When the Scottish Government made the decision to fund the UCI Cycling World Championships to the tune of £36 million, it made a choice. And now, like other projects touched by the SNP, we learn the event is about £8 million over budget and Scottish taxpayers will have to foot the bill.

This sits uneasily alongside another choice: to cut £6.6 million from Creative Scotland’s budget, after some toing and froing. And now we learn that Culture Secretary Angus Robertson is considering slashing a further £4 million from arts sector funding.

The message that the Scottish Government appears to be sending is that it believes a one-off cycling event is more important than the health of our ailing arts and culture sector. That a vanity project which put Scotland on the global stage for a brief time somehow beats ensuring that a vital part of our economy, which helps to define what being Scottish actually means, will thrive and not shrink.

Want to see more SNP fails? – Politics Matters