There’s still nothing happening in Scottish politics, so inspired by the Hieland Coo from yesterday’s godawful Economist front-page story, and for those of you who don’t use Twitter, and by reader request, meet some of my new friends from the last couple of weeks of strolling around Bath, guarding against ursine incursion.
Right, as promised, one last piece of admin. (This post will be removed in due time.)
We left yesterday’s piece and the associated poll up for two full days to make sure the people who don’t read Wings at weekends saw it and had the chance to vote in it too. But in truth it was pretty obvious how the vote would go from about 20 minutes in.
Like, that’s not even a little bit close.
Tens of thousands of people had a party in Edinburgh today.
They caused no trouble, spat on no priests, and everyone involved had a ball.
And for some reason that really, really upset Unionists.
We’ve been watching the Labour Party annual conference today, at which North British Branch Office manager Richard Leonard apparently gave a speech.
Unfortunately the BBC News coverage wasn’t very helpful with its captioning, so we have no idea which of the people below is him. Can anyone help?
The revealing reaction of the Tory benches in Holyrood to Derek Mackay’s deft budget changes in tax, which ensure that 70% of Scots will pay less tax than they do now, and the lowest 55% of earners will pay less income tax in Scotland than they would if they lived elsewhere in the UK (and get better public services for it), while still generating extra money overall from slightly increased rates on higher earners:
The Sunday Times has a breathless account today of Jeremy Corbyn’s triumphant five-day tour of Scotland.
It sounds like quite the event.
We’re not often genuinely shocked, readers.
But then we switched on BBC1 Northern Ireland today.
It’s a sleepy Wednesday in July, so let’s celebrate some proud British culture!
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
