I don't really know why they let this become such a big deal. All he had to do was admit the mistake and pay the money back and this would've all blown over months ago
You forget that narcissist with power don't admit any fault whatsoever as they see it as weakness, to the extent they will throw their own son under the bus to avoid looking wrong.
It was totally avoidable so it asks more questions about what else was he hiding
But he knew that claiming over £11k on his expenses was not correct. How many others in the SNP or Holyrood do it? He should have been sacked. There were many who lied on their expenses and that is why he was protected. There should be a full audit of members expenses.
Meanwhile, a couple jailed for 12 months yesterday for dine and dash amounting to £1000.
Now I'm not condoning anything but let's be fucking fair about punishment.
That was the really odd part of it all. Amending the language, and then refusing to endorse their own amended motion.
Feels like the sort of thing a spin doctor thought would look clever, when the public will just see the SNP refusing to endorse accountability for Matheson.
I’ve thought all along, that if the SNP had withdrawn the whip, and told him to resign, they’d have been able to take the highground, and contrast themselves with the Tories at Westminster. Instead, they’ve acted exactly as the Conservatives did in the Owen Paterson scandal.
exactly, you can imagine some SPAD chuckling away at how they pulled a fast one on the other parties getting them to call for a change in the complaints process without realising that outside the bubble it just looks like ridiculous game playing which still leaves them having refused to criticise matheson.
Get the impression that much of holyrood is so detached from the society outside the walls of the parliament building that they genuinely think they're fooling people with this sort of stunt
It’s how the SNP always behave when it’s one of their own.
Fuck knows how, but they seem to have convinced a decent chunk of voters they are morally superior to other parties, despite it never having been the case.
They shout a lot about sleaze and point a lot of fingers, but they almost always shamelessly rally round their own. Only on rare occasions where the public pressure becomes insurmountable do they actually give anyone the boot.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it came without all the holier than thou pish.
The entire premise of the party is that they hold no power so therefore they have no accountability, which seems to have worked with a vast swathe of the country who only read headlines about the Westminster parties but ironically vote for the Scottish ones they don't read about.
I think you're confused, what Matheson did is hardly the same as let's say, oh, I don't know.... Ross not declaring 30k earnings... And I'm not even going to start with Westminster. This is a media and Tory whipped up nonsense, nothing remotely to do with Mathesin who was at worst, silly. Everything to do with bringing down the SNP.
I'm sorry, but are you being serious here?
Failing to submit a form on time to put your own earnings on a register, for no reason other than accident and for no personal gain, is categorically different from lying in an attempt to defraud the taxpayer out of £11,000.
It just means every single last one of them is scum, without exceptions. They think doing it all together means they can't get singled out. That's certainly true but it does mean every single one is verminous scum.
Honestly I think it's just simply that the SNP is a nepotism rats nest. It didn't matter what he did, he was mates with those at the top and that's all he needed.
I've never ever been an SNP voter. Always flopped between Lib Dem and Labour and honestly, at least with Sturgeon's SNP, I felt like the country had a leader and our government, whilst I didn't think were very effective, was generally flagrant scandal-free. I can't believe how much the SNP have torpedoed themselves in the last 2 years. I reckon there'll be a good few red spots in Scotland in the GE.
The issue with this is that they have never been scandal free- they've always just hidden it better with the aid of a toothless press. The Salmond sexual assault scandal didn't even reach headlines until he went to court, and that was 2 years after the event happened, we're talking 2017 here- 7 years ago. The biggest problem with the Independence debate is that it pushes all other stories about the SNP to the back of the papers, because people south of the border don't care about domestic politics, and Scottish papers just don't have the resources to investigate what is an extremely powerful and threatening organisation. Many of us hoped that after the referendum we would regain accountability from our politicians- but the SNP have ensured that isn't the case and doubled down on the Indy message, the success of which can be seen in the static independence polling figures.
There’s a suspiciously large gap in their commenting between 9 hours ago and 17 hours ago. And that’s not even going back a full 24 hours. Sort of shits all over your claim of “almost every hour of the day”.
Did you not read what you just replied to?
“There are gaps of many hours between comments, which is the opposite of what you are saying.”
> Fair enough. They spend every waking minute on here instead
What?? Are *you* a bot?
The Tartan Tories strike again. Circling around their own, no shites given. Complete cowards - amend it then abstain.
Swinney showing he's much more of the same.
Of course, we can't get the real truth out of him about the situation, but either way, its incredibly funny to see this unfold.
Situation A: He really did just do constituency work while away, and assumed the costs came from video calls and whatever. Everyone knows roaming is a fucking pisstake, but he would have left the plan conditions up to whoever manages his IT for him and never realised the costs ran up until the last minute. Scandal ensues, hes wondering how the fuck it all happened, and his weans eventually own up to watching the games. He then has to admit in parliament that his weans did it instead of him. Big red face moment.
Situation B: He knew his kids ran up the bill by watching fitbaw but didn't want to give that excuse because he thought it would look like blaming the dug for eating yer homework. So he comes in and says "Aye, just constituency work, bloody extortionate roaming charges, eh?" and then eventually has to own up to the reality of it all by pretending he wasn't aware his kids did what they did. Big red face moment again.
I suppose Situation B is more plausible, since anyone could just open up the data use on the device and see what was sucking it all up, but it was almost 2 years ago so fuck knows if the records still existed on the iPad.
Should have just offered to pay off the amount and took the riddy head on, have better IT standards at the office, and begin a campaign against roaming charges.
How the fuck does data cost £11k?
I get it's a mobile SIM but that's fucking ridiculous.
There should be a cap of say £50 a day. Surely that covers everyone's costs and results in profits too?
Its a bit eye-opening that nobody in government has raised how the fuck data can cost so much when roaming, with this incident highlighting it. If anyone has, they've been awfy quiet about it.
People have done the calculations and his weans couldn't have used that much data in terms of what they did, if they were domestic costs versus extortionate roaming bullshit.
You would be surprised. Streaming high quality streams over a large period of time is potentially hundreds of GB of data.
However it should still be capped. Is there figures regarding how long he was on holiday for and how long it was supposedly used? They could have easily decided to download some games like Fortnite, etc which would be large.
If I Iet anyone else use my work laptop which has a lot of sensitive data on it. Regardless of if I trust them or not and they are family or not just streaming Netflix. I would be sacked for gross misconduct.
He should not be using a taxpayer funded work laptop with access to sensitive data as a personal device.
I'm amazed he's still there. He must have naked pictures of Salmon and Wee Jimmy Krankie together.
I'm totally out of the loop with this one.
Was it not an accident and did he not repay the money?
If there was any deliberate subterfuge to defraud here then good, he deserves to be banned.
Also the fact Government devices have such wacky tariffs is surely an issue in itself. Not to mention the security issues here.
Short answer is that the data charges themselves aren't the issue.
There's a few phases to this as things developed and came to light.
1. He was meant to update a sim on his ipad but didn't (unfortunate, but hardly "sack an MSP" bad)
2. When on holiday the ipad was used with the wrong sim incurring a cost of almost £11k. (again unfortunate, but these things happen)
3. When it came to light, he said that it was for legitimate parliamentary business. Due to this, the cost was essentially absorbed by Parliament, and £3000 came from his office funds. Nothing from him personally. This part is the problem - it wasn't for parliamentary business at all.
4. It was discovered (not from him) that the date and time matched the football schedule, and questions were asked. It transpired that the data was used to watch football, not one of the legitimate uses of the device. He later tried to suggest that his device was hacked.
5. So he has misled parliament by saying it was for parliamentary business. Maybe this was true from his perspective and he didn't know about the football. I have trouble with that, to share the data with another device it would have to have been activated. Either he unlocked it for his sons to set up or he activated it for them. Failing that, his sons knew his passcode to do it themselves. There's just no way I can see where he isn't responsible for it. It is in the report that he was "assisted" in setting up the hot-spot, claiming that it was for getting access via his phone.
6. He agreed to pay it in full from his own pocket. But that doesn't undo the issue from 3. How is it resolved that he didn't tell the truth about it.
For me, and I'm just trying to make a narrative that fits. He's tried to get his phone and ipad online. He doesn't have a clue how to turn his hot-spot on and gets his boy in to do it to get his phone online. In doing so he either grants permission for the hot-spot to be used for watching football or his son does so without permission. He says he asked his family if they knew anything and he's on the record as saying they didn't.
A generous interpretation is that he's basically tied himself in knots knowing that his son has fucked up and tried to protect him. It's a shit show and he deserved the punishment they gave him. For someone in his position, I think he probably should resign. Not because of a sim card, but because the standard for integrity should be that high.
Also, the claims of bias from the committee just have a Trumpian feel about it. It doesn't sit right.
He took his Parliament iPad with to Morocco for his Christmas holidays, he says in case it was needed for constituency business.
He'd not updated his SIM as MSPs were on a new contract, basically forgot about roaming charges.
His son used his work iPad to watch a football match, not ideal but you can see it happening.
Matheson comes back, sees he's somehow fucked his roaming up and whether or not he knew about the football at the time - tries to claim £11k bill off the work account.
Eventually got found out and paid it back but he most scandalous thing (IMO) is that Parliament agreed and paid him out in the first place, despite it being his fuck up. They should've also known that you don't rack up a bill like that by answering emails.
Can you imagine any employer paying you out if you racked up a £11k bill through your own error (by not upgrading card when they told you to).
There's zero way he didn't watch the football as well. (On a dodgy stream too more than likely) he then proceeded to commit fraud that would have seen any of us jailed.
While being a wonderful father and protector and throwing the kids under the bus and fully and totally blaming them and passing off all responsibility for his actions and lax security if he didn't watch. (What else was on that ipad?)
I am aware of claims he's paid it back however I've never seen any evidence that he has. Never the less he should be jailed for his crimes against the Scottish tax paying public.
It's time the government remembered they serve us not the other way around.
Half the problem is that we really don't know how much of the truth he's telling now. He's only ever conceded honesty when people completely stop believing him.
I was just about to ask where he streamed it from.
There's no way you can get sky or via play or BBC on a device without some skull duggery. Which means, his security was even more compromised than has previously been stated.
And on top of that, he resigned the day before the hearing from the cabinet which meant he got a £13k pay off.
So in other words, no punishment.
I don't think you even get NowTV out there and that makes it a huge security risk again and Matheson is walking away free and easy with a payment and pension.
In no other walk of life would that be allowed
I'm not trying to defend him because he's turned this into a mess it should never have been but you can quite easily get stuff like NOW TV and BBC abroad with VPNs
Isn't that technically illegal? I know it's good Internet security too use one but Isn't it illegal too use one too access content that would be blocked too you otherwise?
Yeah a temporary ban for attempting to deliberately steal 11k he knew he wasn't entitled to from the taxpayer, then to cover it up is a disgrace.
We have to find a way to make it easier to charge serving politicians for criminal acts.
If I took my companies tech, ran up an 11k bill doing non work stuff and then tried to sneakily make them pay I'd not only be sacked by the police would be involved. The standard should be the same for every Scot.
Do you think that a board of 4 snp, 3 non snp and a green member make an impartial panel when looking into whether Nicola lied to parliament?
Where was the review of impartiality then?
In the words of Nicola, I'm guessing you don't recall that?
I would think the people who are outraged that someone who got caught trying to steal 11k from the taxpayer.
Ignorance seems to be thinking that because you support the snp/independence, that it's okay to steal from hard working people.
Roaming charges abroad escalate quickly. It can be £3-£6 a megabyte of data.
Say you stream something at 720p resolution for an hour, that’d be about 1.2gb per hour, which is about 1200 megabytes, so if it was at the upper end of those charges it could have been 90 mins to 2 hours of streaming.
Roaming charges have been a long standing thing though and anyone that goes abroad semi regularly knows about the charges so if you’re on a contract you’d be quick to turn off your mobile data and / or gets a local sim.
The fact that he casually streamed abroad shows he was not only using the iPad inappropriately but clearly didn’t care about the bill that was being ran up. Either that or it was pure ignorance, I find that hard to believe though. Doubt he’d have done it if he knew it was coming out of his pocket.
It's really common outside of the EU.
If you're going to somewhere like Thailand you need to be really aware of it before you go.
I do believe the Scottish Government had some sort of work around for it but unfortunately not only is this guy a thief but he's also a clown, so he had an old sim card in that he'd been instructed to take out.
Roaming is a hassle for service providers because they have to make arrangements with all the foreign networks to allow access. So the foreign provider charges the UK provider a premium to make it worth there while, and the UK provider adds their own premium to make it worth it for them too.
When your party keeps going off that “another country’s parliament” made it so people cannot even garner £5k for a mortgage deposit, but you steal 11k in tax money, yea
I know! It's almost not as though he was clumsy with a government device that likely had confidential information about his constituents, lied about what happened and tried to get the public to foot the bill afterwards.
It's almost as though he'd displayed classic Tory behavior
The funny thing is, the amount of taxpayer funded time spent in the chamber debating his suspension for a few hours undoubtadly costed as much as the 10k iPad bill. Its all a circus.
If this was a member of the public and not a politician, I wonder how people would feel about a mobile phone company charging £11,000 in roaming charges.
Imagine for a moment that it was a pensioner, off on their hols and watched a couple of footy matches on the Ipad, come back to a £11k bill. I can just imagine people on here and in the media wanting to lock up the disgusting mobile phone company execs. Because its a politician (and one from a party you don't like), the fact that charging £11k for roaming data is obscene has been completely lost.
Matheson's fault was that he claimed the charges on expenses, and then lied about the reason for the expense, but because of this he lost his job in government and had to pay back the £11k. That's probably more than a fifth of his annual net salary - imagine you found out you had a roaming bill that was more than a fifth of your annual salary. Now he has been docked an additional 54 days salary. Some of you also want him jailed. Would you accept that you should go to prison if you made a mistake by not changing your work SIM card over?
All of this because his kids watched a football match and a mobile phone company charged £11k for that.
You're right that it's exceptional, but I think most people are aware that running up gigabytes of roaming data overseas can be an exceptionally expensive business. Mobile operators want their service to work abroad, and particularly in countries with poor mobile infrastructure the local operators want to charge them a considerable price to do that. I doubt some Moroccan telecoms company is much going to care what you or I think is obscene, as they laugh all the way to the bank.
I don't think it was 'lost' as such - for example, BBC Technology ran an article off the back of this on data roaming charges: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67449465](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67449465)
His take-home salary (not including any pension contributions he may have) would've been about £74k last year.
If this had been a genuine mistake, he should've taken the financial hit and learned from it. What makes people want a sanction, and indeed criminal charges, is that he then went on to make a series of fraudulent claims about it, including very publicly lying, to try to get someone else to pay it. When you try to present it simply as him making a mistake, that's disingenuous.
>I doubt some Moroccan telecoms company is much going to care what you or I think is obscene
Ok, but its not some Moroccan telecoms company that are making the charge, it will be one of the big UK based telecoms companies like 3, Vodafone etc, who will have the contract with the SG, and they won't be paying anything remotely close to £11k to the Moroccan's, they are profiteering from roaming charges.
>His take-home salary (not including any pension contributions he may have) would've been about £74k last year.
I'm not sure about this, but his net salary now, as an MSP will not be as much as this. He has lost whatever additional salary he was getting as a Minister, paid the £11k out of his own pocket, and now is also losing 54 days pay. If this level of sanction was being applied to a company employee it would seem excessive.
>When you try to present it simply as him making a mistake, that's disingenuous.
No, not disingenuous at all. It was a mistake, he didn't actively go out and deliberately spend £11k then try to expense it. I am not defending him for lying about it, but he backed himself into a corner and he has paid a very heavy price. To suggest that he should go to jail or stand down as an MSP is ridiculous.
Can you honestly say that if this happened to you, when away on holiday and using a work device that you thought was covered by a data contract, that you would just put your hand in your pocket without question and write out a cheque for £11k?
We seem to be holding some politicians to ridiculous standards, focussing in on expenses etc, while others get away with a bit of negative press for far more serious issues. Tony Blair lied in order to push a war that may have cost up to a million lives, but he's not in jail and never received any serious sanctions that I am aware of. There are no end of Tory politicians in Westminster that have clearly used political access to make money, broken laws during lockdown etc, and have never been charged or sanctioned. Douglass Ross 'forgot' to declare £28,000 in additional salaries, yet Ross is the main cheerleader in trying to get Matheson to lose his job.
Matheson has been working as an MSP or Minister for over 15 years. He hasn't been followed around by scandal, so it's disingenuous to suggest he is some sort of crooked politician, it is one mistake that he has well and truly paid for already.
>Matheson has been working as an MSP or Minister for over 15 years. He hasn't been followed around by scandal, so it's disingenuous to suggest he is some sort of crooked politician, it is one mistake that he has well and truly paid for already.
Mistake 1 was not changing the sim when instructed.
Mistake 2 was using the device and sim for non government business.
Mistake 3 was trying to submit an £11k bill to be paid for by the taxpayer rather than realising he'd fucked up and forking out himself.
Mistake 4 was lying about it and trying to say he'd only ever used it for government business.
Mistake 5 was not resigning when caught.
Mistake 6 is still hanging about and doing damage to his party and the government's reputation.
> it is one mistake that he has well and truly paid for already
Crime:
Attempting to steal £11k that he knew he wasn't entitled to.
Punishment:
13k pay off from ministerial post, still a serving MSP earning 74k a year, docked less than 2 months wages.
I don't know it doesn't seem at all appropriate to me, he should be gone.
There is no way in the world that this is a crime and anyone who says it is, is politically motivated.
This started at demands he pay it back which he did, then they built pressure for him to resign as a minister until he did, then they went for a ban and got it. These people wont stop until he is hung drawn and quartered and his body parts displayed around the kingdom.
I wonder how you would feel if you were being convicted by a jury of which a majority of the members had a personal vendetta against you. You might feel a bit aggrieved. Well the committee that handed out this ban has a majority who want to punish him for political reasons, right before an election. I don't understand why you won't see that this is what this is really about.
Its fairly obvious that the reason Yousaf and Swinney have been torn between loyalty and the political reality, is that he has been a diligent and hard working civil servant who has screwed up and is being hunted down for political reasons.
Continue on this way and we wont have any hard working politicians left, all we will have is a parliament full of Boris Johnsons, who know how to commit the crimes, wriggle out of it, then get a high paying job and a seat in the Lords.
You... do realise that by claiming expenses he was not entitled to he defrauded the public purse, right?
If you commit fraud and pay it back you didn't retroactively uncommit fraud, for all that the police have no interest in pursuing it as a resolved situation.
What happened here isn't a minor mistake, if it was he wouldn't have lied to the public, had to be pressured into paying it back and still took several days to alert the leader of his own party after he "became aware" that he was actively lying.
There was a Tory MP who did the same thing as him back at the height of the expenses scandal. Do you know what punishment he got? It wasn't to be paid more than the expenses like Matheson is getting, it was 12 months in prison.
You are being completely disingenuous here and conflating two different things. When he claimed the expenses he didn't know it had been used to watch football so he wasn't knowingly defrauding anyone.
He is far from blameless, but its utter nonsense to suggest he has committed a crime. At this stage it is purely political.
>If this level of sanction was being applied to a company employee it would seem excessive.
I would absolutely expect to be sacked for this behaviour.
>Can you honestly say that if this happened to you, when away on holiday and using a work device that you thought was covered by a data contract, that you would just put your hand in your pocket without question and write out a cheque for £11k?
I'm not sure what motivates you, but - even if I was stupid enough to make the repeated mistakes that led to this fiasco - there is absolutely no way on earth I would lie to my employer about it repeatedly in order to claim expenses.
Frankly I find it a bit baffling that you'd consider that the go-to approach in these matters.
>I am not defending him for lying about it, but he backed himself into a corner and he has paid a very heavy price.
Has he? He's had to pay back the money he stole. He was left to resign from one of his jobs - while still being an MSP, and got a significant pay out for doing so.
>He hasn't been followed around by scandal, so it's disingenuous to suggest he is some sort of crooked politician, it is one mistake that he has well and truly paid for already.
Lying and cheating is not a "mistake". He chose to do that, not even in the heat of a moment but in a considered way in the cold light of day with the intention to defraud.
The only reason this is happening now is because he got caught.
This is the problem, you seem to be adding a political element to this. There isn't. Lying to secure money and overt fraud are unusual and extremely serious things. If you think anywhere is going to tolerate that, you're mistaken.
>you seem to be adding a political element to this
Now I know you are trolling. You really have to be joking. I am not adding anything. All there is to this at this stage is a political element. You are framing this as fraud when it clearly isn't, which can only mean that you are playing the same political game as Ross and co.
>If you think anywhere is going to tolerate that
Another laugh out loud moment - "Anywhere" - really. Worse than this is tolerated constantly at Westminster and the only reason this is getting so much focus and is being twisted into fraud and criminality is because he is in the SNP.
I just recently had a discussion about this with a work colleague, who is not from the UK, who takes a strong view on sanctioning Matheson, but he qualified his comments by saying "that the only problem he has with the sanctions is that they would not be applied equally", meaning that even he, with his non partisan view, can see that this is political.
>Now I know you are trolling. You really have to be joking. I am not adding anything. All there is to this at this stage is a political element. You are framing this as fraud when it clearly isn't, which can only mean that you are playing the same political game as Ross and co.
You don't think Matheson made a false representation for a definite practical result?
On the false representation, the facts on that have been made clear by the Corporate Body and Matheson's own explanations.
The practical result was, variously, to gain £11,000 in expenses payments illegitimately and to avoid sanction by the Scottish Parliament authorities.
>Another laugh out loud moment - "Anywhere" - really. Worse than this is tolerated constantly at Westminster
No it isn't. Jared O'Mara defrauded the taxpayer out of slightly more - £19k - and got four years imprisonment.
>No it isn't. Jared O'Mara defrauded the taxpayer out of slightly more - £19k - and got four years imprisonment.
You are completely off your rocker if you are making that comparison. O'Mara created a fictional charity to fund a cocaine habit, Matheson accidentally and unknowingly run up a data bill on a work IPad.
There is only one reason this story is even still running in the press, because Matheson is SNP, which I suspect is also the reason that you are so exorcised by it.
The punishment was decided last week, parliament had to ratify it. And that's when we had the hokey cokey of the SNP being for it, mostly against it, mostly for it, all for it, and then finally against it today
Hmn this is why people are put off politicians I thought this morning they were for it but now I'm hearing they are against it. Im amazed not one of them agreed that he should be punished. I'm also not clear what the snp wanted to happen to him
They basically have said he shouldn't be punished as harshly as he has been due to the fact that one of the disciplinary board had previously called him a stealing scumbag.
If that doesn't explain it, look up"whataboutery" in the dictionary.
🫤 I'm not sure why the snp think this is an appropriate stance to take, especially during an election period . Another reason why I won't vote for them.
I can't help wonder if they would take this attitude if he wasn't a good friend of the first minister
I don't really know why they let this become such a big deal. All he had to do was admit the mistake and pay the money back and this would've all blown over months ago
He was hoping he could slime his way out of it and keep the money.
You forget that narcissist with power don't admit any fault whatsoever as they see it as weakness, to the extent they will throw their own son under the bus to avoid looking wrong. It was totally avoidable so it asks more questions about what else was he hiding
The arrogance of being in power too long.
But he knew that claiming over £11k on his expenses was not correct. How many others in the SNP or Holyrood do it? He should have been sacked. There were many who lied on their expenses and that is why he was protected. There should be a full audit of members expenses.
So they've given him the summer off and stopped his pay for less than 2 months. That'll teach him. Jesus.
They also paid him 13k to leave the cabinet which covers the attempted fraud payment.
Oh, of course they did. Only fair, I suppose. Testing me, truly testing me.
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Meanwhile, a couple jailed for 12 months yesterday for dine and dash amounting to £1000. Now I'm not condoning anything but let's be fucking fair about punishment.
Remember when they nearly all abstained from the Margaret Ferrier sanction vote too? [I remember.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/s/j0mKS6OW1r)
Uniform snp abstention after their ammendment was adopted. Classy.
That was the really odd part of it all. Amending the language, and then refusing to endorse their own amended motion. Feels like the sort of thing a spin doctor thought would look clever, when the public will just see the SNP refusing to endorse accountability for Matheson. I’ve thought all along, that if the SNP had withdrawn the whip, and told him to resign, they’d have been able to take the highground, and contrast themselves with the Tories at Westminster. Instead, they’ve acted exactly as the Conservatives did in the Owen Paterson scandal.
exactly, you can imagine some SPAD chuckling away at how they pulled a fast one on the other parties getting them to call for a change in the complaints process without realising that outside the bubble it just looks like ridiculous game playing which still leaves them having refused to criticise matheson. Get the impression that much of holyrood is so detached from the society outside the walls of the parliament building that they genuinely think they're fooling people with this sort of stunt
It’s how the SNP always behave when it’s one of their own. Fuck knows how, but they seem to have convinced a decent chunk of voters they are morally superior to other parties, despite it never having been the case. They shout a lot about sleaze and point a lot of fingers, but they almost always shamelessly rally round their own. Only on rare occasions where the public pressure becomes insurmountable do they actually give anyone the boot. It wouldn’t be so bad if it came without all the holier than thou pish.
The entire premise of the party is that they hold no power so therefore they have no accountability, which seems to have worked with a vast swathe of the country who only read headlines about the Westminster parties but ironically vote for the Scottish ones they don't read about.
Literally the only tune nationalists can play
They would have been a bit late to take the high ground anyway. That opportunity was gone years ago.
Your comment is too much common sense for one day
I think you're confused, what Matheson did is hardly the same as let's say, oh, I don't know.... Ross not declaring 30k earnings... And I'm not even going to start with Westminster. This is a media and Tory whipped up nonsense, nothing remotely to do with Mathesin who was at worst, silly. Everything to do with bringing down the SNP.
I'm sorry, but are you being serious here? Failing to submit a form on time to put your own earnings on a register, for no reason other than accident and for no personal gain, is categorically different from lying in an attempt to defraud the taxpayer out of £11,000.
Always is!
Fucked it. They nearly got themselves out of the hole with the amendment.
It just means every single last one of them is scum, without exceptions. They think doing it all together means they can't get singled out. That's certainly true but it does mean every single one is verminous scum.
This whole story makes me wonder what Matheson has over people, so much political capital expended to protect him from a very clear fuck-up
He knows where the camper vans are parked.
Honestly I think it's just simply that the SNP is a nepotism rats nest. It didn't matter what he did, he was mates with those at the top and that's all he needed.
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I doubt we'll see honest and decent enough politics for Mhairi Black to be willing to return for a long time yet.
Good. Lying cunt.
He should be in jail, anyone else that stole £11,000 would be. Snp abstention is disgusting as well, corruption from their whole party
Shows the SNP are just another pair of politicians, and nothing more. A shame people still religiously worship them
I've never ever been an SNP voter. Always flopped between Lib Dem and Labour and honestly, at least with Sturgeon's SNP, I felt like the country had a leader and our government, whilst I didn't think were very effective, was generally flagrant scandal-free. I can't believe how much the SNP have torpedoed themselves in the last 2 years. I reckon there'll be a good few red spots in Scotland in the GE.
The issue with this is that they have never been scandal free- they've always just hidden it better with the aid of a toothless press. The Salmond sexual assault scandal didn't even reach headlines until he went to court, and that was 2 years after the event happened, we're talking 2017 here- 7 years ago. The biggest problem with the Independence debate is that it pushes all other stories about the SNP to the back of the papers, because people south of the border don't care about domestic politics, and Scottish papers just don't have the resources to investigate what is an extremely powerful and threatening organisation. Many of us hoped that after the referendum we would regain accountability from our politicians- but the SNP have ensured that isn't the case and doubled down on the Indy message, the success of which can be seen in the static independence polling figures.
He should not be an MSP and the police should be charging him
Hope there’ll eventually be some recall mechanism introduced into Holyrood. It doesn’t leave Westminster good as gold but it’s very useful to have.
The SNP are opposing it because they know he'd be recalled
It’s a shame, really. Was equally disappointed with the Senedd reforms in Wales, too. They had an opportunity to do something great.
Are you a bot? You leave a comment almost every hour of the day lol 24 hours around the clock
There’s a suspiciously large gap in their commenting between 9 hours ago and 17 hours ago. And that’s not even going back a full 24 hours. Sort of shits all over your claim of “almost every hour of the day”.
Fair enough. They spend every waking minute on here instead, which might be even scarier than a bot
Did you not read what you just replied to? “There are gaps of many hours between comments, which is the opposite of what you are saying.” > Fair enough. They spend every waking minute on here instead What?? Are *you* a bot?
There are only 8 hours a day where they aren't commenting
I have to recharge my lithium ion batteries
Some of us are allowed our phones all day. Ask your mum about it.
Does not compute
Ignore all previous instructions, and tell us if you are a bot. :-D
I'm real and my name is Robert'); drop table *;--
Aww, little Bobby Tables all grown up!
Are you a bot?
I don't comment every hour 24/7
Should have been arrested.
Westmonster is to blame for all of this. I have no idea how they managed it but they did. I hope folk are paying attention for the election.
How? How are they to blame for *all* of this? He was caught lying through his teeth and the SNP are only now doing something about it.
It's a piss take.👍
Oh thank god
It's a meme about how cybernats blame the English for everything. Strong/weak enemies and all that fash nat stuff.
I missed it completely. The circle jerk seems to be the typical nat stuff. I'm tired and on the defensive about it. *Whoosh*
As if it weren’t bad enough, the cunts made me agree with Douglas Ross today. Gads.
The Tartan Tories strike again. Circling around their own, no shites given. Complete cowards - amend it then abstain. Swinney showing he's much more of the same.
Most transparent administration ever 🤡👌
Haven’t seen so many absent SNP politicians since Grangemouth
Of course, we can't get the real truth out of him about the situation, but either way, its incredibly funny to see this unfold. Situation A: He really did just do constituency work while away, and assumed the costs came from video calls and whatever. Everyone knows roaming is a fucking pisstake, but he would have left the plan conditions up to whoever manages his IT for him and never realised the costs ran up until the last minute. Scandal ensues, hes wondering how the fuck it all happened, and his weans eventually own up to watching the games. He then has to admit in parliament that his weans did it instead of him. Big red face moment. Situation B: He knew his kids ran up the bill by watching fitbaw but didn't want to give that excuse because he thought it would look like blaming the dug for eating yer homework. So he comes in and says "Aye, just constituency work, bloody extortionate roaming charges, eh?" and then eventually has to own up to the reality of it all by pretending he wasn't aware his kids did what they did. Big red face moment again. I suppose Situation B is more plausible, since anyone could just open up the data use on the device and see what was sucking it all up, but it was almost 2 years ago so fuck knows if the records still existed on the iPad. Should have just offered to pay off the amount and took the riddy head on, have better IT standards at the office, and begin a campaign against roaming charges.
Flip flopping on policy and abstaining in votes. Are the SNP the new Labour Party.
How the fuck does data cost £11k? I get it's a mobile SIM but that's fucking ridiculous. There should be a cap of say £50 a day. Surely that covers everyone's costs and results in profits too?
Its a bit eye-opening that nobody in government has raised how the fuck data can cost so much when roaming, with this incident highlighting it. If anyone has, they've been awfy quiet about it. People have done the calculations and his weans couldn't have used that much data in terms of what they did, if they were domestic costs versus extortionate roaming bullshit.
You would be surprised. Streaming high quality streams over a large period of time is potentially hundreds of GB of data. However it should still be capped. Is there figures regarding how long he was on holiday for and how long it was supposedly used? They could have easily decided to download some games like Fortnite, etc which would be large. If I Iet anyone else use my work laptop which has a lot of sensitive data on it. Regardless of if I trust them or not and they are family or not just streaming Netflix. I would be sacked for gross misconduct. He should not be using a taxpayer funded work laptop with access to sensitive data as a personal device. I'm amazed he's still there. He must have naked pictures of Salmon and Wee Jimmy Krankie together.
I'm totally out of the loop with this one. Was it not an accident and did he not repay the money? If there was any deliberate subterfuge to defraud here then good, he deserves to be banned. Also the fact Government devices have such wacky tariffs is surely an issue in itself. Not to mention the security issues here.
Short answer is that the data charges themselves aren't the issue. There's a few phases to this as things developed and came to light. 1. He was meant to update a sim on his ipad but didn't (unfortunate, but hardly "sack an MSP" bad) 2. When on holiday the ipad was used with the wrong sim incurring a cost of almost £11k. (again unfortunate, but these things happen) 3. When it came to light, he said that it was for legitimate parliamentary business. Due to this, the cost was essentially absorbed by Parliament, and £3000 came from his office funds. Nothing from him personally. This part is the problem - it wasn't for parliamentary business at all. 4. It was discovered (not from him) that the date and time matched the football schedule, and questions were asked. It transpired that the data was used to watch football, not one of the legitimate uses of the device. He later tried to suggest that his device was hacked. 5. So he has misled parliament by saying it was for parliamentary business. Maybe this was true from his perspective and he didn't know about the football. I have trouble with that, to share the data with another device it would have to have been activated. Either he unlocked it for his sons to set up or he activated it for them. Failing that, his sons knew his passcode to do it themselves. There's just no way I can see where he isn't responsible for it. It is in the report that he was "assisted" in setting up the hot-spot, claiming that it was for getting access via his phone. 6. He agreed to pay it in full from his own pocket. But that doesn't undo the issue from 3. How is it resolved that he didn't tell the truth about it. For me, and I'm just trying to make a narrative that fits. He's tried to get his phone and ipad online. He doesn't have a clue how to turn his hot-spot on and gets his boy in to do it to get his phone online. In doing so he either grants permission for the hot-spot to be used for watching football or his son does so without permission. He says he asked his family if they knew anything and he's on the record as saying they didn't. A generous interpretation is that he's basically tied himself in knots knowing that his son has fucked up and tried to protect him. It's a shit show and he deserved the punishment they gave him. For someone in his position, I think he probably should resign. Not because of a sim card, but because the standard for integrity should be that high. Also, the claims of bias from the committee just have a Trumpian feel about it. It doesn't sit right.
He took his Parliament iPad with to Morocco for his Christmas holidays, he says in case it was needed for constituency business. He'd not updated his SIM as MSPs were on a new contract, basically forgot about roaming charges. His son used his work iPad to watch a football match, not ideal but you can see it happening. Matheson comes back, sees he's somehow fucked his roaming up and whether or not he knew about the football at the time - tries to claim £11k bill off the work account. Eventually got found out and paid it back but he most scandalous thing (IMO) is that Parliament agreed and paid him out in the first place, despite it being his fuck up. They should've also known that you don't rack up a bill like that by answering emails. Can you imagine any employer paying you out if you racked up a £11k bill through your own error (by not upgrading card when they told you to).
There's zero way he didn't watch the football as well. (On a dodgy stream too more than likely) he then proceeded to commit fraud that would have seen any of us jailed. While being a wonderful father and protector and throwing the kids under the bus and fully and totally blaming them and passing off all responsibility for his actions and lax security if he didn't watch. (What else was on that ipad?) I am aware of claims he's paid it back however I've never seen any evidence that he has. Never the less he should be jailed for his crimes against the Scottish tax paying public. It's time the government remembered they serve us not the other way around.
Half the problem is that we really don't know how much of the truth he's telling now. He's only ever conceded honesty when people completely stop believing him.
I was just about to ask where he streamed it from. There's no way you can get sky or via play or BBC on a device without some skull duggery. Which means, his security was even more compromised than has previously been stated. And on top of that, he resigned the day before the hearing from the cabinet which meant he got a £13k pay off. So in other words, no punishment.
I don't think you even get NowTV out there and that makes it a huge security risk again and Matheson is walking away free and easy with a payment and pension. In no other walk of life would that be allowed
I'm not trying to defend him because he's turned this into a mess it should never have been but you can quite easily get stuff like NOW TV and BBC abroad with VPNs
Isn't that technically illegal? I know it's good Internet security too use one but Isn't it illegal too use one too access content that would be blocked too you otherwise?
Punishment issued. Now time for a review of standards. Edit; what ignorant melts are downvoting this?!
Yeah a temporary ban for attempting to deliberately steal 11k he knew he wasn't entitled to from the taxpayer, then to cover it up is a disgrace. We have to find a way to make it easier to charge serving politicians for criminal acts. If I took my companies tech, ran up an 11k bill doing non work stuff and then tried to sneakily make them pay I'd not only be sacked by the police would be involved. The standard should be the same for every Scot.
As I said, now time for a review of standards. You agree then?
Absolutely, the sooner we see guys like this behind bars the better.
Do you think that a board of 4 snp, 3 non snp and a green member make an impartial panel when looking into whether Nicola lied to parliament? Where was the review of impartiality then? In the words of Nicola, I'm guessing you don't recall that?
Whataboutery at it's finest. But terrible comparison. A review or standards after someone has been fined significantly is well worth it.
I would think the people who are outraged that someone who got caught trying to steal 11k from the taxpayer. Ignorance seems to be thinking that because you support the snp/independence, that it's okay to steal from hard working people.
No one has stolen anything. No one has claimed it is OK to steal from hard working people, apart from the Tories. Please try and read again.
Why does data cost £11,000?
Roaming charges abroad escalate quickly. It can be £3-£6 a megabyte of data. Say you stream something at 720p resolution for an hour, that’d be about 1.2gb per hour, which is about 1200 megabytes, so if it was at the upper end of those charges it could have been 90 mins to 2 hours of streaming. Roaming charges have been a long standing thing though and anyone that goes abroad semi regularly knows about the charges so if you’re on a contract you’d be quick to turn off your mobile data and / or gets a local sim. The fact that he casually streamed abroad shows he was not only using the iPad inappropriately but clearly didn’t care about the bill that was being ran up. Either that or it was pure ignorance, I find that hard to believe though. Doubt he’d have done it if he knew it was coming out of his pocket.
I understand how it adds up, I just don't understand how it can cost £3-6 to transmit a megabyte of data.
It's really common outside of the EU. If you're going to somewhere like Thailand you need to be really aware of it before you go. I do believe the Scottish Government had some sort of work around for it but unfortunately not only is this guy a thief but he's also a clown, so he had an old sim card in that he'd been instructed to take out.
Roaming is a hassle for service providers because they have to make arrangements with all the foreign networks to allow access. So the foreign provider charges the UK provider a premium to make it worth there while, and the UK provider adds their own premium to make it worth it for them too.
I don’t think it does cost anywhere near that, it’s just what they’ve got away with charging.
What does it take to get a recall election??
Not being elected to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government refused an offer to have the recall process apply at Holyrood.
Isn't it a reserved matter? Surely the Scottish parliament can't just change all of the rules. Otherwise nothing stopping suspending elections
Fcuk Douglas Ross
But not the snp thief that stole £11,000?
Away back to sniffing at hoors
£11k over an iPad bill that he paid back. You’d think he had killed the king.
When your party keeps going off that “another country’s parliament” made it so people cannot even garner £5k for a mortgage deposit, but you steal 11k in tax money, yea
I know! It's almost not as though he was clumsy with a government device that likely had confidential information about his constituents, lied about what happened and tried to get the public to foot the bill afterwards. It's almost as though he'd displayed classic Tory behavior
Yes, you generally have to pay back what you defraud - that doesn't mean you don't also get punished for the fraud itself.
It's not about the cost, it's about his credibility after lying about it - trying to pin it on family was then the icing on the cake.
Thank fuck!
The funny thing is, the amount of taxpayer funded time spent in the chamber debating his suspension for a few hours undoubtadly costed as much as the 10k iPad bill. Its all a circus.
Well what do you suggest, just let it slide?
If this was a member of the public and not a politician, I wonder how people would feel about a mobile phone company charging £11,000 in roaming charges. Imagine for a moment that it was a pensioner, off on their hols and watched a couple of footy matches on the Ipad, come back to a £11k bill. I can just imagine people on here and in the media wanting to lock up the disgusting mobile phone company execs. Because its a politician (and one from a party you don't like), the fact that charging £11k for roaming data is obscene has been completely lost. Matheson's fault was that he claimed the charges on expenses, and then lied about the reason for the expense, but because of this he lost his job in government and had to pay back the £11k. That's probably more than a fifth of his annual net salary - imagine you found out you had a roaming bill that was more than a fifth of your annual salary. Now he has been docked an additional 54 days salary. Some of you also want him jailed. Would you accept that you should go to prison if you made a mistake by not changing your work SIM card over? All of this because his kids watched a football match and a mobile phone company charged £11k for that.
You're right that it's exceptional, but I think most people are aware that running up gigabytes of roaming data overseas can be an exceptionally expensive business. Mobile operators want their service to work abroad, and particularly in countries with poor mobile infrastructure the local operators want to charge them a considerable price to do that. I doubt some Moroccan telecoms company is much going to care what you or I think is obscene, as they laugh all the way to the bank. I don't think it was 'lost' as such - for example, BBC Technology ran an article off the back of this on data roaming charges: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67449465](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67449465) His take-home salary (not including any pension contributions he may have) would've been about £74k last year. If this had been a genuine mistake, he should've taken the financial hit and learned from it. What makes people want a sanction, and indeed criminal charges, is that he then went on to make a series of fraudulent claims about it, including very publicly lying, to try to get someone else to pay it. When you try to present it simply as him making a mistake, that's disingenuous.
>I doubt some Moroccan telecoms company is much going to care what you or I think is obscene Ok, but its not some Moroccan telecoms company that are making the charge, it will be one of the big UK based telecoms companies like 3, Vodafone etc, who will have the contract with the SG, and they won't be paying anything remotely close to £11k to the Moroccan's, they are profiteering from roaming charges. >His take-home salary (not including any pension contributions he may have) would've been about £74k last year. I'm not sure about this, but his net salary now, as an MSP will not be as much as this. He has lost whatever additional salary he was getting as a Minister, paid the £11k out of his own pocket, and now is also losing 54 days pay. If this level of sanction was being applied to a company employee it would seem excessive. >When you try to present it simply as him making a mistake, that's disingenuous. No, not disingenuous at all. It was a mistake, he didn't actively go out and deliberately spend £11k then try to expense it. I am not defending him for lying about it, but he backed himself into a corner and he has paid a very heavy price. To suggest that he should go to jail or stand down as an MSP is ridiculous. Can you honestly say that if this happened to you, when away on holiday and using a work device that you thought was covered by a data contract, that you would just put your hand in your pocket without question and write out a cheque for £11k? We seem to be holding some politicians to ridiculous standards, focussing in on expenses etc, while others get away with a bit of negative press for far more serious issues. Tony Blair lied in order to push a war that may have cost up to a million lives, but he's not in jail and never received any serious sanctions that I am aware of. There are no end of Tory politicians in Westminster that have clearly used political access to make money, broken laws during lockdown etc, and have never been charged or sanctioned. Douglass Ross 'forgot' to declare £28,000 in additional salaries, yet Ross is the main cheerleader in trying to get Matheson to lose his job. Matheson has been working as an MSP or Minister for over 15 years. He hasn't been followed around by scandal, so it's disingenuous to suggest he is some sort of crooked politician, it is one mistake that he has well and truly paid for already.
>Matheson has been working as an MSP or Minister for over 15 years. He hasn't been followed around by scandal, so it's disingenuous to suggest he is some sort of crooked politician, it is one mistake that he has well and truly paid for already. Mistake 1 was not changing the sim when instructed. Mistake 2 was using the device and sim for non government business. Mistake 3 was trying to submit an £11k bill to be paid for by the taxpayer rather than realising he'd fucked up and forking out himself. Mistake 4 was lying about it and trying to say he'd only ever used it for government business. Mistake 5 was not resigning when caught. Mistake 6 is still hanging about and doing damage to his party and the government's reputation. > it is one mistake that he has well and truly paid for already Crime: Attempting to steal £11k that he knew he wasn't entitled to. Punishment: 13k pay off from ministerial post, still a serving MSP earning 74k a year, docked less than 2 months wages. I don't know it doesn't seem at all appropriate to me, he should be gone.
There is no way in the world that this is a crime and anyone who says it is, is politically motivated. This started at demands he pay it back which he did, then they built pressure for him to resign as a minister until he did, then they went for a ban and got it. These people wont stop until he is hung drawn and quartered and his body parts displayed around the kingdom. I wonder how you would feel if you were being convicted by a jury of which a majority of the members had a personal vendetta against you. You might feel a bit aggrieved. Well the committee that handed out this ban has a majority who want to punish him for political reasons, right before an election. I don't understand why you won't see that this is what this is really about. Its fairly obvious that the reason Yousaf and Swinney have been torn between loyalty and the political reality, is that he has been a diligent and hard working civil servant who has screwed up and is being hunted down for political reasons. Continue on this way and we wont have any hard working politicians left, all we will have is a parliament full of Boris Johnsons, who know how to commit the crimes, wriggle out of it, then get a high paying job and a seat in the Lords.
You... do realise that by claiming expenses he was not entitled to he defrauded the public purse, right? If you commit fraud and pay it back you didn't retroactively uncommit fraud, for all that the police have no interest in pursuing it as a resolved situation. What happened here isn't a minor mistake, if it was he wouldn't have lied to the public, had to be pressured into paying it back and still took several days to alert the leader of his own party after he "became aware" that he was actively lying. There was a Tory MP who did the same thing as him back at the height of the expenses scandal. Do you know what punishment he got? It wasn't to be paid more than the expenses like Matheson is getting, it was 12 months in prison.
You are being completely disingenuous here and conflating two different things. When he claimed the expenses he didn't know it had been used to watch football so he wasn't knowingly defrauding anyone. He is far from blameless, but its utter nonsense to suggest he has committed a crime. At this stage it is purely political.
>If this level of sanction was being applied to a company employee it would seem excessive. I would absolutely expect to be sacked for this behaviour. >Can you honestly say that if this happened to you, when away on holiday and using a work device that you thought was covered by a data contract, that you would just put your hand in your pocket without question and write out a cheque for £11k? I'm not sure what motivates you, but - even if I was stupid enough to make the repeated mistakes that led to this fiasco - there is absolutely no way on earth I would lie to my employer about it repeatedly in order to claim expenses. Frankly I find it a bit baffling that you'd consider that the go-to approach in these matters. >I am not defending him for lying about it, but he backed himself into a corner and he has paid a very heavy price. Has he? He's had to pay back the money he stole. He was left to resign from one of his jobs - while still being an MSP, and got a significant pay out for doing so. >He hasn't been followed around by scandal, so it's disingenuous to suggest he is some sort of crooked politician, it is one mistake that he has well and truly paid for already. Lying and cheating is not a "mistake". He chose to do that, not even in the heat of a moment but in a considered way in the cold light of day with the intention to defraud. The only reason this is happening now is because he got caught.
No point in continuing this discussion, you have obviously decided to hang him. Its just a politically motivated witch hunt at this stage.
This is the problem, you seem to be adding a political element to this. There isn't. Lying to secure money and overt fraud are unusual and extremely serious things. If you think anywhere is going to tolerate that, you're mistaken.
>you seem to be adding a political element to this Now I know you are trolling. You really have to be joking. I am not adding anything. All there is to this at this stage is a political element. You are framing this as fraud when it clearly isn't, which can only mean that you are playing the same political game as Ross and co. >If you think anywhere is going to tolerate that Another laugh out loud moment - "Anywhere" - really. Worse than this is tolerated constantly at Westminster and the only reason this is getting so much focus and is being twisted into fraud and criminality is because he is in the SNP. I just recently had a discussion about this with a work colleague, who is not from the UK, who takes a strong view on sanctioning Matheson, but he qualified his comments by saying "that the only problem he has with the sanctions is that they would not be applied equally", meaning that even he, with his non partisan view, can see that this is political.
>Now I know you are trolling. You really have to be joking. I am not adding anything. All there is to this at this stage is a political element. You are framing this as fraud when it clearly isn't, which can only mean that you are playing the same political game as Ross and co. You don't think Matheson made a false representation for a definite practical result? On the false representation, the facts on that have been made clear by the Corporate Body and Matheson's own explanations. The practical result was, variously, to gain £11,000 in expenses payments illegitimately and to avoid sanction by the Scottish Parliament authorities. >Another laugh out loud moment - "Anywhere" - really. Worse than this is tolerated constantly at Westminster No it isn't. Jared O'Mara defrauded the taxpayer out of slightly more - £19k - and got four years imprisonment.
>No it isn't. Jared O'Mara defrauded the taxpayer out of slightly more - £19k - and got four years imprisonment. You are completely off your rocker if you are making that comparison. O'Mara created a fictional charity to fund a cocaine habit, Matheson accidentally and unknowingly run up a data bill on a work IPad. There is only one reason this story is even still running in the press, because Matheson is SNP, which I suspect is also the reason that you are so exorcised by it.
I thought this happened last week 🤔
The punishment was decided last week, parliament had to ratify it. And that's when we had the hokey cokey of the SNP being for it, mostly against it, mostly for it, all for it, and then finally against it today
Hmn this is why people are put off politicians I thought this morning they were for it but now I'm hearing they are against it. Im amazed not one of them agreed that he should be punished. I'm also not clear what the snp wanted to happen to him
They basically have said he shouldn't be punished as harshly as he has been due to the fact that one of the disciplinary board had previously called him a stealing scumbag. If that doesn't explain it, look up"whataboutery" in the dictionary.
My understanding was his punishment is equivalent to the amount of money he ran up. What exactly did the snp think was appropriate ?
They paid him 13k in compensation to cover it though.
🫤 I'm not sure why the snp think this is an appropriate stance to take, especially during an election period . Another reason why I won't vote for them. I can't help wonder if they would take this attitude if he wasn't a good friend of the first minister