The extra money from the UK that has gone into this year’s Scottish Budget has largely been accounted for in terms of public sector pay deals and reserved tax rises applied to those wages ... or has gone into replacing cuts from last year’s budget so it’s clear that despite the relative expansion to Scottish finances there still wasn’t going to be a huge amount of play in the figures to do much more than work a little less hard to keep all of the plates spinning in the air.
Next year will not be a budget of action because only weeks after it passes, the Parliament will dissolve, there will be an election and a new Government will return with new promises (perhaps it will include the SNP, perhaps not). The next budget will, however, be full of promises of what the current Government will do if re-elected. A question I’ll be asking then will be fairly simple: Why didn’t you do any of that last year, when you had the chance?