The Grand Canyon of Scottish politics.....

That gap between what the SNP says and what the SNP does gets wider all the time.

Remember how they've spent years slagging successive Westminster Governments for doing business with ATOS and G4S?

Well, now they've awarded G4S £13 million for managing electronic tagging and given £3 million towards ATOS offices in Moray.

What they say

They can't have been listening to what Moray's next door neighbour MP Eilidh Whiteford has been saying about both companies.

It is astonishing that the UK Government have awarded ATOS Healthcare these contracts given the widespread concerns around the operation of the work capability assessments and before the independent review has even been completed.

While the UK Government have properly promised a moratorium over future G4S contracts after the Olympic security shambles, a similar robust approach should be taken with other private partners who have failed to deliver on multi-million pound public contracts.

What they do 

Kenny MacAskill piled praise on G4S when he awarded the tagging contract. 

It gives our law enforcement agencies greater tools in their armoury and as the world's leading provider of this technology, G4S have a proven track record in this area.

The SNP has dug itself into a hole 

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie criticised their hypocrisy:

After publically criticising Atos, the SNP dug itself into a hole by awarding a multi-million pound contract to the company. That hole has got a little deeper now the SNP has awarded a multi-million contract to G4S, after previously supporting a moratorium on government contracts until the Olympic security debacle had been investigated. The SNP continue to say one thing in public but do the opposite using public funds.
 The SNP must explain why they continue to award contracts to companies they have previously slammed.

More of a canyon than a hole, I'd say...