As a counterpoint to this unpleasantness from a couple of weeks ago, this is Kevin McKenna in this week’s edition of the Scottish Catholic Observer:
Click the quote to read the whole article.
Something rather odd happened over on our Facebook page this week. It’s the most sparsely-populated outpost of the Wings empire, (because it’s mostly just links to articles here), and the average post there is doing well if it’s seen by 2000 people and gets five or six comments.
But yesterday, after running this article, we thought it might be fun to turn the two maps into one of our celebrated series of “leaked Better Together posters”, so we quickly knocked up this image and posted it on the Facebook page accompanied only by the words “Another Union dividend”:
And then things went a bit mad.
We haven’t mentioned the Telegraph’s blustery old colonel Alan Cochrane for a while, because his columns in the right-wing broadsheet have recently veered from, well, let’s say Nigel Farage to Nick Griffin. Not in content, you understand – for all Mr Cochrane’s unpleasant faults we see no suggestion of racism – but in tone.
Gone is the note of jocularity, the benignly patrician manner of the bluff-but-affable old British gent, replaced increasingly by poisonous, angry and disturbingly personalised hatred twinned with a rank and ugly intellectual laziness – traits which seem to have spread from the paper’s “Scottish political correspondent” Simon Johnson.
Today’s column illustrates both facets.
The Herald’s lead story this morning is a fascinating piece from the always-interesting Gerry Braiden. Under the headline “MSP poll plan may backfire”, it reveals:
It goes on to focus on the local tribal aspects of the decision, and the likelihood that it will strengthen the grip on their seats of some of the party’s “most inconspicuous elected representatives” (Braiden singles out Glasgow list MSPs Anne McTaggart and Hanzala Malik), but uncharacteristically misses what seems to us to be by far the most intriguing consequence of the move.
To find out what that is, we need to go back to a time and place in which many Glasgow Labour politicians will feel very much at home – 1940s Soviet Russia.
A protest is taking place today from 3pm at 9 Scotland Street, Glasgow G5 8NB, the location of Anas Sarwar MP‘s constituency office. The purpose of the protest is to register people’s disapproval at Mr Sarwar’s failure to attend this week’s House of Commons division on a motion proposing to abolish the so-called “bedroom tax”, which was defeated by 26 votes and at which 47 Labour MPs didn’t turn up.
We urge any readers who are constituents of Mr Sarwar to go along, though we suspect that Mr Sarwar himself, true to his character, will elect to dodge this weekly surgery. But if he’s there, please don’t hurl abuse, jostle him or throw bricks. Instead, we’d be grateful if you could politely and calmly ask him two simple questions for us.
The bit they always leave out is who it’s better for.
Click either image for the story.
No.1: Stop.
Labour MPs have been largely conspicuous by their absence on social media today, just as they were at this Tuesday’s bedroom tax vote. With even the Scottish press belatedly picking up on their no-show, most have been keeping their heads down rather than trying to explain their (in)actions.
So kudos to the party’s culture-loving Airdrie & Shotts MP Pamela Nash, who bravely stood up, despite already having one massive bullet-hole in her foot, to take careful aim and have a blast with the other barrel.
I never understood why everyone hated Maggie Thatcher. Perhaps I was too young. Born in late 1980 I had no direct experience of the unemployment and closures of that decade, whilst the Poll Tax marchers were simply nuisance crowds who blocked the roads. Stuck on the No 14 on Argyle St, I just ate my Monster Munch and asked mum “Why aren’t we moving?”
To me, Maggie was just a puppet on Spitting Image with mad eyes. She was funny, clubbing the other ones with her handbag. I never felt the hatred for her that everyone else in Scotland seemed to have. Even now – older and, dare I say it, well educated – I don’t hate her and just felt embarrassed by those morons whooping and jigging in George Square on the day of her funeral.
The rage of the 1980s simply passed me by. Thatcher and CND and the miners’ strike belong in the same distant era as Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Young Ones and the Sinclair C5. So these days, you could forgive me for feeling a mite confused, because the 80s are here again. Only this time, there’s a much nastier sting.
We’ve rather neglected the Crybaby Nation meme for a while. But as it approaches a year since the last time we wrote about it, perhaps it’s due for a revival.
Because it’s extra-specially dismal to see grown adults whimpering and whining like primary-school children in a playground when the Scottish press has spent most of the preceding weeks excitably hyping them as belligerent, aggressive “bruisers”.
Because in what appears to be part of a co-ordinated campaign of petted-lip clyping to teacher from the No camp, the latest middle-aged professional politician boo-hooing about “bullies” all over our newspapers and screens about people being mean to him is the new Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael.
From this morning’s Daily Record:
– Number of Scottish Lib Dems MPs who didn’t vote for an opposition motion: 11
– Number of Scottish Labour MPs who didn’t vote for their own motion: 10
– Number of UK Lib Dem MPs who didn’t vote for an opposition motion: 55
– Number of UK Labour MPs who didn’t vote for their own motion: 47
Where should we drop this delivery of stones for Torcuil Crichton’s glass house?
So all the names are in, and we now know that 47 Labour MPs didn’t bother turning up in the Commons yesterday to vote for the party’s motion to repeal the bedroom tax, which was defeated by just 26 votes. There’s a full list at the end of this article.
Today Labour’s officers and apologists are all over Twitter trying to justify the craven failure of the people’s tribunes to appear, on the grounds that they’d simply “paired” with Tory MPs who also wanted to stay at home scratching their arses and filling out expenses forms for their heating bills instead of going to work and doing their jobs.
Which would be fine, except for one thing.
So, there was another vote in the House of Commons today on the bedroom tax. Labour brought forward a motion to abolish it, having abstained from the one the SNP and Plaid Cymru filed back in February according to the Bain Principle.
With many Lib Dems abstaining this time, the motion failed by just 26 votes. Dozens* of Labour MPs had failed to turn up to support the motion, including 10 (ie 25%) of the party’s Scottish MPs – Gordon Brown, Jim Murphy, Douglas Alexander, Pamela Nash and Ann McKechin among them.
Someone else didn’t make it either. Can you guess who, readers?
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
