Johnny Foreigner

The SNP Government has been accused of creating a welfare black hole that could reach more than £2 billion by 2030 because of “reckless spending”.

The Scottish Conservatives said the SNP’s budget for benefits “far outstrips” the money it receives from the UK Government for welfare spending.

There’s no reason at all that Scots welfare spending must be limited to what’s lifted off UK taxpayers and then allocated. This is what devo is all about. You want to do different then you go at it. Just raise the money yourselves.

Now, whether it’s wise is another matter, but this is the point. Many of us have long thought that the Celts are more communal – some would say spendthrift – than the Angles. Devo allows them to be so at a rate that the Agnles wouldn’t agree to pay f9or…..

Farmers should stop using the phrase “farmer’s wife” as it reinforces gender stereotypes, the National Farmers Union (NFU) in Scotland has said.

So when do we English get the vote on their leaving and we can tell ’em all to bugger off?

US President Donald Trump has asserted South Africa is “confiscating” land and “treating certain classes of people very badly” as he announced he was cutting off all future funding to the country pending an investigation.

The land issue in South Africa has long been divisive, with efforts to redress the inequality of white-rule drawing criticism from conservatives including Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, who was born in South Africa and is a powerful Trump adviser.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last month signed a bill that stipulates the government may, in certain circumstances, offer “nil compensation” for property it decides to expropriate in the public interest.

“South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

“I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!” Trump wrote.

In response to his comments, South Africa said its expropriation act was not exceptional.

Commies and idiots often do steal land.

Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea but it’s not exceptional, they’re right.

French AI ‘Lucie’ looks très chic, but keeps getting answers wrong
The chatbot, backed by Macron and public funds, is facing criticism after providing inaccurate information.

And who could imagine a French bird getting anything wrong to boot?

It is understood Sarah Gloag, who is Dame Ann’s stepdaughter and daughter-in-law, attended voluntarily at Livingston police station in West Lothian with Dame Ann’s son-in-law Paul McNeil.

Thought they were from Scotland, not Norfolk?

Albania bans TikTok after teenage feud ends in fatal stabbing
Country’s prime minister confirms ‘thug of the neighbourhood’ app will be prohibited from January

Albania’s been famous for blood fueds since longh, long, before TikTok was invented….

All foreign criminals in jails should be deported – and if countries refuse to take them back, the UK should stop issuing visas to their citizens, Robert Jenrick has said.

Well, yes etc. But second order effects. Visas are always bilateral. The conditions you impose upon our folk going to you are the same as we will impose on your folk coming to us.

The other places will – wholly righteously – stop issung visas to Brits.

Could be worth it all the same, obvs, but it’s worth considering those second order effects – as politics so rarely does.

Aquitaine, Gascony, Brittany etc returnmto their rightful ruler?

Spain has arrested one of its top police officers after €20m (£17m) was found hidden in the walls of his house, as part of an investigation into the country’s largest-ever cocaine bust.

Óscar Sánchez Gil was until recently the head of the fraud and anti-money laundering division of Spain’s national police force in Madrid.

Officers arrested him last week along with 15 other people, including his romantic partner, who is also a police officer in the Madrid region, a police source said without naming her.

During the raid, police found the €20m, in cash, hidden in the walls and ceilings of the couple’s home in Alcalá de Henares, a town of about 195,000 inhabitants located 18 miles (30km) east of the Spanish capital.

Err, yes.

Portugal is planning to become a haven for young adults by giving them a decade-long tax break in an attempt to curb a brain drain.

Under plans proposed by the country’s centre-Right government, workers under 35 would be exempt from paying income tax for the first year of their careers before receiving progressive discounts for the next decade.

Luis Montenegro, the prime minister, said: “Our goal is to really increase our ability to retain talent, to keep our young people in Portugal, ensuring that fewer of them leave and that those who do can return.”

The country is largely a scheme by which the haute bourgeois professions rook the rest of the country. The costs of trying to start something up – little one man businesses, self employment – are vast which is why no one does.

Change that matey.

‘Existential threat’ is a thin excuse: the out-of-control force that is pushing the Middle East to the brink is Israel itself

Hezbollah and Hamas both pooclaim as a goal the destruction of Israel and also work to that end.

To oppose this is to be the extremist, is it?

I’m still looking forward to Nesrine’s column on the Arab oppression of darker skinned Sudanese myself….

Spain’s two enclaves on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast, Ceuta and Melilla, share the only land borders of the European Union with Africa.

Colonialism, eh?

Payments towards government initiatives that help vulnerable households and reduce CO2 emissions.

She grew up at the other end of the ferry ride, in Pozzuoli/Arco Felice.

Actually, last time I was there I would swear that I walked past her spitting image – but her spitting image when she was 20-ish. Something in the local genes perhaps…..

French police are investigating a suspicious letter addressed to the interior minister that tested positive for the plague.

Discovered at a mail-sorting centre near Dijon, the letter was addressed to the town hall of Roubaix, in the north of France outside Lille, for the attention of Gérald Darmanin, the minister of the interior.

Police were called when the unstamped envelope, with undisclosed “inscriptions” on its back, roused suspicions among workers. Inside, they discovered a black powder and a letter containing racist insults.

Ineffective – usually got to get it into the bloodstream – but innovative all the same.

Trump files complaint against Harris for taking over Biden’s campaign funds
Complaint to Federal Election Commission Tuesday accuses Harris of violating federal campaign finance laws

American files lawsuit!

Now there’s a surprise for us all.

With just three days to go, available tickets cost between £700 and £2,200, with hospitality packages priced at more than £3,000.

Such figures for a ceremony lasting less than four hours have incensed the unions, which say that profits are not being shared with ordinary workers.

Many of the 3,000 dancers, acrobats and actors who will contribute to the show were working for low wages, or even for free, and were pointing to “glaring inequality and discrimination”, said the SFA spokesman.

Show dancers were recruited “under shameful conditions, or without payment”, the spokesman added.

It comes as other unions threaten similar strike action during the ceremony, which is expected to be attended by up to 600,000 people.

Pay rates for the evening range from between the equivalent of around £50 to £1,400 for entertainment professionals.

They’re currently threatening strike action. Which would be very fun indeed.

Thing is, if the authorities said, fair play, off you go then. Strike. I have a feeling that they wouldn’t. And that if they did the overall effect would be thoroughly good for the longer term impact on France. Not sure what the Frog for “taking the piss” is but I’d expect the general population to think that of the unions for a long time afterwards.

Campaigners last year called on MPs to enshrine the right to a four-day week in law after hailing the results of the UK pilot as a “major breakthrough”.

Other countries have also been testing out the idea. Emmanuel Macron last month had to postpone a labour summit to discuss the idea because too many participants were on holiday.

South Africa is facing the uncertain possibility of a coalition government after the former president Jacob Zuma’s new party upended the country’s elections, contributing to the African National Congress party’s vote share collapsing well below half, with 97% of voting stations counted.

By Saturday, the ANC, which has governed South Africa with a large majority since Nelson Mandela led it to power 30 years ago after the end of apartheid, had 40.14% of the vote.

If the final results are similar, that would represent a decline of more than 15 percentage points from the 2019 elections, and suggest voters have punished the former liberation movement for chronic unemployment, rolling power cuts and crumbling infrastructure.

The business-friendly Democratic Alliance (DA) was on 21.7% of the vote, while Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party, which was launched only in December and supports nationalising banks and expropriating land without compensation, was on 14.8%.

“Business friendly” is one way of putting it. Hoping to maintain a civilisation another……

Americans are drinking half the coffee they did in the 40s

Hmm. Not sure that’s something I would measure by the gallon to be honest. American coffee used to be famously awful – weak. Now it’s less so – note, only less so.

lb of beans per capita sounds like a better measure to me – could be the same result, sure, but gallons, given possible changes in strength, seem the wrong measure.

He served around two years at the “country club” prison at Lompoc, California, with tennis courts, a golf course, gym and billiard room.

Having actually been to Lompoc (no, not into the prison) that sounds like the conditions inside could be better than outside.