SCOTLAND is the most energy-rich part of the UK, it also has the coldest and darkest winters and the highest fuel bills. Just yesterday a £3.4 billion project was announced to carry Scottish renewable energy to markets in England.

One of the first acts of the new Labour government in Westminster was to announce it was axing the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners. Henceforth the payment will only be made available to pensioners who are in receipt of means tested benefits.

On making the announcement the chancellor said that the mess in which the Conservatives had left the public finances meant that she was forced to make some "tough choices".

Rachel Reeves would rather see pensioners freeze than raise taxes on the better off. Isn't it odd that these tough choices always seem to involve punishing the poor and the vulnerable and never being tough on the rich, big businesses, and the well-off. "Change" eh?

READ MORE: Universal Winter Fuel Payments to be axed in Scotland

The winter fuel payment in Scotland is devolved to the Scottish Government, however, it was largely funded by a Barnett Consequentials boosting the Scottish block grant by an amount proportional to Scotland's population share of the equivalent government spending on the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners in the rest of the UK.

Reeves's decision means a cut in the cash available to the Scottish Government of approximately £100 million. Unlike Westminster Holyrood does not have full control of tax raising measures and has only very limited borrowing powers.

Today Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville (below) confirmed the Scottish Government had no alternative but to replicate the decision in Scotland and restrict payments to pensioners who receive eligible benefits.

In a statement she said: "Despite all efforts to review our financial position we have been left with no choice but to follow the UK Government and restrict payments to older people who receive relevant eligible benefits.

“This is a necessary decision when faced with such a deep cut to our funding and in the most challenging financial circumstances since devolution. The reduction we are facing amounts to as much as 90% of the cost of Scotland’s replacement benefit, the Pension Age Winter Heating Payment.

“Given the UK Government’s decision to restrict payments to those in receipt of means-tested benefits, such as Pension Credit, and the implications for the Scottish Government detailed above, I have urged the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to undertake a benefits take-up campaign for Pension Credit and to move forward with plans for a social energy tariff."

Entirely predictably Anas Sarwar was almost immediately quoted on BBC Scotland blaming the Scottish Government for a situation created by the Labour Party. Funny how he's quick off the mark to make a public statement when he is trying to pin the blame for his own party's mendacity, sorry, "tough choices," on the Scottish Government but was nowhere to be seen when Rachel Reeves made her announcement a couple of weeks ago.

Under a Labour government we are already seeing the theft of Scottish natural resources and a return to the austerity that Anas Read My Lips Sarwar assured us was not going to happen. Nothing really changes, and what also hasn't changed is the way in which Anas Sarwar blames the Scottish Government for decisions made in London.

Now however, those "tough choices" are being made by a Labour government and Sarwar can no longer plausibly pretend that they have nothing to do with him. For all that he's protected by BBC Scotland and the anti-independence media, he owns the two child cap on benefits and he also now owns the axing of the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners.

His petulant insistence that this is a result of 17 years of SNP spending decisions is way up there in the pantheon of political lies with Donald Trump's assertion that the crowds at Kamala Harris's rallies are AI-generated. The Scottish Government, unlike Westminster, is legally obliged to balance its books, and as Labour health secretary and private health care advocate, Wes Streeting admitted earlier this year, even in devolved matters, all roads ultimately lead back to Westminster.

READ MORE: Scottish Government to end universal Winter Fuel Payments

It's GERSmas but we've got to the point where no one cares except the Scottish Tories and some suspiciously well-funded anti-independence pressure groups cosplaying as independent think tanks.

The figures are now thoroughly discredited as a political propaganda tool created by the Conservative government in the early 1990s as a weapon to be used against the campaign for home rule and a Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. At the time the Tories under John Major were desperately seeking ways to fend off the growing clamour for a Scottish Parliament.

The GERS figures were devised over 30 years ago as a means of undermining those arguing for greater Scottish self-government. Decades later they are still playing the same role. Even the most frothing opponents of Scottish independence have been forced to grudgingly admit that the figures tell us next to nothing about the finances of an independent Scotland.

But every year we go through this charade so that British nationalist politicians and the anti-independence press can crow about how much Westminster gives to Scotland out of sheer kindness and generosity. It's a convenient distraction from the continuing theft of Scotland's natural resources.

No one could ever accuse the disgraced former prime minister Liz Truss of possessing a lettuce shred of self-awareness. She is currently in Edinburgh to promote her book, entitled "I was right but was brought down by the Marxists of the Bank of England" or something like that.

While on stage telling the presumably small audience about her support for Donald Trump, that other far-right fantasist, the campaign group Led By Donkeys dropped in on her pro-Trump speaking tour with a remote-controlled lettuce banner featuring a googly-eyed lettuce and the slogan I crashed the economy.

Needless to say Truss was not amused, and quickly stormed off stage muttering: "That's not funny." Truss must shudder with PTSD flashbacks every time she saunters past the fresh vegetable section in her local Waitrose and catches sight of a lettuce.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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