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The Great Separatist 165

Posted on March 04, 2016 by

An alert reader just found this. It’s quite something.

We especially liked this bit:

“The growing practice of the socialist government is to take decisions vitally affecting Scotland in Whitehall… this is a process which we have every intention of setting in direct reverse.”

(1m 46s)

Shoulder to shoulder 142

Posted on February 27, 2016 by

The dogged determination of Scottish Labour to insult the Scottish electorate is a source of constant slack-jawed astonishment to us. Over the years we’ve lost count of the number of times the party’s politicians have effectively said “People are just too stupid to vote for us”, in the apparent belief that abuse is the way to win back support.

foulkesfools

But it’s not always so overt. The subtler ways in which the party treats voters like morons include the assumption that people’s memories only go back to yesterday’s newspapers, and there can surely be no more stark illustration than its recent adoption of the attack line that the SNP are standing “shoulder to shoulder with the Tories”.

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More repeats 297

Posted on February 21, 2016 by

The slow news year in Scottish politics continues. These are all from today:

ae1

ae2

ae3

Sound familiar?

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Check against delivery 47

Posted on February 11, 2016 by

The title of this article is a phrase that people use when publishing a transcript of someone’s intended speech, to signify that this is what they INTENDED to say, but that the reader should verify it with the actual speech to check whether they did, because sometimes there are last-minute changes or the person simply forgets bits.

slabmoretax

The above is Kezia Dugdale’s scripted speech to the Scottish Labour conference in October 2015, just 94 days before calling for an income tax increase for “hundreds of thousands of working Scots”.

Sometimes leaving stuff out by accident looks like the smart move.

Help, we need somebody 77

Posted on February 02, 2016 by

It’s been a fair few months since we last documented the Daily Record’s increasingly panicky attempts to save its own hide over its infamous eve-of-referendum “Vow”.

recordvowsorted

In its growing desperation, the paper bizarrely turns today to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, demanding that SHE should be the one to fulfil a promise that the Record made specifically in order to thwart Sturgeon’s lifelong goal of independence.

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A Penny For Labour 109

Posted on February 02, 2016 by

We’re just going to leave this here.

Penny dreadful for low paid: Inland Revenue figures back Labour claims public-sector workers would bear brunt of SNP tax plan

Labour will seek to put tax at the centre of its ‘big push’ for a Holyrood majority this week, with new figures showing nurses, teachers, and council workers will foot the bill for the SNP’s ‘penny for Scotland’.

A detailed breakdown of the tax’s impact reveals how public-sector workers would be forced to bear the brunt of a measure that would affect more than two million workers.

An analysis prepared by the Inland Revenue and passed to The Herald confirms Labour claims that the Nationalists’ flagship policy, intended to raise £690m extra for health and education, will fall disproportionately on those on low and middle incomes.

The figures, released with just 72 hrs to go to polling day, mark the culmination of Labour’s non-stop campaign against the SNP’s economic policies.

[Gordon Brown] said last night: ‘There is hardly a nurse, teacher, policeman, or council worker in Scotland who won’t be paying this tax increase. These are the very people the SNP claimed it wanted to help and instead they will be hit the hardest.'”

It’s a funny old world.

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Imagine our surprise 112

Posted on January 25, 2016 by

Referendum day, 18 September 2014:

telegraphtourism

“English tourists are cancelling holidays to Scotland because they fear ‘ill feeling’ towards them after the referendum, it emerged today.

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Phew, that was close 162

Posted on January 20, 2016 by

Remember the scary old days, readers?

pens0

Thankfully, Scotland voted No and pensions were saved forever.

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A small discrepancy 180

Posted on January 19, 2016 by

The Labour Party has today published Margaret Beckett’s report into why it lost the 2015 general election. We were rather struck by this line:

beckett4

Let’s just go over that one again to be sure: Labour believed that an SNP victory in Scotland would make it “impossible” for the Tories to form the government.

Which is weird, because that’s not quite what we remember them saying.

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The shifting foundations 201

Posted on January 08, 2016 by

As we noted on Tuesday, Scottish Labour’s opening election salvo for 2016 has been to blame the Scottish Government for unaffordable house prices.

scotsmanhousing

Of the 450 most obvious flaws in that argument, not least the extraordinary efforts a 13-year Labour government went to to keep the housing bubble inflated, the one that caught our eye was that in the past three years we were regularly told of one thing that definitely WOULD bring prices down dramatically, but which Labour pathologically fought every step of the way.

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The Forth Road Bridge FAQ 268

Posted on December 14, 2015 by

Over the last few days, as most of Scotland’s media has focused on hysterical smear stories and outright lies, we’ve been digging around trying to uncover the truth about events around and leading to the closure of the Forth Road Bridge.

frb

Here’s what we’ve got so far.

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Look on down from the Bridge 184

Posted on December 11, 2015 by

It’s Friday night, readers. Let’s kick back with a little history.

forthbridges

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