potentially sharp rises in council tax this April, it's back on the
01:54
agenda again.
01:55
Yeah, as you were saying, this has been talked about by the SNP for years now.
02:00
It was discussed way back in 2007, when they first came to power in Hollywood.
02:04
They proposed replacing it with a sort of a local income tax type thing.
02:09
That, at the time, faced opposition in Hollywood and Westminster and therefore did not go ahead.
02:14
It feels like every election cycle, we hear this coming up again, is there going to be
02:20
reforms to council tax.
02:21
In 2021, for example, the last Hollywood election, it was being mooted as well again, was shut
02:28
down by the then public finance minister, Tom Arthur.
02:31
We're now looking ahead to, obviously, next year, another Scottish Parliament election.
02:35
And yet again, the SNP are saying that they want to try and reform council tax to make
02:40
it fairer.
02:41
So right now, ministers are looking at trying to speak to the public, trying to do some
02:44
consultations on what to do here about council tax.
02:48
But a lot of the opposition parties are not really paying much heed to it.
02:51
They're basically saying, we've heard this before many times from the SNP and nothing
02:56
has happened. And basically, the Lib Dems are saying that nothing's going to change
03:00
here. So there's no point in even really listening to what the SNP have to say here.
03:05
As you were saying, quite interesting, the timing of this, partly because we have the
03:09
Scottish Parliament election next year coming up, which is when we tend to hear these
03:13
kinds of announcements, but also because we're starting to see councils setting their
03:18
council tax rises for the next financial year, which starts in April.
03:23
Primarily, we're thinking of this because this week's Scottish borders are looking to
03:27
discuss rising council taxes by 10 per cent.
03:30
That's quite a big amount.
03:32
And of course, hopefully all the viewers listened to our episode of the Steamy podcast
03:37
where we interviewed the First Minister.
03:39
In that interview, he said that he thought rises of more than 10 per cent were too much
03:43
and they were unnecessary.
03:44
He felt that enough money was coming the council's way from the Scottish government that
03:49
that was not needed.
03:50
So quite interesting to see that happening at this point as well.
03:54
Yeah, and we're looking at a potential 8 per cent council tax rise in Edinburgh as well.
03:59
And other councils are in the process of considering and voting on the level at which
04:05
they'll set their council tax throughout this month.
04:08
So it's one to watch, as you say, Rachel.
04:11
Certainly the wording coming from John Swinney was rises of 10 per cent were too high and
04:18
shouldn't be justified based on what councils are being given, at least to the Scottish
04:23
borders. They seem to disagree with that assessment.
04:27
Away from that, Rachel, there's still a lot of chat about Labor this week and specifically
04:33
Scottish Labor. There's been an interesting run of promotions from the party around them
04:40
keeping some policies that I guess have long been attached to the SNP government, like
04:45
free prescriptions, free university tuition as well, making the point that they're not
04:51
looking to remove those if they come into power.
04:54
There was some interesting analysis from John Curtis that you have written up.
04:59
Just talk us through that and where Anas Sarwar and the party's currently at.
05:04
Yes, as I was saying, a whole year, more than a year until the Scottish Parliament election,
05:08
but the party are really, really starting to ramp up their campaign, particularly Scottish
05:14
Labor. Scottish Labor and its leader, Anas Sarwar, they've made no secret of the fact that they
05:18
want to win this election.
05:20
They want to be in the new house.
05:22
Anas Sarwar wants to be first minister.
05:24
If you go back to last summer, Scottish Labor were actually doing really well in the
05:29
Holyrood polls. About neck and neck with the SNP, Anas Sarwar on the back of them doing so
05:35
well in the general election, a lot of people thought perhaps this was possible.
05:41
But as more unpopular decisions have been made in Westminster, more and more people have
05:46
now started to drift away from Scottish Labor and back towards the SNP or to other parties.
05:51
If you look at the polling now, Labour have fallen way back down to where they were in
05:56
2021 and the SNP look to be back up to around about where they were in 2021, albeit on
06:03
slightly reduced numbers.
06:05
So if you look at what Anas Sarwar has been doing in the past, he's been trying to put out
06:09
some new policy points and some other things to keep in mind.
06:13
So, for example, announcing that he would support nuclear energy last week and this week
06:18
he's been announcing that he will keep a lot of policies introduced by the SNP, such as free
06:23
prescriptions and free tuition fees.
06:25
It might sound strange seeing as an SNP policy, but if you look at polling, these things are
06:29
very, very popular with the public.
06:31
So it would be very bad electorally for them to get over these issues here.
06:37
Now, John Curtis says there's probably at this point one of two options, the first option
06:41
being that the SNP once again win the majority of the constituency seats and the Greens,
06:47
which they're predicted to do, will do well in the list votes and that creates a pro-independence
06:50
majority and therefore Labour cannot win.
06:54
The other option is that the SNP and the Greens just fall slightly short of that majority
07:00
and therefore as a pro-unionist majority in Pollywood, that would be made up of many
07:04
different parties who would have to work together on this.
07:08
Given how many MSPs from reform are expected to win the seats, that could also prove very,
07:14
very difficult for Labour to come together on those issues.
07:18
So it's not great news for Labour at the moment.
07:20
And as John Curtis was saying, it's a very difficult path for them.
07:24
But it's not impossible, it's still possible, particularly if popularity with the UK
07:29
government starts to go back up.
07:31
So that's kind of the assessment of things right now.
07:34
But it's going to be really interesting to see this battle between the SNP and Labour
07:38
between now and the election in 2026.
07:40
Can the SNP hold on to this newfound ground that they have and will Labour continue to
07:45
fall down the polls or will they be able to clean up a couple of little bits?
07:49
Thanks, Rachel. You can read the stories on Council Tax and what John Curtis had to say
07:55
at Scotsman.com.
07:56
If you can't find them readily, go to the politics tab, which is in the navigation bar,
08:01
and you'll be able to access the stories from there.
08:04
There's also some news this morning from Callum Ross about just the extent of what cuts
08:12
may happen at Edinburgh University.
08:13
We know more widely universities are under pressure and that Callum's written extensively
08:19
about the financial support that's being considered from taxpayers' money for a Dundee
08:24
University to get it out of a financial hole.
08:27
So you can read that story at Scotsman.com as well.
08:29
Rachel, thanks to you and thanks to everyone else for joining us.
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12:37
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