We don’t know about you, viewers, but when we tune into a two-hour TV programme called “Scottish National Party Spring Conference 2013”, we sort of expect the large bulk of that show to be, well, the Scottish National Party Spring Conference 2013.
With the UK’s state broadcaster, though, that isn’t necessarily the case.
Apologies for the lack of posts today, readers – been working on a small practical project and getting into an argument with a No voter who might just be persuadable, among other things. But amid it all we stumbled across this on the BBC website.
It’s a 2011 interview with Noel Gallagher about the English riots. Gallagher was one of the cultural figureheads famously invited to Downing Street by Tony Blair during the short-lived “Cool Britannia” phase before the shine wore off the New Labour project.
“Running up to the last election I wasn’t going to vote, until my wife said ‘You’ve got to vote’, and I’ve got to say it’s the first time I’ve picked the most ludicrous thing on the list – some guy who was gonna dress as a pirate.
But the Labour Party have managed to prove themselves to be just as sleazy and horrible as we all know the Conservatives are. There’s nothing left to vote for any more.“
We empathise. But there’s still one part of Britain where that’s not true.
The BBC’s coverage of the SNP spring conference has finally started. You can watch it on BBC2 Scotland or on this live web stream, and discuss developments below.
We can only assume that Scottish Labour member and “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall somehow got lost in the blizzards sweeping the country and accidentally stumbled into the Scottish Conservatives conference this morning.
Warmly applauded, apparently. That’s nice.
We suspect that for the vast majority of our readers, it’ll be quite hard to get to grips with the fact that the Scottish Daily Mail intends this headline as a criticism.
In 18 months’ time, Scots will have the chance to decide whether they’d rather spend their money on pay rises for public-sector workers or on tax cuts for the rich and bribes for them to buy second homes and inflate another housing bubble with. We must admit to being quite surprised that there’s a debate about it.
We already know that Labour, particularly in Scotland, have no policies on just about anything. But in the light of the past week’s glut of abstentions, we decided to see if we could find out if the party had any remaining principles either. The results were startling, by which we mean not startling in the slightest.
Below are just a few of the votes that Labour has abstained on, at both Westminster and Holyrood, in recent memory. What, we ponder rhetorically, is the point of having an Opposition that doesn’t ever actually oppose anything?
We must admit that we didn’t see this one coming. Johann Lamont made a rather surprising admission 3m 16s into last night’s Newsnight Scotland special.
“There’ll be many people who voted SNP but don’t believe in independence who will breathe a sigh of relief, like me.”
Well, that goes some way to explaining the size of the SNP’s majority, at least.
We’re only just now getting round to watching last night’s special edition of Newsnight Scotland. It’s off to a cracking start. Great work there, BBC Scotland graphics team.
Just for fun, then, let’s have our guesses. I’d love to see Alex Salmond stand up in Holyrood this afternoon and announce that the historic first chance for Scots to choose their own destiny will take place on Saturday 25th October 2014, because that means the result would arrive on my birthday the following Monday. But I don’t think he will.
The official Wings Over Scotland prediction is Thursday 2nd October 2014.
And, um, also another person, can now be heard on episode 20 of the Scottish Independence Podcast, featuring regular host Michael Greenwell and your humble correspondent rambling on about the this and the that (and occasionally the other) of Scottish politics. It’s a right riveting listen, and if you don’t like it you can always skip straight to the end for a nice tune.
The 36-minute podcast can be downloaded, played live or subscribed to on iTunes.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
