The Wee Black Book 315
Posted on
March 24, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Archive for the ‘scottish politics’
The little guy 128
Posted on
March 23, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We hadn’t heard of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust until today. It turns out that it’s a sister organisation to the highly admirable Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which does great work highlighting and fighting issues around poverty and social injustice.
The Reform Trust, not so much.
Yesterday, when they were mad 177
Posted on
March 23, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
To mark the day when Scotland would have become independent had it voted Yes in 2014, the Scottish Conservatives have hired someone who sells dog food (not very successfully) for a living to produce a 37-page dossier about how absolutely dreadful Scotland is and how it would be the most bankrupt country in Europe – poorer than Greece, poorer than Latvia and poorer than Cyprus.
It wasn’t supposed to be released publicly until tomorrow, so that all the papers could splurge their loads on it, but someone found a copy that had been left on a bus and sent it to us. It’s incredibly dull, but if you really want to read it, it’s here.
All bad things to everyone 86
Posted on
March 23, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re very confused today.
Okay, so that’s all straightforward enough. The SNP are bad because they’re going to hit “middle Scotland” with more tax. Bunch of dangerous tax-and-spend lefties. Right?
A failure to communicate 75
Posted on
March 22, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
From the Scotsman tonight:
As previously, we’re having quite a lot of trouble understanding the difference between “independence” (39%), and “the Scottish Parliament should make all the decisions for Scotland” (51%). We’re going to drop the SSAS a line and see if they’ll ask for us.
Something to do 104
Posted on
March 22, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Barring some sort of unforseeable apocalypse, Scottish Labour aren’t going to win the Holyrood election in May, so it doesn’t really matter what their policy proposals are – they’re never going to happen.
Nevertheless, it’s pretty much our job to examine stuff like their plan to “scrap council tax”, and it’s more fun than watching the news today, so let’s give it a go.
The other kind of soaring 167
Posted on
March 21, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Even by the low, low normal arithmetical standards of the Scottish media, yesterday’s Scottish Sunday Express humiliated itself with the most stupendously factually wrong articles we’ve seen in a newspaper for some time.
James Kelly on Scot Goes Pop! has already eviscerated its comically inept bumbling in detail, but we thought we’d just quickly give you a visual version.
Blood and soil socialism 260
Posted on
March 20, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
From Kezia Dugdale’s speech to the Scottish Labour conference yesterday:
So hang on – only people born in Scotland are “Scottish”? Bit controversial. But then again, given Scottish Labour’s constant pejorative use of the word “foreigner” in recent years, we probably shouldn’t be shocked.
Funny how things come around 179
Posted on
March 19, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
From a BBC report on the 2004 Scottish Labour conference:
And to give the former First Minister his due, he wasn’t wrong.
The new middle 284
Posted on
March 18, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Scottish Daily Mail has been working itself into a froth this week over the idea that the Scottish Government doesn’t intend to match George Osborne’s increase in the upper-rate income tax threshold from £42,000 to £45,000.
Central to the complaint is that rejecting the increase will hurt what the Mail calls “the squeezed middle” and “middle earners”, including “nurses, teachers and police”.
There are, of course, several ways of defining “middle”.
The short farewell 122
Posted on
March 16, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We thought quite a lot of you would probably like to see this:
The murder of words 140
Posted on
March 16, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This headline appears in The Times today:
It’s an absolute lie. But that’s not the interesting thing.
