Back when I came to supporting Scottish independence, the reason for that was the desire for better governance. At that time, the Coalition government was the worst we'd seen, and I'd never seen a Westminster government that I'd consider 'good' or even 'adequate', while Ed Miliband's Labour offered absolutely no hope of anything better. Meanwhile, Salmond's SNP government were demonstrating that better was, in fact, possible.
Spin forward a number of years, and the Coalition government looks like a comparative Golden Age. We've now had a succession of three "worst ever" Prime Ministers in sequence followed by Rishi Sunak's best efforts to continue that streak. Meanwhile Labour are promising a continuation of all the same inhumane policies of the existing government, just executed with rather more ruthlessness.
But meanwhile in Scotland the SNP government are now not demonstrating that anything better is possible. In fact, the notion of independence under this shower terrifies me - an independent Scotland would absolutely have a written constitution, a good written constitution is necessarily hard to change, but the constitution written by this government (or, more accurately, the "independent" committee they set up and cherry-picked to write it) just does not appeal one iota.
Thankfully, that's something we don't need to worry about, as the SNP gave up on independence a long time ago. Yes, they talk about it. Of course they talk about it - there's an election coming, so they have to try to get out their vote to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
Anyway. What does this have to do with Michael Matheson?
The story is pretty straightforward: he went on a family holiday, taking his work iPad with him. A bill for £11,000 was duly run up. He then submitted this expense claim for reimbursement.
So far, so simple. But then the whole thing unravels very fast.
Because running up a bill of £11,000 over a few days is ludicrous. It actually should never happen (I'll get to that), but not surprisingly it gave the media something to sink their teeth into. Because the only way to run up that sort of bill is through streaming video - either lots of calls, or something else.
MM declared that it was, of course, an entirely legitimate expense - he'd run up the bill on constituency work. So, fair enough I guess.
But it was a lie - it turns out that the two days on which the biggest usage occurred just happened to be days when Celtic were playing football.
The new story is that MM's children, unknown to him, had used that data to stream the matches, thus running up the bill. An honest mistake.
Well...
Assuming we believe the story that "his children", and not MM himself streamed the matches (which is a huge assumption), we still have huge problems.
Firstly, there's the issue with the bill existing in the first place. Apparently MM was told, a year previously, that he needed to update his SIM for the parliament's new provider. And he was further told that foreign travel had to be logged, so that a roaming package could be put in place. As I said, that £11,000 bill should not have existed in the first place, and I'm afraid it is at the very best carelessness, and more likely incompetence, that brought it about.
Secondly, though, there's the issue of MM's children using the iPad to stream the matches. There are three possibilities here:
- They actually used the iPad, with MM having unlocked it for them. In which case he knew they improperly used a public device, and his story is a lie.
- They actually used the iPad without MM's knowledge. Which means they must have the password - meaning it was either ridiculously easy to guess, or MM had given them the password. Either way, that's a shocking lapse in security.
- Or they used the iPad as a hotspot, effectively connecting their phones to it via wi-fi. The problem with that - MM would have had to set that up for them and shared the password. So improper use of a public device and a shocking lapse in security.
Finally, how did they stream it?
Because in the UK, the matches were available on Sky, but that only applies in the UK. To stream from Sky while abroad you would need to set up a VPN to spoof your location (which would be illegal). Alternately, there are a wide variety of "unlicensed" streams available. Which are both illegal and tend to be riddled with all manner of malware and other nastiness. Again, a massive security risk.
Now, in the grand scheme of things, £11,000 is a drop in the bucket of government expenditure. And, yes, compared with the torrent of corruption in Westminster, it's trivial.
But it's a matter of someone claiming expenses where they should not, then trying desperately to cover it all up. And it is that that makes this whole thing stink. He could, perhaps, have survived if he'd simply held his hands up at once and apologised. But now...
Fundamentally, is better governance possible? Or is the SNP exactly the same as the other parties - a bunch of self-serving grifters who should be barred from ever holding office precisely because of their desire to do so?
