  We investigate the spin dependent part of the Skyrme energy-density
functional, in particular its impact on the residual particle-hole interaction
in self-consistent calculations of excitations. Test cases are the low-energy
M1 excitations in $^{208}$Pb treated within the self-consistent random-phase
approximation based on the Skyrme energy-density functional. We investigate
different parametrizations of the functionals to find out which parameters of
the functional have strongest correlations with M1 properties. We explore a
simple method of the modification of the spin-related parameters which delivers
a better description of M1 excitations while basically maintaining the good
description of ground state properties.
