Alex Neil

With the election of 3 Presiding Officer roles in Holyrood today, the SNP have permanently lost 2 of their MSPs and their voting number is now down to 56. This throws up some interesting maths/party alliances for Swinney’s first challenge of who to sweet talk to pass his budget.

10 of the UK's 18 p/w PMs came to power without an election; 5 subsequently won an election: Including: Anthony Eden (1955) Harold Macmillan (1957) Alec Douglas Home (1963) Jim Callaghan (1976) John Major (1990)

Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur - who led the Assisted Dying Bill through Holyrood - has announced he will stand for Presiding Officer Comes after he has had his arm twisted to do the role by fellow MSPs - some worried about calibre of other potentials and a pro-indy "stitch up"

Joined SNP in 70's as a young nationalist for Indy, I worked and campaigned with many others, after 79 it was disastrous for SNP we rebuilt for the sole belief was Indy, then came Sturgeon, Humza and Swinney who've systemically destroyed SNP, i can now longer cast a vote for SNP

NEW: Reform’s candidate for East Kilbride Dr Tim Kelly quits. It comes after my stories on him being a covid vaccine sceptic and someone who has said he does not care at all about carbon dioxide in relation to climate change.

Turnout could be under 50%. Not one decent campaign by any of the parties. No vision. No big plans to transform Scotland. No credible plan to achieve independence

Chinese company CATL is mass producing sodium ion batteries for energy storage yet when AMTE Power in Scotland tried to raise £2.5m to build a sodium ion battery factory in Dundee it couldn't & went bust selling its tech to a Dutch startup. The Union doesn't work for Scotland.