Emma

🏳️‍🌈 Proud to be 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 She/Her

[Johnny @JohnnyDundee]

You'll not hear this on BBC Reporting Scotland https://t.co/CGkz0q37Yy

[Firhill @Firhill40]

Independence is not about the SNP, it's not about Nicola Sturgeon, it's not about Peter Murrell. It's about the right to self determination. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

At what point do we stop pretending our newspapers are ‘news’ and start calling them what they are…

Promotional pamphlets for the billionaires who own them and the agendas they’re selling.

[Míng Kerr⊗Normalist @Guiseppim]

When the BBC does not clarify that immigration is reserved, that dumping refugees in hotels is a Home Office responsibility, a responsibility they fobbed off to private business, they are actively promoting Reform in Scotland and the ignorant racism it relies on for support...

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

The govt rejects the petition signed by 114,216 people to hold a public enquiry into pro-Israel influence in Britain.

In unrelated news, half the Cabinet has been funded by the pro-Israel lobby, the last time we looked.

👉 https://t.co/xEdyiQvyJU

[Willie White @williew97931391]

What the unionists don’t want Scots to know.

[Diana Harding @DianaHarding7]

This story mustn't be allowed to die.

This is an outrageous abuse of power.
Labour says: "it’s only there as a backstop..."
Where have we heard that before?

In the words of Mel Stride: "Your savings should be invested in your best interests – not to fund the pet projects of Rachel Reeves."

Once again, we are reliant on the @UKHouseofLords to reject this again.

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"Labour has forced through plans to take control of people’s pensions..."

"In a debate on the upcoming Pension Schemes Bill, MPs approved a so-called “reserve power” allowing ministers to order pension schemes to invest billions of retirement savings in private markets and other assets."

"The controversial measure provoked criticism when it was first proposed last summer, with pensions professionals saying it would put retirements at risk and take investment decisions out of the hands of trustees and investment experts."

"It was rejected by the House of Lords last month, but ministers returned with a watered-down proposal, which was passed by MPs on Wednesday."

"The bill will now return to the House of Lords for another vote."

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Labour wins vote to seize powers over private pension pots

https://t.co/s9W7zgnRWf

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

You go to work for 40 years (I'm currently at 42).

You’re forced into auto‑enrolment. You play by the rules, you save into a pension on the promise it’s yours.

Then Labour strolls in, waves through a law that lets ministers tell your scheme where to gamble those savings – not for your benefit, but to prop up their economic “strategy” and vanity infrastructure schemes that the market won’t fund.

This isn’t prudence. It isn’t “modernisation”. It is a straightforward transfer of control from the saver to the state.

Hands off our pensions. Share this before they pretend nobody noticed.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

The British government has wasted more money on failed projects than some countries spend building their entire infrastructure.

After hearing about the cancellation of the Stonehenge Tunnel project, yet it still racking up £179 million in cost, I wanted to look at other projects and costs to see what the picture looks like this century.

Every number here comes from official reports, the National Audit Office, parliamentary committees, and ministers' own admissions.

Let me show you where your money has gone.

HS2 was sold to the country as a £37.5 billion high speed rail network connecting London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds. The first phase was supposed to open this year. In 2026.

Here's where it actually is.

After six years of construction and £46 billion spent, tunnels have been bored, earth has been moved, viaducts have been built. But there is no railway. Not a single metre of track. The legs to Manchester and Leeds have been cancelled entirely. What's left is a line from London to Birmingham with no confirmed opening date, no confirmed final cost, and estimates so unstable that Parliament's own Public Accounts Committee has warned the cash cost of Phase 1 alone could reach £80 billion. Some industry forecasts put it above £100 billion.

The Transport Secretary stood in Parliament last year and called it "an appalling mess." She said billions had been wasted on scope changes, ineffective contracts, and bad management. Fraud allegations have since emerged in the supply chain.

Three times the original price. A fraction of what was promised. And still years from completion.

But HS2 is just one example.

The NHS National Programme for IT was supposed to create a unified electronic health record for every patient in England. Launched in 2002 with a budget of £6 billion. Abandoned in 2011 with the Public Accounts Committee putting the expected cost at £12.4 billion. It delivered a fraction of its promised benefits. Only 13 out of 169 hospital trusts received the systems they were meant to get. Then one of the contractors sued the government and won a settlement of nearly half a billion pounds. On top.

During Covid, the government threw billions out the door with almost no checks. The Covid Counter Fraud Commissioner's final report, published December 2025, found that fraud and error across pandemic support schemes cost taxpayers £10.9 billion. How much has been recovered? £1.8 billion. The Commissioner's words, not mine. The previous government "left the front door open to fraud." Bounce Back Loans were rolled out in under two weeks with no independent verification. PPE contracts were handed to companies with no track record. Defective gowns, masks, and visors weren't inspected for two years. By the time anyone checked, the money was gone.

Universal Credit was supposed to simplify the benefits system. The original programme was budgeted at around £2 billion. The National Audit Office has flagged massive overruns repeatedly as the project ballooned in scope and complexity. Total costs have run many times higher than planned. Nobody was fired.

The smart meter rollout was supposed to be finished by 2020. It wasn't. Costs have hit £13.5 billion. The programme has been dogged by meters losing functionality, missed deadlines, and a failure to deliver the energy savings that justified the whole thing in the first place.

One many of you will be familiar with. The Post Office spent £600 million on a computer system called Horizon. It was fundamentally flawed. Its defects led to more than 900 wrongful convictions. Sub-postmasters lost their homes. Their businesses. Their families. At least 13 people took their own lives. Compensation has now reached £1.4 billion and is expected to hit £2 billion. Fujitsu, the company that built the system, has not paid a single penny toward that bill. It is still collecting government contracts.

The Fire Control project. £469 million. Seven years. An attempt to modernise fire service control rooms. Scrapped. Nothing delivered. What a waste.

The electronic tagging programme. Five years late. Tens of millions spent. Abandoned. They ended up buying off the shelf tags that could have been bought for a fraction of the price years earlier.

The Garden Bridge. £53 million of public money. Not a single piece was built. You might ask what £53 million was spent on exactly.

The Rwanda deportation scheme. £715 million. Four people went voluntarily. Not a single forced deportation was carried out. Then the whole thing was scrapped.

Now here's the part that ties it all together.

In 2019, the Prime Minister's own Implementation Unit looked at the government's £432 billion portfolio of major projects. Only 8% had proper plans to evaluate whether they were working. 64% of that spending, £276 billion, had no evaluation at all. None. The government was spending hundreds of billions of your money with no way of knowing if any of it was delivering.

The National Audit Office has said there has been a "consistent pattern of underperformance" spanning 25 years. Twenty five years of reports saying the same thing. And nothing changes.

Add it up. HS2 overruns. NHS IT written off. £10.9 billion in Covid fraud. Universal Credit ballooning. Smart meters over budget. Post Office compensation approaching £2 billion. Fire Control. Rwanda. Garden Bridge. Tagging. And those are just the ones that made the news. The total runs into the tens of billions. More than the entire annual education budget. Approaching what the government now spends on debt interest in a single year.

And here's the scary part. This is only what we know about. The NAO has been clear the real picture is worse because most projects aren't properly evaluated in the first place. These are the failures too big to hide. Imagine the ones that aren't.

This is the same government that says there's no money for public services. That raises your taxes every year and delivers less every year. That can't build a railway. Can't roll out a computer system. Can't buy protective equipment without losing billions to fraud.

And every time it happens, the pattern is the same. The project fails. The minister moves on. The civil servant gets a knighthood. The contractor gets the next contract. And you pick up the bill.

The UK doesn't have a funding problem. It has a competence problem. And until that changes, no amount of tax rises, borrowing, or spending reviews will make the slightest difference.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Zack Polanski, "It's not enough to just be hopeful... It's about having hope and a plan"

"I also disagree that left wing policies are popular"

"Didn't you - Jeremy Corbyn - get 3,000,000 more votes than Keir Starmer got?"

Jeremy Corbyn, "The highest vote this century for Labour, it was 2017"

Zack Polanski, "That's 3,000,000 more people who wanted to move wealth away from private capital, to nationalise our water services, nationalise our public services, and that's very popular in this country"

"Broadband is a good example of how the media jumped on saying it's not possible, not pragmatic. And that's their number one weapon, to always make people think that better isn't possible, and that change isn't possible"

"And we know why. The multimillionaires and billionaires who pump money into wars, or oil and gas, or into arms companies, or into gambling companies"

"Once they've bought up the assets, they buy the media, then they buy our democracy"

"I guess we're here tonight to say that they're taken our power, they've taken our democracy, they're taken our media"

"But collectively, we are going to take it back"

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Any broadcaster airing Wes Streeting on the future funding of the NHS should, for transparency, also show the people and companies linked to private health who are paying him to say it.

[Mikey @MikeyTheBuddie]

Funny how Russian submarines only ever seem to carry out ‘covert operations’ when it’s Scottish election time.

[Luke Robert Black 🌳 @lukerobertblack]

It must have been so weird to pretend they’ve never met

[Peter McCormack 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧🇮🇪 @PeterMcCormack]

This is a great account, well worth a follow.

[The Architect. @TheMarcitect]

I'll say it again.. this energy crisis is a complete fabrication. It's been planned for a very long time and is the key part of the agenda 2030 reset that will control everything you do. Everything that's happening now is just theater to condition you into accepting it. Wake up.

[🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Independence is Normal @jim45cotland]

Just to add to the high energy costs being suffered by Scottish households, we learn that the costs of the £6+ BILLION Energy Superhighways (EGL1 and EGL2) flowing from Scotland to England are also ADDED TO SCOTTISH HOUSEHOLD ENERGY BILLS (Britain-wide) to subsidise energy bills in England👀

#ScottishIndependence2026

[Frank Johnstone @FrankJohn1964]

@ClaireCoutinho BREAKING: MAJOR CLOSURES CAUSED BY WESTMINSTER IN SCOTLAND 1980–PRESENT
Hospitals28
Jobcentres (DWP)23
Post Offices130+
Coal Mines15
MoD Sites7
HMRC Offices6
Major Industrial Sites12+
Grand Total major closures since 1980:
220+ WM De-Industrialising Scotland, not for our benefit.

[Debs @WindsorDebs]

Yep!

[Dischord @Prae54Rae]

1921 is when we should have taken our country back. When the London colonialists were caught with their hand in Scotland’s till, and the thieving radges are still at it, big time!! We will need north of a trillion in reparations after independence.

[Alan Shanks @AlanShanks4]

When you cast your votes in the May remember

Anas Sarwar reports to Keir Starmer
Russell Findlay reports to Kemi Badenoch
Alex Cole-Hamilton reports to Ed Davey
Malcolm Offord Reports to Nigel Farage

John Swinney reports to YOU
Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay report to YOU