The History Boys 419
Posted on
May 21, 2016 by
Chris Cairns
Archive for the ‘comment’
An act of sabotage 201
Posted on
May 20, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Yesterday we reported how the only people who were risking the privatisation of key ferry services to the Western Isles were the Scottish Labour politicians and media crowing about how the decision to keep them in the hands of publicly-owned operator Caledonian MacBrayne had been made for political reasons.
(Which, were it true, would render the award of the contract illegal under EU law.)
We had no idea how low they were about to sink.
Two Scotsmen 195
Posted on
May 19, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Here’s (a few seconds into the clip) George, Baron Foulkes Of Cumnock.
Born in 1942 in Oswestry in Shropshire and privately educated at The Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School in Hertfordshire, George was first elected by the public in 1979, serving for 26 years. During his time as an MP he was convicted of a drunken violent assault on a policeman and fined £1,050. In 2005 he was ennobled into the House Of Lords and will make laws for UK citizens until he dies, no matter what voters say.
You’d think he’d have learned better manners by now.
Scottish Politics For Dummies 142
Posted on
May 19, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
As we write there’s a protest going on outside the Scottish Parliament regarding the privatisation of ferry services to the Western Isles. It was formally announced almost three hours ago that there definitely wasn’t going to be any privatisation and that the service would remain in public hands, but the protest still went ahead.
The people conducting the protest, who’ve got the exact thing they wanted, are now doing their level best to lose it again. Welcome to Scottish politics.
The taxonomy of lies 246
Posted on
May 18, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
For much of its life, this site has been warning readers that, as their default position, they should always assume newspaper headlines are a lie until proven otherwise.
Today, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper admitted it in public.
James Kelly is a liar 330
Posted on
May 17, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Last night the Labour MSP James Kelly – who was resoundingly rejected by voters in Rutherglen earlier this month but was forced on the Scottish Parliament anyway by his party – appeared on Scotland Tonight to debate the Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act. You can see the full segment from 15m 35s here.
Mr Kelly told a number of quite serious lies. We’ve edited them together.
Let’s examine them in turn.
The politics of hatred 370
Posted on
May 16, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It must be bewildering being the SNP sometimes.
You win a historic third election with a second massive landslide, getting more than twice as many seats as your nearest challenger – the first time such a thing has ever happened in a Holyrood election – on the back of what’s (self-evidently) by and large a very popular policy programme and record, and before you’ve even taken your seats in the chamber all the parties you just thrashed out of sight line up to explain how you’ve been doing everything wrong.
And as alliances go, they don’t get much less holy.
An act of provocation 480
Posted on
May 12, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re still on a break. But we’ve had another response from the BBC.
The stagnant pool 400
Posted on
May 11, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re supposed to be taking a few days off, but it’s been tipping it down outside for 36 solid hours, so when an alert reader emailed us a question relating to this article from Monday, we couldn’t help but go and research it just to pass some time.
They’d asked how many of the Tory MSPs elected last Thursday had been rejected by the voters of a constituency seat on the same day, and we were startled by the answer – of the 24 Conservative members of the Scottish Parliament elected on the list last week, every single one was also a failed constituency candidate.
And that got us thinking.
The separation of goals 790
Posted on
May 09, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
In amongst a torrent of pretty mad analysis of the election result at the weekend, we noticed the most insane reason yet suggested for the loss of the SNP’s majority:
The co-founder of a much-lauded but little-read pro-independence website asserted that the SNP were cruising to victory until the Nats got the backing of the Scottish Sun and Nicola Sturgeon was pictured posing with the front cover endorsing her party.
The whole litany of gaping flaws in that argument is something the Yes movement has needed to talk about for some considerable time now. So let’s bite the bullet and do it.
The chasm between words and actions 427
Posted on
May 08, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’ll just leave this here:
Actual percentage of female MSPs returned in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election:
Labour 46%, SNP 43%, Conservative 19%, Green 16%, Lib Dem 0%.
Hmm.
