WHEN the SNP takes its record of government in Holyrood to the people in 2011, its leaders will have hoped to have a number of substantial achievements to boast about.
And the promises that won them that narrow but historic breakthrough victory in 2007 seemed to outline a vision of a very different Scotland.
Gone would be the much-hated council tax and public private initiatives (PPP and PFI), dubbed as putting
public finances on a credit card.
In would be a "fair" local income tax (LIT) and a "not for profit" Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) paying for new schools and infrastructure through "patriotic" bonds.
More than half way through their first term, First Minister Alex Salmond and his ministers are running out of options.
Already they have been forced to drop their much-criticised plans for LIT, and the SFT has turned out to be an embarrassing failure.
Far from issuing patriotic bonds, it has been reduced to little more than an advisory organisation, an expensive quango from a government which promised a bonfire of such bodies.
SFT and LIT appear to have gone to the same bin as the other extravagant pledges on reducing class sizes, paying off student debt and giving first-time buyers £2,000.
It appears the SNP's only major achievements were winning an election, freezing the council tax, freeing up spending for councils and scrapping tolls on bridges.
The big issues of substance have simply failed to materialise.
Even though they are ploughing on with their National Conversation, the independence referendum appears doomed before it even goes to the vote.
To make matters worse, they also stand accused of unnecessarily dithering on the vital issue of rebuilding Scotland's schools for two years simply to try to make the SFT work.
The announcement on schools by education secretary Fiona Hyslop for a funding package could have been brought forward any time in the last two years in that it used methods of payment that were tried and tested before the SNP came to office.
It appears that Ms Hyslop will pay for the price of failure.
Even though SFT was finance secretary John Swinney's responsibility, along with his now defunct promise of having an SFT school built in time for the election, he seems to have neatly passed on the mess to his unfortunate colleague.
