Wings Over Scotland

Ruth Davidson finally emerged today from a summer of hiding from press stories about her racist and sectarian councillors and MSPs to give a bizarre, nervy and gabbling interview to Good Morning Scotland.

Highlights included calling Show Racism The Red Card an “anti-Semitic” organisation and proposing the building of eight entire new towns in Scotland (the funding source and potential locations for this colossal undertaking were not specified), all filled with social housing which would nevertheless be for sale under Right To Buy.

(Which if it could somehow magically be done would of course lead to the homes being quickly sold at heavy discounts, leaving councils insufficient money to fund their replacements and creating another massive housing bubble and crisis.)

But our very favourite bit was when (at 2h 17m) she said this:

“Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say to a bloke in the pub who’s half-cut with a broken glass, six foot tall and five foot wide.”

To be honest, readers, if we encountered a 30-sq-foot drunk waving a broken glass around in a pub, we’d just be looking for the door as fast as possible. But clearly Ruth Davidson frequents different sorts of bars to us.

So just for a bit of light-hearted Friday fun, we thought we’d ask: what WOULD you say to that person in that situation?

From today’s interview on Good Morning Scotland:

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 17 May 2017)
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That needs transcribing for the record.

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This is amazing, readers. It’s an extract from this afternoon’s The Big Debate on Radio Scotland, in which a journalist – the BBC’s Gordon Brewer – finally gets round to asking someone from Scottish Labour how they can make the extra £500m they need to fund their tax-credits “policy” while keeping all taxes the same.

The answer… well, the answer is quite something.

(The Big Debate, BBC Radio Scotland, 6 November 2015)
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You might have to listen through a few times to get your head round it, because that really is what a grown woman actually tried to get away with in front of a live audience.

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An alert reader pointed us today to this audio clip of Jim Murphy. It’s not tagged, but we THINK it’s from a Radio Clyde interview about three weeks ago which oddly didn’t seem to get picked up at the time by anyone in the media.

It’s an interesting viewpoint.

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Below is a clip from today’s “Morning Call” on BBC Radio Scotland. Speaking (from 16m 24s on the full show) are SNP MSP Mark McDonald, presenter Kaye Adams and Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald. There are a couple of noteworthy moments.

A caller named “George” had rung in concerned that the SNP might be giving up on their goal of independence, and Adams invited Mark McDonald to set his mind at rest. Here’s what happened in the next three minutes.

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Today we’ve become quite obsessed with Jim Murphy’s pathological avoidance of a straight answer to the question of whether income tax should be fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament or not. The BBC now has a report on his much-trailed speech in Glasgow, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First it’s worth having a listen to this.

It’s an interview taken from the “Pienaar’s Politics” podcast on Radio 5 Live earlier this month. And it makes for an intriguing study of the art of evasion.

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We know some readers hate listening to audio (we do too), so here’s a full transcript of this interview from this morning, with some brief added commentary.

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On his imminent election as “leader” of the Scottish Labour “party”.

Because this, readers, is the opposition.

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Here’s Neil Findlay MSP on this morning’s Andrew Marr Show:

Wait, what?

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George Osborne on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning:

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There’s some interesting footage circulating today of a referendum debate for women that took place last week. Many people have focused on No-campaign representative Cat Headley admitting that a “Better Together” leaflet made some highly misleading claims about an independent Scotland’s ranking among the world’s wealthiest countries, but we covered that back in May so we won’t go over it again.

The bit of the meeting that caught our eye is at 1m 36 in the clip above.

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Alert readers will be aware that even in a campaign characterised by dishonesty, the ever-smirking Labour MSP Jackie Baillie has carved a reputation for especially notable creativity with the truth. With our hands on our hearts, we don’t think we’ve ever heard her say anything that wasn’t a lie. However, on last night’s The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4, we believe she reached a spectacular personal best. Have a listen.

If you can’t quite believe your ears, we’ll transcribe that for you.

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