Yesterday we noted that while Scotland’s opposition parties and Unionist media were united in the staunch belief that the Scottish Government should do something to improve the poorly-performing economy over which it has almost no control, none of them seemed able to offer so much as a single actual policy they wanted changed or implemented to this end.

Today the Daily Mail continued the attack at length:

So we thought we’d see if anyone had come up with anything yet.

Firstly, some bloke from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (no, us either) was wheeled in to offer up some vague boilerplate waffle:

A rise of 14.75% is “up to” 400%? What? No it isn’t. It’s a rise of up to 14.75%. But in fairness to Mr Roy-Chowdhury, he’d said the same thing about business rates rises in England just a few weeks earlier:

In fact, in Scotland the overall rates burden on businesses is being reduced, as noted in February by law firm Pinsent Masons:

Many Scottish firms will see increases of less than 14%, or even decreases, while a large number of English companies are expecting hikes of 20% or more. But curiously Mr Roy-Chowdhury seemed rather ungrateful for this extra assistance: