Wings Over Scotland

Hi, I’m Lauren. Some of you might know me – during the referendum I wrote a letter to the Wee Ginger Dug about my journey from No to Yes. I’m a true convert, and once I crossed over I got busy – I leafleted and canvassed and worked my socks off as most activists do. I never joined the SNP because on the doorsteps I liked being able to say “it’s not all about the SNP, I’m not a member”.

But after the referendum I did join. I joined because I knew that I could still be actively involved in campaigning for independence. Within a few months I was chosen to be Branch Organiser in my hometown of Bathgate. Every time a new leaflet came out I counted 10,000 leaflets into their individual runs and delivered them to volunteers and I delivered the ones that that no one else wanted to do after I’d done my own.

I organised training days and visited new members, encouraging them to get involved. Wednesday nights and Friday afternoons were spent on canvassing sessions. For the by-election in nearby Armadale I’d get up on a Saturday morning, leave the kids with my partner and chap doors. On other Saturdays I manned street stalls.

Monday and Tuesday were spent building the constituency website where each of the branches could have space to communicate outside the confines of internal emails but in private. I went to constituency meetings and was also made Political Education Officer. I was actively campaigning full-time while having a job, four young children and a house to run.

I didn’t mind that I had very little time to see my friends, I didn’t mind that I had to give up our family time at the weekends, I didn’t mind that my petrol budget doubled, I didn’t mind that I missed my wee girl singing solo at a school opening ceremony because I was out canvassing. It was all for the cause, for a better Scotland

Yesterday I resigned from the SNP because the party told me I was second-class.

Read the rest of this entry →

From an editorial leader in this week’s London Evening Standard:

“The man likely to lead the SNP in Westminster, former party leader Alex Salmond, has made it clear that he is contemplating keeping a minority Labour government in power on a case by case basis. ‘If you hold the balance, then you hold the power,’ he said yesterday.

His price: an end to austerity and to Trident.

Labour leader Ed Miliband has come out fighting against the threat.“

Seems to sum it up pretty well.

An alert reader pointed us to this edition of Newsnight we’d missed earlier this month, featuring the renowned Conservative Party chairman and liar Grant Shapps MP.

The population of the UK, according to the 2011 census, is 63,128,000. Shapps just told us he only cares about 11,200 of them (or 0.018%), because apparently those are all the votes the Tories need to turn round to secure an absolute majority in May’s general election. We very much doubt that any of the 23 target constituences he mentions, across which the required 11,200 votes are spread, are in Scotland.

And that, readers, is what the Tories (and, for that matter, Labour) really think of “the democratic will of the British people”. You may want to keep it in mind when you vote.

Because almost nobody in Westminster, whether they’re politicians or the media, ever pays any attention to anything outside SW1A, Alex Salmond’s comment in London yesterday that the SNP would vote against any Tory government in the event of a hung Parliament – which to any Scottish person was news as surprising as a weather forecast for rain – has been greeted with seemingly-genuine shock and horror.

Reporter after reporter has treated the non-revelations (which have been official SNP policy for as long as we can remember, and were stated explicitly by Nicola Sturgeon in November) as a stunning bolt from the blue, and Tory politicians and the right-wing media alike have burst into frothing, spluttering rage, based on the fact that apparently none of them grasps how either the UK electoral system or basic arithmetic work.

Read the rest of this entry →

We’re still not tired of these.

Although we can’t help thinking that maybe internal email is the more appropriate medium for resolving this particular workplace dispute.

(Or not. It might have been a present.)

The MONSTER!

Read the rest of this entry →

Respect to John MacKay of STV, who on last night’s Scotland Tonight asked Labour MSP James Kelly the question this site has called for about whether Labour would stand aside and let the Tories rule if the latter were the largest party after May’s election, but Labour had enough seats to win a confidence vote and form the government with backing from the SNP and/or other parties.

Kelly, unsurprisingly, flapped and blustered and totally evaded it. But then we doubt he has the authority to make the tea in Scottish Labour, let alone speak for the party on key policy issues. If the question isn’t put repeatedly by all of the media to more senior Labour figures until an answer is produced, we’ll be wanting to know why.

Here’s Ed Miliband, giving a speech this morning to literally at least 20 Labour MPs, Labour MSPs, journalists and possibly a stray member of the public who accidentally walked through the wrong door in Clydebank, a place where Labour leaders used to address gatherings of thousands.

Unusually, Miliband took a few questions from the hacks, all of whom promptly wasted the opportunity by lobbing completely pointless softballs about coalitions and deals, all of which (a) have been asked a hundred times already, (b) were rendered moot by Alex Salmond on the Marr show yesterday, and (c) were only ever going to be batted away non-committally.

So here’s an actually worthwhile one they can ask instead next time.

Read the rest of this entry →

…having just spent the last three years in bed with them.

Zounds, the irony.

Read the rest of this entry →

We have to give Jim Murphy credit – on this week’s Sunday Politics he started off with the subtle, misleading but technically-accurate version of Labour’s line about the “biggest party forming the government”, which involves making the true but irrelevant observation that in the past it’s usually been the case. (Mainly because UK elections almost always give the biggest party a comfortable majority.)

But it only took a couple of minutes of questioning for the Scottish branch manager to lose his cool and resort to the comprehensively debunked flat-out lie again.

Read the rest of this entry →

Scotland on Sunday on Labour’s latest Scottish election strategy:

We’re not making that up. Go and check for yourself. And when you’ve prised your jaw off the floor, acquaint yourself with the truth, as told by Jim Callaghan himself.

Our dear old pal Blair McDougall tweeted this at a minute past midnight today:

Maybe someone can explain it to us.

Read the rest of this entry →