First the lies (from the print-only editions of today’s Daily Mail):
And then the truth, from our own Scott Minto a week ago.
Decide for yourself who to believe.
Further to our piece of earlier this morning, we present some chilling numbers for your information. They’re some of the votes cast in the last UK general election, in 2010.
(NOTE: No suggestions whatsoever of any kind of moral equivalence between the various parties named below are intended or should be inferred.)
We’ll be brief about the Eastleigh by-election result.
For all sorts of reasons.
There’s an interesting story on the BBC website this morning on the subject of EU membershi- WAIT! COME BACK! Honestly, it really IS quite interesting!
The UK state broadcaster’s Scottish outpost has undertaken what could under certain conditions be described as journalism, by conducting a survey of 27 EU member states (plus imminent newcomer Croatia) to find out their view of what an independent Scotland’s status would be. 23 of the 28 either ignored the Beeb’s request or wouldn’t commit to an opinion, but the teeny Baltic state of Latvia (pop. 2.2m, EU member since 2004) pluckily threw its 2-Lats-worth into the debate.
In political terms, being an MP is a bit of a poisoned chalice of a job. You ostensibly get elected to represent your constituents, but in reality to represent your party leader. Unless you manage to land yourself a ministerial job you’re basically nothing but a vote on legs, told what to say and ordered through the division lobby by party whips like a ewe in a sheepdog trial, under the constant threat of being overlooked for plum spots on committees or even deselected.
Now don’t worry, readers. Wings Over Scotland isn’t going soft. We have precious little sympathy to spare for career politicians troughing for all they’re worth on a £65,000 salary typically inflated to somewhere comfortably over £100,000 by allowances and perks, and accompanied by incredibly generous redundancy payments and pensions the likes of which us poor saps can only dream of.
But still, it’s no job for anyone with any dignity or self-respect. MPs are loathed by the public more than almost any other profession (other than bankers, with whom most people think they rhyme), very often justifiably so, and most will achieve nothing in their lives other than self-enrichment. It’s a soul-destroying way to get yourself a couple of nice houses at the taxpayer’s expense.
There’s a much less corrosive way to be an MP, though.
It’s old news, but someone finally dug up the actual leaflet. Click for the reason!
If the YesScotland campaign had its wits about it, it’d be running off a million of these with this week’s news stories printed in bold on the back.
Showbiz news from yesterday’s Daily Record:
“In a shameful confession that will shock their fans, cheeky TV duo Ant and Dec have admitted that one of them… voted Tory. The Geordie lads, back on ITV tonight on Saturday Night Takeaway, revealed all in a no-holds-barred interview in which they also said they’d taken drugs.
Asked about their political allegiances, the pair said they have both always voted Labour until the last election, when Ant voted Conservative for the first time. He told the Guardian’s Weekend magazine the decision would make his family in the North East of England “very angry”.
Ant said: “They certainly couldn’t give an argument for Labour for me at the moment – not a valid one. Then again, I’d struggle to give an argument for voting Conservative at the moment.””
It’s an understandable view.
A powerful reality check from Iain Macwhirter in the Sunday Herald:
“Scotland bailed out the UK economy in the 1980s with Scottish oil revenues, and received precious little in return except factory closures and the highest mortality rates in Europe. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that any improvement in the UK economy is going to happen in London and the southeast, rather than in Scotland. Like the high-speed rail link, it might eventually extend to Manchester but no further. Scotland is on its own whether it likes it or not.”
Last year (24 June 2012, to be precise):
This year:
Nice to know we didn’t have to wait for independence, eh?
This is the text of yesterday’s radio interview between BBC Scotland’s Glenn Campbell and Lord Malloch-Brown, the former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations who also served as a Foreign Office minister in the last UK Labour government. It seems reasonable to suggest that (a) he’s not a rabid SNP stooge, and (b) he’s a pretty good authority on how Europe works.
The interview starts with the response to a question we don’t get to hear, and we’ve excised a few “um”s, “you know”s and “I mean”s for readability. All emphasis is ours. The transcript is otherwise verbatim.
This guy’s on your team. Congratulations on that.
(We’re particularly impressed by the attack on Nicola Sturgeon, just days after a poll found her to be the most popular politician in Scotland, and probably Britain. Genius.)
At the last Scottish Parliament election, UKIP secured 0.52% of the vote, a little over half the share achieved by the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party. We’re not sure why the press doesn’t give their leader, whoever it is, more front covers.
In this site’s view, the single most important truth that YesScotland will need to convey to the Scottish electorate if it wants to win the 2014 independence referendum is the reality of what a No vote will mean for devolution. It’s a theme we’ve covered extensively, and will continue to highlight because it’s the core thing the Unionist campaign don’t want people to know.
All three London-run parties are engaged in the pretence that if Scots reject full control of their own affairs they’ll be showered with new powers by Westminster, despite that premise collapsing under the slightest scrutiny. But today an alert reader pointed us towards something that reveals a much more convincing reality.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
