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Safe in their hands 375

Posted on August 25, 2014 by

Alistair Darling was angry last week, as he was awake. In a tetchy interview with the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland he insisted that “there is no political party in the United Kingdom at the moment that could get away with destroying the NHS”.

darlingns11

He went on to rubbish the idea that the English service was being privatised by the Conservative-led government, and accused the SNP of scaremongering over the issue for opportunistic political gain. So we thought we’d see if we could find anyone else who thought the NHS was in danger of privatisation and destruction.

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Tags:
Category comment, investigation, scottish politics, uk politics

Alistair Darling Lie Bingo 138

Posted on August 25, 2014 by

We’ve been so busy with the Wee Blue Book for the past week or so that we only just got round to listening to last Tuesday’s interview with Alistair Darling on Good Morning Scotland in time, before it vanished from the iPlayer. The former Chancellor gets a quite uncomfortable ride from presenter Gary Robertson, and flaps angrily for much of the ten-and-a-half minutes trying to turn every question into one on currency.

soundwave2

Mr Darling also makes some startlingly and empirically false statements throughout the interview, and we thought it’d be worth noting a few of them and seeing if they crop up on tonight’s BBC1 debate with the First Minister.

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Category audio, comment, debunks, scottish politics

Kezia Dugdale is a liar 147

Posted on August 25, 2014 by

There’s some interesting footage circulating today of a referendum debate for women that took place last week. Many people have focused on No-campaign representative Cat Headley admitting that a “Better Together” leaflet made some highly misleading claims about an independent Scotland’s ranking among the world’s wealthiest countries, but we covered that back in May so we won’t go over it again.

The bit of the meeting that caught our eye is at 1m 36 in the clip above.

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Category comment, scottish politics, transcripts, video

The wrong direction 183

Posted on August 24, 2014 by

Stand by, readers. We’re about to post some porn for stat nerds.

bondyields

Yeah, you like that, don’t you? What’s a bit less sexy, though, is what the table above means for the “safety and security” of the UK, and the cost of your mortgage.

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Category analysis, debunks, scottish politics

Why Ed Balls is an idiot 115

Posted on August 24, 2014 by

Labour’s shadow Chancellor quoted in today’s Observer:

“Alex Salmond doesn’t want to admit it now, but joining the euro would likely be his only realistic plan B.”

This won’t take very long at all.

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Category comment, debunks, europe, scottish politics, uk politics

The ordinary people 390

Posted on August 23, 2014 by

The startling lack of “grassroots” support in the No campaign has been a recurring theme on this site. Time and again, people presented as typical members of the public turn out to be dedicated political activists with a vested interest in the status quo.

The “Better Together” website has a long-running series of blog posts under the banner “Why I’m saying No Thanks”. All of the people featured in it are introduced with no mention of any involvment in politics. Out of idle curiosity we thought we’d see if we could find out a little more about them.

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Category comment, investigation, scottish politics

Strong medicine 237

Posted on August 22, 2014 by

When we came up with this flyer idea last January, we decided that on balance it was perhaps edging a wee bit on the aggressive side. But in the light of today’s comments from Eddie Bone and the deputy leader of UKIP, and the findings of the recent Future Of England survey, it seems suddenly more appropriate. What do we think, folks?

bottleflyer

Category admin, scottish politics

Gordon Brown is a liar 450

Posted on August 21, 2014 by

This is what goes on behind the closed doors of invitation-only events run by the No campaign. Here, the former PM and self-proclaimed “ex-politician” lies through his teeth (again) to a Fife audience in June, presumably hoping they’ve by now forgotten his incompetent reign as Chancellor – the massive pensions raid, the cut-price sell-off of the nation’s gold, the ending of the 10p tax rate and all the rest, and the calamitous economic crisis he bequeathed to the nation:

Apparently oil revenues will be the sole source of money for an independent Scotland. No taxes at all. Apparently they’re only “£3 billion a year”, even though they’ve in fact NEVER been as low as £3bn since the Scottish Parliament existed and most sensible projections put receipts for the next few years at an average of at least twice that.

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Category comment, scottish politics, video

The lost treasure of the deep 310

Posted on August 21, 2014 by

Sir Ian Wood quoted in the Scotsman late last year:

“A radical overhaul of the North Sea oil industry can deliver a £200 billion injection to the economy over the next 20 years, a major report has concluded.

Oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood has led the biggest independent review of the North Sea oil and gas industry in its history, and said yesterday that production could increase by four billion barrels over coming years if major changes to the operation of the oil and gas sector are made.

Such changes would put the UK in a ‘stronger position’ to extract nearly all of the estimated 24 billion barrels still remaining underneath the North Sea.”

Unfortunately, since then there’s been a cataclysm.

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Category analysis, comment, scottish politics

The other one’s got bells on 216

Posted on August 20, 2014 by

An alert reader drew our attention to a piece in the Telegraph on Monday.

“The pro-UK Better Together campaign said it plans to “turn majority support into a majority vote” by contacting every household at least three times over the next month and every undecided voter at least four times.

Up to a million postal voters will be contacted and more than 25,000 activists will be working to mobilise support for No ahead of polling day. The campaign will also be using advertising on websites such as Facebook to reach 500,000 undecided women.”

Lordy, where to start?

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Category analysis, media, scottish politics

How Scotland will be robbed 281

Posted on August 20, 2014 by

As we’ve already noted this morning, today’s newspapers “reveal” something this site told you nine months ago – that a No vote in the independence referendum will see Scotland punished with a massive cut to its budget.

bowlertwats

But some voters still don’t really know what the “Barnett Formula” is or how it works, so it seemed worth putting together a concise step-by-step guide to how it’ll be used to steal billions of pounds from Scots, should they vote next month to leave control of their affairs with Westminster.

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Category analysis, reference, scottish politics

A little origami swan 28

Posted on August 20, 2014 by

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Tags:
Category media, scottish politics, video

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