A trip down Memory Lane 78
This was a little cruel, frankly.
(From today’s Daily Politics.)
This was a little cruel, frankly.
(From today’s Daily Politics.)
Watch the devolution committee live from 8.30am here.
It’s quite incredible that someone with Jim Sillars’ political experience should be so naive about the tactics surrounding the EU referendum. Regardless of your feelings on the EU itself, there’s absolutely no point in any supporter of Scottish independence voting Leave this June, and here’s why.
The slow news year in Scottish politics continues. These are all from today:
Sound familiar?
Alert readers can’t have failed to notice a desperate Scottish Labour dusting off the old “Tartan Tories” attack on the SNP recently, over the Nats’ unwillingness to join in with Kezia Dugdale’s kerrazy kaper of hiking up income tax.
So after today we can only assume they’ll be looking for some similarly pithy zingers for their colleagues in Wales. They can have this one for free.
It’s curious that as the Scotland Bill negotiations deadlock drags on, well beyond its original deadline of 12 February and now hurtling headlong towards the extended 23 February one with no sign of progress on the horizon, that nobody is remarking on one of the most striking facets of the new devolution proposals.
Remember “pooling and sharing”, readers? Whatever happened to that?
Last night, MP Natalie McGarry made another heavily-qualified semi-apology to the popular abusive-tweeter enthusiast JK Rowling, because that’s how bullying works. (As far as we know McGarry has still refused Rowling’s demand that she make a sizeable donation to Rowling’s charity under threat of legal action.)
One of George Orwell’s most-quoted lines is “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
We wonder who was trying to silence the torrent of drivel below, then.
Without a doubt our new favourite Unionist website is this one:
And it’s not just for the snazzy badges.
Since the astonishing election of 56 SNP MPs to the UK Parliament last May, the Unionist media – suddenly deprived of a whole contacts book full of friendly Scottish Labour bench-warmers ready to feed it cosy stories over a boozy expenses lunch in Whitehall – has raked through every bin and gutter in the land looking for anything (however pathetic) that it can try to puff up, distort, and rope into service as “dirt” on each of the Nat members, in an attempt to discredit them and the party.
So let’s just have a little look in here and – YIKES!
This could take some time.
We saw a very interesting article on the London School of Economics website today.
It notes that in 2006, the year before the SNP came to power, 65% of Scots identified themselves as “Scottish not British” or “more Scottish than British”, but by 2014 – the year of the independence referendum – that number had fallen to just 49%.
It concludes, correctly, that just as we noted on Sunday, support for independence is fundamentally political in nature, not nationalist. But that only tells half the story.
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)