The future, coming soon 150
From a YouGov poll of young (18-24) voters today:
Now that’s quite the thing.
From a YouGov poll of young (18-24) voters today:
Now that’s quite the thing.
The Herald, 1 June 2014:
Scottish leader Johann Lamont will be joined by former prime minister Gordon Brown at the event.
We’ll let Johann’s rather shaky grasp of the UK and Scottish population sizes slide on this occasion – she taught English, not maths or geography. The important thing is that the No vote in the referendum assured that benefits would remain a central, shared and uniform facet of British life. Right?
A real letter sent out by the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland this week.
Someone do us a favour and explain to her in language she’ll understand that as the Scottish Parliament isn’t trusted by her Westminster pals to control its own resources, the price of oil doesn’t actually impact on “the SNP’s economic plan” in any way whatsoever, would you? We’re not very good with crayons.
George Osborne’s autumn mini-Budget is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be read late at night. The programme of swingeing cuts to public services it outlined would chill the blood of anyone with an ounce of compassion in their souls.
Fortunately, this site concerns itself chiefly with Scottish politics, so we can leave the full horror to others, turn away in fear and focus on a couple of decisions that are particularly interesting in a constitutional context.
Alert readers will already be aware that we’re not the biggest fans of prospective Scottish Labour deputy “leader” Kezia Dugdale. Even this site, however, doesn’t think the Lothian list MSP is so inept and slow-witted that she could single-handedly be held responsible for the party losing the next two general elections.
Some of her comrades, however, have less faith.
The Daily Record, 27 November 2014:
So, IS the Scottish Government budget going to “nearly double”?
We’ve been watching in some bafflement the continuation of this bizarre non-story from yesterday. (For which, incidentally, the P&J has published a correction today.)
As one in five Scottish children live in poverty and temperatures fall at the beginning of winter with many families facing the choice between heating their homes or buying food, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie apparently arrived at the conclusion that the most important thing he could be doing with his taxpayer-funded time was occupying the Scottish Parliament with a demand to know (for no immediately apparent reason) how often civil servants had accessed Wings Over Scotland in the six months leading up to the referendum.
We didn’t think we’d ever encounter a greater feat of rapid comprehension than Alistair Darling digesting and analysing the entire 670-page White Paper on independence in under two hours back in 2013, readers. But we’re delighted to reveal a new champion.
…of the Press & Journal.
As we’re talking about surveys, opinion polls and statistics today, it seemed worth mentioning another one that’s come to our attention. Conducted earlier in the year by YouGov but only released today, it’s a vast poll done on behalf of the Co-operative and canvassed over 180,000 people, most of them through the Co-op’s own website.
It’s relevant to us because the Co-operative also runs a political party, which has representatives at both Westminster (31 MPs) and Holyrood (4). They’re little-known because the Co-op never stands in its own right, but in conjunction with Labour, so to all intents and purposes it’s a branch of the Labour Party, funded by Co-op customers.
And it turns out most of them don’t know that, and don’t like it when they find out.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.