“Hi there,” writes an alert and cheery reader this afternoon, “I work for ******* within an RBS contract and so have my own RBS PC log-in and security card. During lunch today, I tried to take a look at the website for the Yes Campaign.”
Well, that’s understandable, we suppose.
This was Glasgow South West MP Ian Davidson speaking (around 5:40) on Scotland Tonight just over a week ago, in a debate about independence and left-wing values sparked by the findings of a poll commissioned by this very website.
His contention was that independence wasn’t necessary to achieve left-wing goals:
“I used to be a councillor in Strathclyde. In many ways Strathclyde was actually far more radical than the Scottish Government has ever been. We had clear policies to combat deprivation – there was an emphasis on pre-fives, there was an emphasis on tackling poverty and misery and class differences in education that no Scottish Government has replicated.”
When we heard that, we went and checked some dates.
We don’t normally post if we’re just repeating another publication’s article and don’t have anything to add to it, or if there aren’t mistruths in it that need correcting. Simply spreading existing news wider is what Twitter is for.
But we’ll make an exception for this extraordinary piece from the Evening Times.
In reference to this article we ran on Saturday, here’s (courtesy of several alert viewers) a timely piece from this week’s Scottish Catholic Observer.
Click the image to read it at full size.
If you click the image below, you can listen to just over nine minutes of Johann Lamont – whose £85,000 salary you pay – on “Good Morning Scotland” earlier today.
Presenter Gary Robertson does about as good a job of questioning the Scottish Labour “leader” (never before have the inverted commas we habitually put around that word rung so true) as anyone could ask, so no criticism can be attached to him.
But after you’ve listened to all nine minutes, can anyone tell us a single actual fact we’ve learned about the Labour Party in Falkirk that we didn’t know before?
This is why you’ve had no posts today.
Meet Skye, Islay, Rona, Shuna, Cara and Jura. They’ll be staying.
So I guess now we know why Ed Miliband isn’t too bothered about whether energy companies whack their prices up before and after his 16-month “price freeze” or not.
Because we’re paying his bill either way.
Ed Miliband’s parliamentary salary is approximately £140,000. Plus expenses.
Tune in at 8am tomorrow for more.
It’s the 1st of November and we almost forgot to do a stats post. Tch, eh?
We’re calling one of those numbers another landmark.
We’re really, really sorry about that headline, on several levels.
But wait until you see what this one’s about.
Blair McDougall, director of “Better Together”, Dundee University, 30 October 2013:
You heard it straight from the horse’s – well, let’s be kind and say “mouth”, folks.
Just when you thought it was safe, we’ve got one last bit of data for you from our second Panelbase poll, which seems to have really grabbed the attention of the Scottish political world (as best observed in the furious, hysterical reaction from “Better Together” activists on Monday evening when Scotland Tonight announced they were going to be referencing it in the show).
We asked people a couple of questions about their voting intentions in various circumstances, but some of the most intriguing and revealing results came when we inquired as to how they planned to vote in the 2016 Scottish general election.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
