Owen Jones in the Guardian, 7 September 2014:
Many Scots look at the Britain built by this political elite, they don’t like it and they want out.”
Seems to pretty much cover it.
Here’s what George Osborne actually said on today’s Andrew Marr Show:
“You will see in the next few days a plan of action to give more powers to Scotland. More tax powers, more spending powers, more plans for powers over the welfare state.
That will be put into effect – the timetable for delivering that will be put into effect – the moment there is a no vote in the referendum. The clock will be ticking for delivering those powers – and then Scotland will have the best of both worlds.”
(From 32m 40s.) It’s not actually very hard to follow.
This is Andy Brough, the Executive Director at Schroders Investment Management Ltd, discussing the referendum and currency on the Bloomberg channel yesterday.
He predicts a Yes vote in the referendum, and that Scotland and the rUK will share the pound, regardless of what George Osborne says. He predicts a “chaotic” aftermath, but seems rather relaxed overall at the prospect of an independent Scotland in a currency union. And for a senior City financier, he seems to have a very perceptive grasp on the reasons behind Scottish Labour’s backing for the Union.
Here are two snippets from a couple of recent “Better Together” leaflets:
Curiously, that 16% increase has fallen to 13% in their latest “briefing” full of made-up numbers Blair McDougall has pulled out of – well, let’s be polite and say “thin air”. But since they’ve been specifically named, let’s just check the claim with Tesco.
…you probably write for the Express.
Yesterday we posted a couple of tweets observing the fact that the Scottish media had conspicuously ignored the phenomenon that is The Wee Blue Book. (We’d have made more of the total blanking had we been even a little bit surprised.)
Despite having extensively reported almost every other document published about the referendum debate (such as Sir Tom Hunter’s almost-impenetrable digital-only effort), the press saw nothing at all newsworthy about a 72-page book that’s been downloaded over 400,000 times online and which a small team of complete amateurs had managed to fund, print and distribute more than 250,000 physical copies of in a matter of days, with demand still far outstripping supply.
But it turned out we were being a little unfair.
Bill Leckie in the Scottish Sun, 4 September 2014:
“I still have a list of nagging doubts, not least over who emerges to lead this new state. It’s just that… well, whereas not so long ago these doubts were what held me back, today they somehow seem exciting.
From industry recruitment website oilandgaspeople.com today:
Another 100 years? A trillion pounds? When will this curse be lifted from Scotland?
Here’s the BBC News website quoting defence secretary Michael Fallon today, on the announcement of a £3.5 billion order for almost 600 new armoured vehicles:
Let’s study that for a moment, shall we?
If anyone was still harbouring any doubts as to the significance of last night’s poll news, they would surely have been dispelled by this serious, thought-provoking and perceptive analysis on the BBC news channel’s “The Papers” roundup last night.
Of course, the poll might be a rogue. It might just be a temporary bounce from the second Salmond-Darling debate. And it still shows No in front. The Yes campaign will have to redouble its efforts in the last couple of weeks, not start congratulating itself.
But the one thing we can surely all agree on, right across the political divides, is that the most important aspect is whether someone might at some point have been slightly rude to Andrew Lloyd Webber on Twitter or not.
The rather sour Times leader linked in the tweet doesn’t actually specify the numbers, and the poll isn’t officially released yet as we write this, but we’d been hearing rumours of a Y47 N53 (excl. DKs) for a little while beforehand, so it looks like they were true.
Less than a month ago, YG stood at Y39 N61. If these numbers are confirmed, that’s a colossal 8% swing in three weeks, from the most No-friendly pollster around.
Game, as they say, on.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
