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An intriguing vote at Holyrood on finance.

The SNP and the Tories both voted to condemn what they say will be "severe cuts" in Scottish public spending as a consequence of the Chancellor's budget.

Why? Because they have a shared objective, albeit different reasons for sharing.

Quite understandably, SNP ministers want to highlight cuts which they say are pending: £500m next year with worse to come.

Equally understandably, they want to pin the blame on Labour.

As do the Tories. They hope and expect to replace Labour next year as the UK Government.

And they want to enter power, if they do, with the voters regarding Labour, not the Tories, as culpable for what David Cameron has said will be an "age of austerity."

In the Holyrood debate, Labour maintained its line: that Scotland's budget will increase fractionally in real terms, if one factors out the shift in capital expenditure caused by bringing forward projects in an effort to counter recession.

They argued further that Scotland had benefited from Treasury initiatives such as the cut in VAT - and the cash support for the banks.

Consequently, they offered the spending package a "welcome".

However, by a majority, MSPs preferred to heed the case that there are big cuts pending, with worse to come.

During the debate, the Tories cited research prepared by the Centre for Public Policy for Regions.

CPPR has gained a reputation for hard-edged, dispassionate research.

This is an academically rigorous organisation featuring, among others, a former Labour special adviser on the economy.

They say that, in real terms, the Scottish Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL) will shrink by between £2.1bn and £3.8bn between 08/09 and 13/14.

And that, beyond that, the prospects remain decidedly challenging.

Big numbers - with potentially big implications. And big thinking ahead at Holyrood.

You may remember at the time of the stushie over John Swinney's budget that there was talk of reforming the process by which spending plans are determined, to reflect the gravity and detail - plus the minority status of the SNP administration.

Such talk has not gone away.

Indeed, behind the scenes in Andrew Welsh's finance committee and elsewhere, there is considerable work going on.

Realistically, of course, it is not possible to exclude entirely the last-minute haggling which customarily attends political compromises.

Plus of course partisan politics will always intrude, especially with European Elections due in June and a UK General Election due next year.

But perhaps it might be possible to confront, collectively, the spending challenges ahead.

PS: Welcome your comments as ever. Would remind you, gently, that it is one of the house rules that responses should not stray from the particular topic on offer.

This is designed to ensure that, in the interests of all readers, there can be focused, substantive debate.

Over a prolonged period, it means that the broadest possible range of topics can be aired.

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Our common human vulnerability has a tendency to concentrate the mind.

And so it did during .

The exchanges between Alex Salmond and Iain Gray sounded notably consensual. That is because they were exactly that.

The Labour leader rightly concluded that the customary political brawling would sound somewhat incongruous in the light of the heightened alert over swine flu.

So he approached the FM, offering to voice questions which would enable Mr Salmond to put up-to-date information in the public domain.

Reassurance and realism

The FM accepted the opportunity gratefully - noting repeatedly that Mr Gray's questions were "helpful". As, indeed, they were meant to be.

As has Nicola Sturgeon throughout, Mr Salmond generated the right blend of reassurance and realism.

He was able to break the happy news that the Askhams, the couple from Polmont who contracted the disease on honeymoon in Mexico, have been released from hospital.

However, he also stressed that Scotland had not by any means conquered the virus - but had rather "bought time" by swift and decisive action.

PS: Welcome your comments as ever. Would remind you, gently, that it is one of the house rules that responses should not stray from the particular topic on offer.

This is designed to ensure that, in the interests of all readers, there can be focused, substantive debate.

Over a prolonged period, it means that the broadest possible range of topics can be aired.

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So far, so competent, so assured.

Health ministers north and south of the border would appear to have sounded the correct note in response to swine flu.

Thought Nicola Sturgeon got it right.

Always tricky - but she contrived to balance a sense of calming the public with stressing that officials and ministers were taking the potential threat seriously.

Panic assists nobody. Hence the need to offer reassurance, to point for example to the fact that cases outside Mexico have, so far, involved relatively minor illness.

Equally, though, that move to reassure is bolstered when it is backed up by a detailed demonstration of the measures in place, for example to provide containment and vaccination, if necessary.

Both factors would appear to be in place. It is not, therefore, a case of wait and hope. More of prepare and decide.

PS: Advance warning. Blogs will be somewhat sporadic over the next few weeks. That is because I am preparing a documentary on 10 years of devolution.

However, I will attempt to post when I can spare a moment, thoroughly aware that this site has a life of its own through your very welcome comments. That needs occasional stimulus.

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I expect you are all huge fans of "Yes Minister". Do you recall the episode when Sir Humphrey characterises a ministerial decision as "courageous"?

Does that mean, asks the eager Hacker, that it is a good and wise decision? There follows a solemn shake of the mandarin head.

.

Not only did he lead off on the chancellor's Budget but he sought to turn it into an attack on Alex Salmond.

You know, he didn't do at all badly, given the relative dearth of ammunition and the less than adulatory reception which has greeted the Westminster statement.

Mr Gray accused the FM of cutting services in sensitive areas, in advance of any plans produced by the chancellor.

Blame for these, he said, could not be laid at the door of the 2010-11 spending plans.

Real terms

An alert observer might suggest they were down rather to earlier restraint announced by the Treasury - but let us set that aside for now. On the day, it was a sterling effort.

Further, he said that the budget for Scotland had actually increased in cash terms - and, Labour argues, fractionally in real terms.

It was courageous stuff indeed. For two reasons.

Firstly, when Alex Salmond fought back with his customary vigour, he was citing not SNP figures - but statistics produced both by his own officials and by the Treasury.

Mr Salmond directed Iain Gray to Page 241 of the Treasury Red Book. When John Swinney gave the first reaction yesterday, he was bolstered by two senior officials from the Scottish Government.

Secondly, on the day in the chamber, Mr Salmond's analysis was explicitly backed by Annabel Goldie for the Tories.

She too talked of a "Labour squeeze" - before challenging Mr Salmond to say what he proposed to do now. Of which, of course, more later.

Plain and simple

How to explain the different interpretations. Firstly, Labour Ministers and Holyrood politicians tend to take the phrase "efficiency savings" at face value.

SNP ministers say that a reduction ordered by the Treasury - with the cash going back to the Treasury - is a cut, plain and simple.

Secondly, on the real terms point.

Labour says that the claim of a real terms reduction is based upon the fact that substantial capital expenditure has been brought forward from next year to this - giving the appearance that the 2010/11 budget features a reduction.

Scottish Government ministers say what counts is the available expenditure.

Money was brought forward under Treasury encouragement and fiat. It cannot be spent twice.

Consequently, there is a real terms cut. Hope that helps.

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UPDATE AT 1534:

More re the Budget. The UK government says the level of "efficiency saving" demanded from Scotland next year, 2010/11, works out at a net £366m.

That is calculated thus: - £392m as Scotland's share of GB efficiencies; plus £25m as Barnett consequential of new spending announced in the Budget. Adds up to - £367m.

Calculators in hand, Scottish Government sources don't dissent from that sum.

But they say you have to add on a further reduction of £129m as a consequence of the reprofiling of NHS capital spending.

And they say this sum takes no account of the further £9 billion of "efficiency savings" being sought by the Chancellor, post 2011.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

. Whoah, there. Flash it on the News Channel. Hold the front page. Alert the Palace.

I would imagine you are less than surprised by the disclosure that brave Caledonia has joined the recessionary trend. But news it is, nonetheless.

For it was only today that Gross Domestic Product figures confirmed what the pooches in the precinct knew.

The statistical cycle means that, as of today, there have now been two successive quarters of shrinking output in Scotland. That is recession.

Also today, we learned unemployment has risen in Scotland. By 15,000 over the past year.

Again, there may be a tendency to let that brush past us. Credit crunch equals global crisis equals recession equals unemployment.

But think. That figure means 15,000 more people, 15,000 more families have faced or are continuing to face the real stresses and strains of economic downturn.

As the chancellor well understands, will be judged according to whether it can ameliorate those figures and their comparators across the UK as a whole.

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Households across the UK will be eagerly scanning the content of the Chancellor's Budget on Wednesday.

What does it mean for us: on tax, on duty, on services, on jobs?

There is an Edinburgh house where the detail will be particularly thoroughly scrutinised. St Andrew's House.

Already, the First Minister Alex Salmond is mounting a robust and sustained attack on consequential cuts in Scottish spending which, he warns, will cause significant problems from next year.

Mr Salmond is making that case again to the Scottish TUC - along with outlining further new thinking in respect of measures to tackle the recession.

Expect that campaign to grow in volume, intensity and frequency should there be further requirements for spending constraint as a consequence of the Budget.

Nomenclature matters. Will the Chancellor announce "cuts"? Or "efficiency savings"? Or "lower growth in future spending plans"?

If an individual Whitehall department - say, Transport - goes for efficiency savings, then any cash recouped can be ploughed back into frontline services. And there is no knock-on impact upon comparable Scottish budgets.

However, if the Chancellor orders a reduction in their headline budget then, via the Barnett formula, that will have direct consequences for Scotland.

The Chancellor may say that they should find the money via enhancing efficiency. That would not alter the nature of the exercise.

Barnett works downwards as well as upwards. Scotland gets a proportionate share of any increase in budget for comparable Whitehall spending departments.

Similarly, Scotland takes a proportionate hit if Whitehall budgets are reduced.

That is already the core of the existing dispute between St Andrew's House and Whitehall.

The Treasury says it has ordered £5bn in "efficiency savings".

Team Salmond says they are no such thing: they are direct cuts, with direct impact upon Scotland.

So, if and when the Chancellor announces a search for further such savings tomorrow, the House on Calton Hill will be looking very carefully indeed at the small print.

Should this turn into a further controversy, then stand by for the First Minister and his Finance Secretary to protest, loudly.

Stand by further for a rebuttal from the Treasury/Scotland Office to the effect that Scotland gained substantially from the relative largesse of the past decade and must, consequently, share in the pain.

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Went to the theatre after the SNP conference on Saturday. To see Copenhagen by Michael Frayn at the Lyceum. Great show, powerful stuff.

It concerns a meeting between Eisenberg and Bohr, their impact upon the development of the atomic bomb - and, among many other things, controversy over mathematics.

Perhaps I should have viewed it prior to the SNP event, rather than subsequently.

As noted elsewhere by respondents to this blog, I committed a mathematical solecism during my webcast interview with the FM.

I can only blame inattention, lassitude or, just possibly, the fact that party conferences tend to translate one to an alternative dimension where ordinary laws don't work.

Whatever, I made an unaccountable gaffe.

The first minister wasn't remotely discomfited. Indeed, as usual, he gave every appearance of thoroughly enjoying our exchanges.

At the close, he clasped me warmly by the hand, eschewing the customary throat.

However, it would appear that several of this site's more eager and persistent contributors were upset. Which won't do.

To one and all, 3.14159265 apologies.

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Niftily discerning a bandwagon, Alex Salmond has written to Susan Boyle, she of the splendid voice designed to demonstrate that "Britain's Got Talent".

He is offering her best wishes.

This fits rather splendidly with Mr Salmond's inclusive pitch, as outlined in his speech to the SNP's spring conference in Glasgow.

Not content with taking his Cabinet on tour round Scotland, the first minister wants to bring them to a consultation suite near you.

More precisely, he wants to offer stakeholders a chance to present their solutions to the economic crisis directly to ministers.

High tea

Eck had offered a similar chance to Team Brown, the UK Cabinet.

Unaccountably, they declined - offering Mr Salmond high tea in Fife instead.

To be fair, this is a potentially good wheeze - although one wonders what the stakeholders (unions and the rest) will say face to face that they couldn't say in an emailed paper.

However, it is undoubtedly true that nations need all hands to the wheel in these troubled times.

One can but hope that said stakeholders will set aside the projects to advance their own group's interests and consider the wider economy.

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And so we have the new SNP campaign slogan for the period ahead.

It is this: "We've got what it takes."

Brace yourself for endless repetition. Indeed, but an hour old, it has already been aired with unstinting determination at the party's spring conference in Glasgow.

Being the wag that I am, I ventured to a senior party figure that it made a difference from the approach which might honestly be taken by politicians in this period of economic turmoil - which would be "we'll take what you've got".

This insolence received, quite rightly, a pale, watery smile in response.

The new campaign motto is, of course, a single transferable slogan. It can refer to the SNP - or to Scotland.

The accompanying literature gives prominence to the Saltire, not the party logo.

With one bound, the SNP hope both to advance their own credentials to govern - and, simultaneously, to counter suggestions that Scotland would struggle to an exceptional extent under independence.

In her address to the conference, Nicola Sturgeon is attempting to translate slogan into action.

She's announcing - and more money for council housing.

Both designed to improve public service provision - and create jobs.

PS: As ever, the conference is accompanied by a trade fair of exhibitors. They advertise their presence in the conference handbook.

One enthusiastic contributor perhaps needs to update its "cut and paste" approach.

It informs stalwart Nationalists that "the Labour Party conference is an ideal opportunity" for engagement.

The organisation in question? The Association for Public Service Excellence.

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He said it. Sorry, that is.

The prime minister in respect of the email smears despatched by his former special adviser Damian McBride.

This was in response to a "doorstep" question from my esteemed colleague Alison MacDonald in Glasgow.

When the word emerged, it sounded remarkably unthreatening, little different from the previous "regrets" which he had delivered in letters to the potential targets of Mr McBride's bile.

However, Team Brown plainly hope that it is quantitatively different: that it may finally close down the remarkable row which has pursued the PM all week.

Mr Brown is hosting a .

He wanted that to be a restatement of the UK Government's economic strategy - and a counterblast to the SNP, arguing for example that Scotland alone would not have been able to rescue the banks.

Again, the calculation is clear: any hope of success for that initiative was being undermined by the email row, by the persistent suggestion of corrosive rot at the core of government in the UK.

Will Mr Brown's rivals let it rest now that the PM has said sorry? What do you think?

Yes, I thought that might be your response.

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You will forgive me, I feel sure, for the absence of a political blog today.

I am in Aberdeen providing commentary for our for those who died in the North Sea on 1 April.

The service commemorates the 16 men who lost their lives on helicopter flight 85N returning from the Miller field and the one man who was killed in an accident aboard the oil supply vessel Well Servicer.

When I was a reporter on the Press and Journal in Aberdeen I was well-acquainted with the church where the service is being held, St Nicholas in the city centre.

To generations of Aberdonians, St Nicholas is known as the Mither Kirk, Mother Church.

Today as in the past, the kirk is extending her maternal embrace to those who have died bringing oil and gas from the North Sea.

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And so the UK Cabinet is coming to Glasgow this week. Stand by for a barrage of e-mails and blogs.

Apparently, the is causing a "huge amount of frustration" in Downing Street. I bet.

In fact, I can just hear G. Brown mouthing: "This leaves me hugely frustrated." Or words to that effect.

The peripatetic Cabinet was designed to display the Brown effect reaching those parts of the UK that others couldn't reach.

It was designed to show a ministerial team in touch with opinion and concerns outwith London.

In particular, it was designed to offer reassurance that Team Brown is getting on top of the economic crisis.

Instead, the run-up to the Glasgow gathering has been dominated by a squalid little tale of subterranean malevolence and incompetence.

"Frustration" doesn't quite get there, does it?

PS: The last time the British Cabinet met in Scotland was in 1921 when Lloyd George broke off his Highland holiday and summoned his team to Inverness - including Winston Churchill, then MP for Dundee - to discuss an emergency which had arisen with regard to Ireland.

One year later, in 1922, Lloyd George lost his Premiership. And Churchill lost his seat.

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Catastrophic. Harsh and brutal, the word fell from the lips of the first minister and, almost simultaneously in the Commons, the Scottish secretary.

It told of a . Not on take-off or landing. But precipitously and mid-flight with minimal warning.

Jim Murphy outlined the work of the Air Accident Investigation Branch which is already under way.

He indicated that interim lessons could be learned - and that, ultimately, any reforms which might be recommended would be implemented.

Alex Salmond indicated that once the initial expert investigations were completed.

Inevitably inadequate

Serious promises, solemnly delivered. Accompanied in both parliaments by sincere expressions of sympathy from all sides.

In the long run, these promises may well prove vital. They may involve changes or lessons learned which could save other lives.

On the day, however, they seemed inevitably inadequate - and I do not remotely blame the politicians for that.

What words could encompass such a savage, sudden death? Catastrophic indeed.

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Macro and micro. More economic developments in Scotland today as .

Forget, for a moment, the Presidential cavalcade pursuing Barack Obama and the rather more modest retinues attached to the other leaders.

Set aside, for now, the concomitant, disparate protests.

Consider the core objective - to find a common route, if possible, out of recession.

The current economic crisis has prompted comparison with the 1930s. In 1933, a Scottish prime minister, Ramsay Macdonald, convened an economic summit of 66 countries in London.

The object of the London Monetary and Economic Conference, as now, was to revive global trade and stabilise markets.

But the initiative collapsed because the new US President Franklin D Roosevelt, replacing a deeply unpopular predecessor, refused to compromise, fearing that his power to act independently in American interests would be jeopardised.

This morning President Obama insisted that talk of division between the US and the EU (Britain apart) had been overstated in a search for "drama".

Real challenge

Alert to European and other sensitivities, he described the US as a "peer" to fellow nations in the G20. Equal, perhaps, but notably more equal than the remainder.

And those Scottish micro developments? , with a fall of 9.6% in manufactured export sales.

A statistical reminder of a real challenge.

The full implementation from today of the Scottish Government's cut in business rates, hailed as a "landmark" by the Federation of Small Businesses.

It should abolish rates for some 12,000 firms and cut them back for a further 30,000.

Plus further controversy at Holyrood over the which is designed to find innovative ways of investing in schools, hospitals, roads and the rest.

Labour says it's a costly quango whose board has met just twice since it was established last autumn.

Scottish ministers say it's working hard to generate investment - but that other avenues are being pursued and that Scotland is relatively well placed, with the slowdown in construction more marked south of the border.

While subjecting all these developments to close scrutiny, we can but hope that the macro and micro elements come together.

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