Fraser Brydon @ScotPotential

Scotland can’t afford to keep paying £425m a year to cover gaps that proper pay and conditions would close. The bank and agency bill alone funds much of the solution. Today’s piece makes the case. substack.com/@scotlandspote…

60% of Scotland’s midwives work part-time - because childcare is unaffordable. The midwifery workforce and the childcare system aren’t separate problems. They’re the same problem. The Nursing Taskforce produced recommendations. They sit unfunded on the Cabinet Secretary’s desk.

Scotland’s nursing crisis has been described so often it’s stopped registering as an emergency. In 2025-26, NHS Scotland spent £425m on bank and agency nurses to fill workforce gaps. That’s the equivalent of 7,320 staff - bigger than the permanent workforce in most health boards.

The Western Isles looked at a tourist tax and stepped back - a hotel levy would hurt a fragile local economy more than it helped. What they actually want: a charge at ports and airports. Pay to access somewhere irreplaceable. Revenue from the visit, not the bed #scottishpolitics

Scotland’s life sciences sector: £10.5bn turnover, 46,000 jobs. The sector’s own target is £25bn by 2035. The structural problem: Scottish companies are acquired at scale-up because affordable lab space doesn’t exist here. The talent stays. The value leaves.

Scotland's hospices provide care to 21,000 people a year and face a collective deficit of £16m. Two thirds are cutting beds, making redundancies and reducing community services. Demand is rising. Funding is falling. Two thirds of hospice income comes from charitable fundraising.

15,693 homes needed. Fewer than 6,000 built. The gap is political, not technical. The tools exist. Today's piece makes the case. substack.com/@scotlandspote… #politics #housing #scottishpolitics #scotland

Scotland spends hundreds of millions annually on temporary accommodation. Every pound managing homelessness is a pound not spent on permanent housing that would make it unnecessary. A Land Development Bank changes that equation, patient capital for social housebuilding at scale.

Every 15 minutes a household in Scotland is assessed as homeless. In the six months to September 2025: 17,291 homeless assessments, 18,092 households in temporary accommodation, 10,480 children among them. The trajectory is not improving. It is worsening.

31.5 % point employment gap between disabled and non-disabled Scots. UK benefit cuts projected to push 50,000 more Scottish children into poverty. Scotland has Adult Disability Payment. Not mirroring those cuts is a budget decision the new parliament needs to make. #politics

@JohnSwinney Agree on the diagnosis but "decisions made in Scotland" needs specific content: renegotiate ScotWind 2 rental rates, mandate community equity stakes, fix the TNUoS grid charging regime. These are the decisions. Parliament endorsing the principle is the beginning, not the end.

Glasgow has a significant concentration of call centre, financial services admin and public sector back-office jobs - the categories most vulnerable to AI displacement by 2035. Transition investment needs to happen before displacement peaks. Glasgow is at the top of that list.

@ScotNational Swinney is right that Westminster controls Scotland's energy to Scotland's detriment. But energy devolution is the destination, not the next step. The next step is specific: renegotiate ScotWind 2 rates, mandate community equity stakes, fix the TNUoS grid charging regime.

thenational.scot/news/26151202.…

My piece on Scotland’s ScotWind rental rate - £1.07/MWh, £110m/yr, and why the new parliament has one last chance to get this right - is in @TheNationalScot today. Online now, in print Sunday

ScotWind 2 leases haven't been signed. The decisions that determine whether Scotland builds a wealth fund or repeats the North Sea oil pattern are still open. Today's piece makes the case for getting it right this time. substack.com/@scotlandspote…

In 2025 Scottish wind farms were paid £350m to switch off. Then £1bn was spent firing up gas instead. The reason: Scottish producers pay 10-20x more than English ones to connect to the grid. Two extraction mechanisms operating simultaneously.

Scotland's contracted ScotWind rental rate is £1.07/MWh. At full capacity that's £110m/yr. Norway made an equivalent natural resource decision in 1990. Norway's fund is now worth $2.2 trillion. The difference is one institutional decision, made before the revenues arrived.