Gaelic professor just inadvertently summed up everything that's wrong with SNP government

The excoriating criticism of the Scottish Languages Bill by leading Gaelic expert Professor Conchúr Ó Giollagáin will dismay anyone hoping the Scottish Government is about to save the language from its existential crisis. But it will also ring bells with many who look to ministers to tackle Scotland’s other pressing problems.

The Bill, he writes in an article for The Scotsman, “represents an institutionalised vision, both unsympathetic towards community reality and nonchalant about the risks of terminal demise”. He describes it as a “non-policy”, condemns its “weak relevance to Gaelic communities” and “extra levels of unnecessary box-ticking”, and says it is hard to see how it will improve “the talking-shop tendency in Gaelic officialdom”.

The SNP government has struggled to provide state-owned ferry company CalMac with the vessels it needs to run a decent service (Picture: John Devlin) | National World

Until recently, the SNP appeared decidedly “nonchalant” about the NHS’s decline; its own “talking-shop tendency” has been writ large in numerous government papers about independence; and its inability to provide CalMac with the ferries it needs to run a decent service suggests a marked lack of sympathy for island communities’ everyday reality.

The Scottish Languages Bill sounds like a metaphor for pretty much everything that's wrong with the Scottish Government.