A revealing moment from a meeting of the UK parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee last Tuesday, featuring the former Secretary of State for Scotland, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean.
Who knew, eh?
Scottish Labour’s announcement that it wants to increase tax for everyone earning over £20k (and therefore anyone on under that who fancies making a little bit more, or might do a wee bit of extra overtime), reflects its acceptance both that the far left is in charge now and that this year’s Holyrood race is virtually over already.
SNP party folk will “take nothing for granted”, of course, and some aficionados might find it fun to see which candidates slink into list seats after they’ve lost the votes which count, but I’m really much more interested in what will come after that.
From an excellent letter in today’s Herald by Chris McLaughlin of Giffnock:
The only fault in Chris’ logic is that he’s a bit too generous to Labour.
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
STV have leaked the results of Scottish Labour’s list-candidate rankings. Alert readers will recall that Kezia Dugdale promised that her leadership would see an influx of “new talent and fresh faces” to the beleaguered branch office’s ranks.
So let’s see how that panned out.
From a Daily Record vox pop today on Scottish Labour’s tax plan.
Seems there are some things nearly everyone agrees on.
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”.
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.
An alert reader directed us to an article on finance site Bloomberg today:
It’s interesting to see a business and bankers’ perspective on something that we’ve already pointed out a number of times on Wings, namely that the lower oil price has at least as many upsides as downsides.
Something kept nagging at the back of our minds as we read today’s front-page lead story in Scotland On Sunday about a battle between finance secretary John Swinney and a number of Scottish councils.
And then we remembered what it was.
Brian Spanner Fan Club chair JK Rowling yesterday moved quickly to correct some press reports that she’d abandoned her plans to sue independent MP Natalie McGarry over alleged defamation.
Tweeting to Herald reporter Martin Williams, she snippily noted:
The true nature of the “request” therefore seems unmistakeable – “make a donation to my charity or get sued by someone richer than the Queen”.
And we can’t help wondering whether that’s tantamount to blackmail.
To the astonishment of all, it turns out that JK Rowling isn’t going to sue anyone after all. Or, as the ever-reliable-and-accurate Scottish Daily Mail puts it:
(It seems needlessly churlish and picky to also point out that McGarry currently isn’t an “SNP MP”, so we won’t do that.)
Instead, the author, worth hundreds of millions of pounds, intends to try to pressure McGarry into making a donation to her childrens’ charity, Lumos, which we can only presume is happy to receive money generated by what some people might regard as intimidation bordering on blackmail.
So that’s all well and good. If you’re going to bully people, after all, it’s probably best if it’s at least for a worthy cause. Rowling was full of praise for abusive Tweeter “Brian Spanner” when he raised some money for the same charity last year by selling t-shirts mocking the loony “Scottish Resistance” campaign group.
But not all charitable donations attract such gratitude.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
