Wings Over Scotland

Archive for the ‘uk politics’

Powers without pennies 200

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Scott Minto

One of the more intriguing aspects of the EU debate has been the claim made by former Labour minister Tom Harris that a vote to leave the EU would transfer a raft of new powers, including over fishing and farming, to the Scottish government.

(Part of a fairly major volte-face by Harris on who should control what in Scotland, but let’s not get into that right now.)

On the face of it, this is a perfectly feasible possibility, since devolution was set up on a “reserved list” basis – any issues not specifically reserved to Westminster are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. In theory this would indeed mean that powers over farming and fishing would revert to Holyrood automatically upon exit from the EU.

But it’s not quite as simple as that.

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Tags: Scott Minto
Category analysis, comment, debunks, europe, scottish politics, uk politics

The undecided 702

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

Alert readers will already know that the closest thing this site has to a position on this week’s EU referendum is that supporters of Scottish independence living in Scotland should vote Remain.

(And even that view is conditional on whether you consider Scottish independence the most important political goal of your life. If it’s more important to you to be out of the EU than out of the UK then clearly you’ll be voting Leave and there’s nothing we could say that would change your mind.)

But what if you happen to be a supporter of Scottish independence who DOESN’T live in Scotland? What then?

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Tags: perspectives
Category comment, europe, uk politics

Lion lies down with lambs 276

Posted on June 17, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

The man who last year wrote this:

…and in 2014 wrote this, today wrote this. We live in strange times.

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Category comment, europe, media, scottish politics, uk politics

Another 24 hours 190

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

Good grief. And we thought yesterday was grim.

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Category comment, uk politics

48 hours in Britain 292

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

So, just to recap this week’s events so far:

It’s now offensive to call gay people human beings, a Leave vote will destroy Western civilisation, a Remain vote will bring about an Orlando-style mass killing by Islamic terrorists, Ed Balls – whose party isn’t in government and who isn’t even an MP – has promised to cut immigration if we vote Remain, Alistair Darling has teamed up with George Osborne to deliver a Punishment Budget if we vote Leave (except that it won’t pass because 57 Tory MPs will vote against it), Jeremy Corbyn led the last Prime Minister’s Questions before the EU referendum by asking about the Leveson Inquiry, and Bob Geldof is conducting a naval battle on the Thames with Nigel Farage.

Did we miss anything?

Category comment, uk politics, wtf

Knight follows day 90

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

You’ll never guess what’s happened, readers.

At least they left a slightly more decent interval than with Michelle Mone.

Tags: and finally
Category culture, history, uk politics

Hawks and doves 132

Posted on June 07, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

Last month Scotland on Sunday published some findings from a poll covering, among other things, backing for Trident and for a second independence referendum in the event of a Brexit vote.

We didn’t think much about it until a reader told us that Labour MSP Jackie Baillie had trumpeted the Trident result – a wafer-thin 43-42 majority in favour – in her column in the Helensburgh Advertiser. We were curious to see the finer details and set about finding the full data tables for the poll, which was conducted by ICM.

(Under British Polling Council rules, pollsters have to release full data within 48 hours of any headline findings being made public.)

Weirdly, they didn’t exist.

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Category comment, scottish politics, uk politics

Yeah, that ought to do it 245

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

We’re a bit behind, but we only just saw this.

Suddenly a 70% Remain vote in Scotland looks like a conservative estimate.

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Tags: and finally unionist of the day
Category comment, europe, uk politics

A change in values 140

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

There’s been a lot of chat on social media recently commenting on what seems to be a rather low-key approach to the Tory election fraud story.

Despite having the potential to cast the result of the UK general election into doubt, with dozens of Tory MPs under suspicion of being elected illegally, press coverage – particularly on the BBC – has been noticeably thin on the ground compared to, say, the days and weeks of sustained, new-content-free reporting on Michelle Thomson’s business affairs or Stewart Hosie and Angus MacNeil’s love lives.

(We learned very recently, of course, that the police still haven’t even spoken to Ms Thomson, over eight months after the allegations came to light.)

But even we were startled by this:

Yes, if you type “Tory election fraud” into the BBC website, the top result is for some unfathomable reason an article about Hosie and MacNeil, who are neither Tories nor under investigation for any kind of fraud.

Indeed, the current Tory election fraud story is nowhere to be found at all – the next most recent item on the page is from 2012 and about the Liberal Democrats.

We’ll leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics, uk politics

Four minutes of fun 336

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

This evening’s Question Time saw one of the most incident-packed passages on the show in recent memory. From left to right onscreen the panellists were Paul Marshall (hedge fund manager, head of a chain of academy schools and co-author of the Lib Dems’ infamous “Orange Book”), Alex Salmond, Tory minister Greg Clark, Labour’s shadow home secretary Andy Burnham and right-wing think-tanker Jill Kirby.

We’ll let you watch for yourself.