It’s one of the weirder aspects of the independence debate that the No campaign constantly shrieks about how an independent Scotland might run a deficit, as if that was some sort of unusual and terrifying state unique to Scotland. So we thought it might be handy to keep this clip from today’s BBC Breakfast here for future reference.
Continuing our daily serialisation of HJ Paton’s fascinating 1968 book “The Claim Of Scotland”, courtesy of splendidly alert and dedicated reader Wilma Watts.
“Better Together” website, May 2013:
We nearly killed ourselves this week compiling twelve “quotes of the year” articles for December 30 and 31, which required ploughing through over a THOUSAND posts (1,170 to be precise) looking for interesting or amusing word-nuggets. Unfortunately, everyone was on holiday or out having a good time, so hardly anybody read them.
So we’ve put them all together in a single ridiculously huge mega-post to give everyone who only reads the most recent article a chance to catch up. We’re nice that way.
And then on Monday, when we’ve all finally got back to having some sort of vague idea what day of the week it is again, 2014 starts in earnest.
We’re enormously grateful to the alert reader who uncovered this little gem. “The Claim Of Scotland” is a book published in 1968 and written by one Herbert James Paton, a philosopher and a senior civil servant at the Admiralty and Foreign Office, who sadly died the following year.
If you click the image above, you’ll find a scanned PDF of the foreword, contents and first chapter, which at just 14 pages is a modest task of reading. Prepare yourself to marvel at how little times have changed since this pre-North Sea oil age, and to smile ruefully at a few of the sentences you’ll encounter.
Awesome start on healing those divisions, Johann.
(From today’s Scottish Sun.)
Okay, readers, it’s time to speak your brains. We’ve been evolving the synergy of the Wings customer-facing recognition interface in line with the leading edge of the zeitgeist over the years, from our early crude banners through to the current clean and eye-catching style, and it’s time to pick the logo that’ll take us through 2014.
Give us your thoughts, whydoncha?
“Gary Gibbon on Politics”, Channel 4 website, today:
Does he? Is he an idiot or something?
Is to mercilessly and with extreme prejudice delete the comments of anyone who doesn’t put the right amount of paragraph breaks in them.
Just sayin’.
There are now just fewer than nine months to go until the referendum that will decide Scotland’s future. But in those 260 or so days, there will be one that more than any other is likely to shape the outcome, and curiously it’s one in which few people in Scotland will actually be very interested.
The last elections to the European Parliament, in 2009, saw a turnout in Scotland of under 29%, below even the dismal UK figure of 34%. We have no reason to believe this year’s will be massively different, at least not on the northern side of the border.
But the election, which takes place (on 22 May) almost exactly halfway between now and the referendum, will have a huge impact on UK politics, and the corresponding knock-on effect could decide which way Scotland swings in September.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
