Stephen Kerr MSP – This is Michael Matheson’s phone bill, revealed by a FOI. The two dates the most data was used; the 28th Dec and the 2nd Jan, are both notable for significant football matches: Hibs v Celtic and Celtic v Rangers. A coincidence? We need the full truth.
by Tennants_Lager
12 comments
As funny as this is, MSPs really shouldn’t be using Scottish Government property and Scottish Government money to watch football games
Politicians pissing our money up the wall for their own enjoyment, pretty standard nowadays.
Stephen Kerr is still an arsehole though.
He paid it back because he was caught being negligent/incompetent for not changing the SIM card when told and ignoring warnings.
He maintained (and Yousaf did too) that it was being used for work purposes.
Does he resign if he’s shown to have lied?
What’s worse than the lie? The cover up.
Whenever there are signs of the latter, journos and activists get busy digging. Before long you lose control of the narrative and end up in situations such as this. And then the question is asked, “*If they lie about this stuff, what else are they hiding?*” and the out-of-control snowball continues to roll down the hill…
Matheson used government kit to watch a couple of football games. He should not have done it but no-one really gives two shits. What people do care about, however, is that the government attempted to cover this up and were – at first – content to have taxpayers foot the bill.
Piss poor situation and comms control by the SNP here. I doubt it would have happened on Sturgeon’s watch.
So he’s on holiday, uses his work (why take two?) ipad to watch football, get’s scuppered by a huge data bill pays it, and now the Tories want to do what exactly, charge him double for being a Celtic fan?
It’d have made sense for Kerr to link to the actual FOI release.
https://www.parliament.scot/about/information-rights/foi-request-disclosure-log/2023-694207?ref=210
If it turns out he racked up the bill through streaming fitba games, he’s in bother. That’s hardly parliamentary business.
If that data *was* streaming fitba, him lying about it is the issue more than the £11k bill. That can be explained by just being oblivious to the extortionate cost of roaming data. It’s daft, but not intentional. Not calculated. Saying it was work usage would be him actively lying about it.
Of course, this FOI release doesn’t prove anything either way.
Both the 31st and 3rd also show high use of data?
Is your party going to pay back the £150,000,000 paid to the Rwandan Government to take away people’s human rights Stephen?
But everyone said there’s no point in checking what he was doing and he’d assured us it was work!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but streaming a football match onto an iPad won’t consume over a gigabyte of data, never mind over 3?
£7,000 to watch the old firm derby!
As tax payers it would have been cheaper to buy him hospitality and a private plane from
Morocco to Glasgow
Unless streaming a football match in January takes twice as much data than it does in December this is barking up the wrong tree.
Does anyone actually give that much of a fuck?
He didn’t do it on purpose. We’ve all been shagged by roaming charges or unexpected costs before (Taken a flight recently?)
It’s very funny to see opposition parties falling over themselves pretending to care a lot, fainting with the inhumanity of it all. An MSP got scammed by a data plan! Won’t someone think of the children!