Why I won't be voting for the SNP in May

OK, the Scottish elections are something like a month and a half away and my mind is already made up in terms of how I will be voting for the regional list, but the absence of a Green candidate in my constituency means I still have a choice to make about that. However, I might already be reaching a decision by process of elimination - I've seen nothing so far that would persuade me to break my longstanding habits and vote either Labour or Tories. Added to that I can categorically say that I won't be vote for the SNP.

This has nothing to do with independance (an issue which, as an Englishman in Scotland, I am surprisingly neutral about). No, my decision is based on what for me are the two most important issues in this election - in the short-term there are the cuts facing Scotland and in the long-term there are the environmental issues. In the first case I find the stance of the SNP contradictory and in the second their track record is now approaching the disastrous.

The Cuts
If I was to put the parties on a specturm with regard to their attitudes towards the cuts, at one end you have 
The Tories who, however much the try to dress it up as necessity, ideologically like the the ideas of cutting back state funding.
Next come the Lib-Dems who seem to have been persuaded that the cuts are necessary due to the economic situation.
Somewhere in the middle you have Labour and the SNP both of whom seeming to be appealling to the popular vote by appearing to stand against the cuts and the evil coalition who are viciously imposing them on poor Scotland. Labour are doing this whilst offering no alternative strategy and doing the whole "No sir, it wasn't us, a big bank did it and ran away" act as to how the country ended up in an economic mess in the first place. The SNP are attacking Labour for this, but still not offering an alternative to handing on the cuts from Westminster. Indeed they allowed the democratically mandated tax varying powers of Holyrood (which could offer some alternative vision) to lapse into a state where they could no longer be used without informing parliament (symptomatic of a contempt for parliamentary process they have shown around a number of issues). Meanwhile they exacerbate the situation be cheap populist vote-catching measures like the council tax freeze and by huge, expensive photo ops for Salmond unnecessary public projects like the Forth crossing (of which more later). For a party whose whole raison d'etre is the separation of Scotland from the UK, this unwillingness to explore Scottish alternatives to the Westminster solution, but it actually fits with the way the party has acted in local government across Scotland - they complain about cuts to get support and then cut when in power. It might actually be a fiscally resonsible approach compared to Labour, but they need to stop trying to milk the anti-cuts vote so hard - that is not where they are standing by their actions!

At the other end of this spectrum is, of course, The Greens who say that the cuts are going too far and are wanting and prepared to use the powers the Scottish parliament has to try and find alternatives in Scotland.

The Environment
The SNP, like the other major parties, do their best to try and present themselves as green. Salmond will make speeches about Scotland's potential for renewable energy, but politicians need to be judged by what they do and not what they say and at every opportunity the SNP has shown its loyalty to the coal and oil industries, a dependance on short-term solutions that are denying us the chance to build for the future. The SNP favour building more coal-fired power stations in Scotland rather than investing more in renewable sources, they will try to explain away the environmental impact of this by talking about the carbon capture potential of the North Sea, but there they are talking about technology that has yet to be proved feasible anywhere in the world. They favour allowing deep-sea drilling off Shetland, using the same technology that failed so dramatically in the Gulf of Mexico. Even without the environmental impact, there is a short-termism to these solutions - fossil fuels are running out, investing more in them now is denying us the chance to prepare properly for that time. The fact is that Scotland could be producing almost twice its electricity needs from entirely renewable sources within 20 years or so. If we were to invest now, we could be at the forefront of Green energy. This just won't happen under the SNP.

They also remain committed to more road building projects, like the new Forth crossing, which will cost £2billion (budgetted - as we all know, major projects in Scotland seem to have a problem sticking to budget!). Repairing the existing bridge, which is only 50 years old, could be achieved for a very small fraction of that cost. The costs for that project include a £100 million liability cost to BP as the new crossing will be built across a pipeline thar carries an awful lot of oil. Again, the SNP decided to withhold this information and costing from the parliament when the project was being considered (for "security" reasons). At the same time they are withdrawing funding from an initiative which was working, which had the support of businesses, to get more freight off the roads and back on to the rails.

I could go on, but I won't.