Scottish Enterprise £236m annual public budget is the strategic delivery partner for Scotland’s Green Data Centres Action Plan. It promotes the pipeline. It is not an independent assessor of it. Its Chair (appointed Jan 2025) co-chairs the Scottish Government’s Energy Advisory Board with the First Minister and holds a board position at ScottishPower whose renewables arm develops MachairWind, the offshore wind project connected to the grid the data centres need. The question is structural: can the body promoting a pipeline also be trusted to assess its cumulative impact on Scotland’s grid, water, land and communities? The ask: an independent cumulative impact assessment, commissioned from outside the promotional network, published, accountable to Parliament.

Investigative journalism: we once had Roger Cook confronting fraudsters and crooks on their doorsteps, now we've got Marianna Spring searching for internet trolls on socials media.

RIP Roger Cook. Confronting dubious types with their rotten deeds, and occasionally getting a whack on the head for his trouble, on Central Television's The Cook Report for 16 series over 12 years on ITV. And a host of work prior with the BBC.

Failed sheepdog needs new home because he likes humans more than sheep ift.tt/RON0rqY

Residents of Iona are opposing a 91-turbine offshore windfarm proposed for the sea near Staffa and Iona, saying that the site is “top-tier sensitivity” and a “national strategic test case”, which will impact how West Coast seascapes are developed. heraldscotland.com/news/2618…

Premium Newsletter: Part 1 of my series covering how the AI "revolution" is part of a larger Silicon Valley Bubble, where grifts replace value and cults of personality crush innovation. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have become bubbles unto themselves. wheresyoured.at/premium-the-…

What's another £500 million to pay for through our electricity bills?

Eleven points about this: 1) This is not a rogue Headteacher with a personal hobby horse. This is the SNP Government's LGBT Inclusive Education policy in action, as introduced by John Swinney in 2018. 2) This is not just "woke nonsense" or a "distraction from real education". It harms children. 3) Homosexual relationships are associated with negative outcomes in terms of physical health, mental health, addiction and relationship stability. To encourage children to see homosexual relationships as an equal and healthy alternative to heterosexual ones is misleading and irresponsible. 4) Many view homosexual relationships as immoral and therefore see this as the promotion of immorality to children. Children are taught that the teachings of most religions on human sexuality are wrong. This is indoctrination. 5) Transgenderism is a contested ideology, so schools should not be presenting it as the one true truth. 6) Changing gender is associated with a host of negative outcomes for children, so schools should not be presenting it as normal, natural and healthy. 7) Critical Race Theory, as represented on the flag, is divisive and contested. Preaching it in a school is indoctrination. 8) Children who disagree with the LGBT agenda, for example because of their religious beliefs, will be made to feel alienated in their own school. In fact, we have heard that from a pupil at this very school. 9) "Love is Love" is a vacuous soundbite that implodes on the slightest intelligent consideration. "Love" between a grown man and a young boy? Love between a married man and another woman? Love between a brother and sister? Love between a man and his four wives? Are these all equivalent? Are they all morally acceptable because "Love is Love"? No. As well as being a dangerous message, it indicates a pitiful level of intellectual engagement among the school leadership. 10) Inverness Royal Academy looks bad, but at least it's not Kinlochbervie High School, where the cross-dressing Headteacher, John Naples-Campbell, approves of utterly perverted content in the school library. 11) Highland Council won't do anything about it. We complained and were brushed off with cut-and-paste diversity and inclusion speak.

When I moved to Devon, I clearly remember seeing a pickup driving down Cullompton high street, with a hand banging the outside of the driver's door in time to The Wurzel's Combine Harvester that was blaring out of the open windows, and thinking "What the fuck am I doing here?"

This is the most telling part of the Green motion backed by the SNP to avoid an inquiry into Peter Murrell. Holyrood doesn't actually have the power to turn the recommendations of their proposed review into law. It's an impotent sideshow. Democracy in action, folks

..and of course he wants access to women’s toilets. 🕹️ Detain and deport the pervert.

Around £14 million to put unnecessary and useless cycle lanes in Byres Road Glasgow Just so that a kebab shop can store its bins on it. What a f..King shambles.

It's so profoundly entitled to take your place at a prestigious university - playing the game when it benefits you - then shout over people who've done years of research because you don't want others to hear their arguments

25 years of never earning a penny you didn’t give him through tax. Absolute zero real world experience. Possible next PM. Jesus wept. Andy Burnham. Andy. Fucking. Burnham. A man who has spent thirty years with his hand in the public till and his eye on the mirror, who has never once in his entire adult life had to worry about where next month’s money was coming from because next month’s money was always, always, coming from you. Prime Minister. He wants to be Prime Minister. A man whose entire preparation for managing the sixth largest economy on earth consists of running buses in Salford and once making a Chancellor look bad on the evening news. That’s it. That’s the CV. That’s what we’re being asked to get excited about. He’s never hired anyone with his own money. Never lost a contract. Never had a customer tell him to get stuffed. Never stayed up until the small hours wondering if the payroll clears and his staff can pay their rent or feed their families. The concept of economic risk to Andy Burnham is entirely theoretical. It is an abstraction. It is something that happens to other people in constituencies he visits before elections. What he has done - and credit where due, he’s done it with genuine artistry - is spend three decades constructing a man. A specific, careful, field-tested human adult man. Caring but tough. Northern but serious. Principled but electable. A man who emotes on cue, lands in the news cycle like he was dropped from a helicopter by PLMR, genuinely sincere. Scheduled sincerity. Every fifteen minutes, on the hour. Every hour. The Hillsborough stuff is real. Fine. One moment of genuine courage in thirty years of professional positioning. One. And it’s still doing press tours. PM. Jesus. I’m so tired, man. x.com/AndyBurnhamGM/status/2…

As a gay man, I say: you did this - you, the far-Left LGBTIAQ activists with your grotesque parades, your absurd 'pronouns', your men in women's spaces and your drag queen storytimes. You did this. You pushed and pushed the boundaries of power to see what you could get away with, using the 'cause' as a testudo: criticise us and you're a 'homophobe', 'transphobe', etc. You used us, the 'normie' gays as a cause, to radicalise and militarise, whilst weaponising speech, with what others can and cannot say - and now you're surprised that there's kick-back? Oh, sure, you'll now use that as: "See? See? Look at all the homophobia and transphobia! We told you!" but it was you that caused the homophobia and transphobia with your ridiculous power moves for 5% of the population. We asked for equality. We got that. We asked for Same-Sex Marriage. We got that. But you wouldn't stop there. Emboldened by the generosity of those who, in many countries, voted for or supported the latter, you wanted to see how much further you could go. You poked the bear. The bear didn't react. But you kept poking and finally the bear reacted. And now we're in a position where the bear recognises you every time and will swipe back. You did this.

The Climate Change Committee's longstanding desire to stamp out meat and dairy consumption is back in the news following their publication of the 7th Carbon Budget -- advice to Parliament and Ed Miliband, which they are very likely (they always do) to adopt without meaningful debate. They have been trying to do this for a long time. And they have for just as long been trying to find ways to make this acceptable. In 2020, this including convening the Climate Assembly on the belief that the Assembly could stand as a focus group or opinion poll to represent the entire public. They further believed that if they could show that the Assembly supported something, then because the Assembly was selected from ordinary people, the public would accept the Assembly's votes on policy options. But the Assembly's vote on the reduction of meat and dairy consumption was not a vote as we'd understand it. First, only a third of the assembly were present for the vote. Second, the assembly members were not given the option to vote against anything. The 'voting' consisted of a "Borda count" -- a method in which the "voter" ranks options given to them. The policy of reducing meat and dairy consumption only appeared on less than one third (10/35) of that part of the Assembly's orders of preferences, according to the Borda method. 8 policies were put to the Assembly, and reducing meat and dairy was the second lowest preference: 1. Provide support to farmers: 89% 2. Information and education: 86% 3. Use land efficiently: 66% 4. Rules for large retailers/supermarkets: 46% 5. More local and seasonal food: 40% 6. Make low carbon food affordable: 34% 7. Some, just less, meat [reducing meat and dairy consumption]: 29% 8. Part of planning policy and new developments, including allotments: 14%. Worse for the CCC, though not counted, comments submitted to the organisers were adamant that policies should not coerce, force, or punish -- i.e. tax -- consumer behaviour. The convenors of the climate assembly, which includes Parliament itself (the offices, not the members), green NGOs and their billionaire philanthropist grantors, civil servants, and fake academics lied about this underwhelming result, and claimed that the Assembly -- and therefore the public -- supported the CCC's ambitions to force us to be vegetarians. This means two things. 1. The government, MPs, green wonks, civil servants, the blob, all of them, *know* that these policies are unwanted and unpopular -- that they have no mandate. 2. That they will try everything and anything to get the policies they want, all the same, and that includes acts of very obvious bad faith. Ed Miliband and his crew and the current population of the CCC are even more determined to inflict policies on us before democracy can stop them. This is bad for us, and it is bad for UK farmers. Here is a video I made about it in 2020.

Breaking: Scottish Government found in contempt over FOI practice. Read more at: foi.scot/court-rules-failure…

This has been a limitation of all estimates of the "green economy" since the 2000s. I pointed it out in 2009 that DECC had hired a private market research firm, but it included waste management and the manufacture & retail of "doors and windows", which are counted as "green" because they are subject to green legislation. DECC and the company refused to let me see the full taxonomy of the database, but I eventually obtained it under FOI in 2013, along with emails about them discussing how to obstruct it and bitching about me. Then it became a competence of the ONS and other agencies, which produce a number of estimates. But what's the point of attempting to measure the "green economy" when we know that it's only growing because legislation requires subsidies and grants to be given to the sector -- its growth is parasitic? The entire enterprise is daft.

Toulouse right now. Win game -> destroy street level tables of Sushi restaurant

She was the selfie queen.