If you’re not familiar with Glasgow, the distance on foot between Shettleston in the city’s east and Maryhill in the west is roughly seven and a half miles. That information will become relevant a few minutes into the video below.
You might want to share it with people.
Later this morning the Queen will launch a vessel named after herself at the Rosyth naval dockyards. Earlier, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, appeared on the BBC News channel dripping in gold braid and medals to revel in the delivery of his shiny new toy, or at least the hull of it.
(Rather crassly Sir George claimed that it was being given the name of not just the current monarch but “both our Queen Elizabeths”, even though Scotland has only ever had one Queen Elizabeth and the ship itself tactfully avoids adding a “II” on the end.)
In what was an all-round virtuoso display of foot-shooting, the esteemed Admiral was also keen to point out just how few jobs would be supported by HMS Big Grey Floating Car Park – which won’t actually carry any fighter jets until 2020 – noting that “this ship only has 600 people aboard… that is a fraction of previous vessels of this size”.
And that got us to thinking.
The Guardian, 1 July 2014:
“Many British people will never afford an acceptable minimum living standard
We know we go on about this quite a lot, but it’s pretty important – if the Tories win the next election, they’ll cut billions of pounds more from the welfare budget. If Labour win it, they’ve pledged that they’ll be even TOUGHER on welfare than the Tories.
Welfare isn’t just about the unemployed, though the unemployed don’t deserve to suffer either. Millions of people in full-time work need benefits to top up their earnings to even remotely close to a liveable standard. Whether under Labour or the Tories, the prospects for the poor are bleak and getting bleaker, no matter how hard they work.
Scotland, alone, has an option for real change available. Just about every billionaire businessman in the country wants Scots to turn that chance down. UK government ministers who rely on Scotland’s multi-billion-pound annual net contribution to the Treasury want them to turn it down. Labour MPs who’ll be out of a cushy job-for-life if there’s a Yes vote want them to turn it down.
All we’d say is if you’re planning to vote No and you’re NOT a billionaire businessman, a UK government minister or a Labour MP, it might be worth wondering why that is.
From yesterday’s Evening Express:
It’s probably appropriate to remember at this point that Labour have promised to be even tougher on welfare than the current coalition should they be elected in 2015. But there’s something very alarming about those stats.
It feels almost insulting to you to even mention this, readers, so we’ll be brief.
“Balls seeks to reassure business by pledging to maintain low rate of corporation tax
Shadow chancellor commits Labour to retaining “the most competitive corporation tax rate in the G7“
Do we need to fill in the rest?
One of the features of the independence debate as covered by the Scottish and UK media has been the casual lie. We’re not talking about screaming banner front-page headlines here, but the passing, offhand untruths slipped into articles that are primarily about something else, or tiny little corner-of-a-page pieces so trivial that readers absorb the falsehood in seconds and move on.
We covered a good example of the latter last week, and it’s repeated in this morning’s Times, in a piece which makes the flatly and diametrically untrue assertion that “experts” have “produced figures suggesting that the final cost [of setting up an independent Scotland] could be £1.5 billion”, when the reality is that the only expert who has produced figures has explicitly rubbished that number.
But it’s another article in the same paper that made us smile wryly.
It seems somehow fitting that there was a political battle in Stirling yesterday. The city was host to two sets of military-themed festivities, with the UK government having decided to hold Armed Forces Day there in a move transparently aimed at wrecking the commemorations of the 700th anniversary of the Battle Of Bannockburn.
The anniversary was obviously on an immovable date and location, but the Labour-Tory coalition that runs Stirling Council, and which last year attempted to replace a Saltire which flies over the statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce with a Union Jack – a plan it abandoned after it was highlighted by this site – agreed to host the competing festival on the same weekend.
Armed Forces Day had free admission to undermine the relatively pricey Bannockburn event. Labour even went so far as to actively try to put people off attending the latter, with Glasgow MP Ian Davidson suggesting that the commemoration was nothing more than a glorification of “the murder of hundreds of thousands of English people”. (These particular “people” being an invading army, actual English casualties around 10,000.)
The press covered the subsequent downsizing of the historical recreation with glee, with numerous articles reporting low ticket sales and other problems right up to the eve of the show, which appeared about to be a major flop.
But then something odd happened.
Julie Webster of the Maryhill Food Bank, quoted in the Evening Times, 28 June 14:
The best of both worlds. As good as it gets. UK OK. Better together. No thanks.
It’s becoming ever harder to keep track of the twists and turns of the No campaign on the thorny subject of immigration.
First we have astroturfing groups urging us from London to “Vote no borders”, and the Better Together narrative of “border posts at Berwick”. But then we’re offered the rather desperate spectacle of the fear of immigration being used as a weapon against Scotland being able to control immigration with the powers of independence.
We’ve already written about the ludicrous way in which the figures for net immigration were distorted by the media and the differing needs here. But there’s even more irony and hypocrisy in the No camp using immigration as a stick to beat Yes with.
There’s an interesting article on the Guardian today from the invariably-excellent former music journalist John Harris entitled “The crisis in the Labour party goes much deeper than Ed Miliband”, which looks at how a 280-page policy document published this month by the Labour-leaning IPPR thinktank was boiled down by the party for public and media consumption to “cutting benefits for young people”.
That got us to thinking about something, but luckily before we’d wasted too much time on thinking we discovered that Labour Uncut had helpfully already done the research we were about to embark on for us.
The Edinburgh Evening News, today:
Well, as long as the poor people are suffering three times as much as the rich people, and the disabled are being hit hardest of all, clearly coalition policy is working as intended. Of course, if Labour get in, it’ll be different – they plan even MORE welfare cuts than the Tories, and they’re proud of it. If you can’t work, you’re dead weight.
We didn’t quite grasp the meaning of the phrase “we’re all in this together” when David Cameron said it before, but we think we’ve got it now.
A round-up of recent UK stories you may have missed, from The Sealand Gazette.
1. New Government cuts could see a million state jobs go
“George Osborne orders ‘ambitious’ new efficiency drive, to be detailed in the Autumn Statement, for savings and job cuts deep into the next parliament.”
2. British people favour leaving the European Union, according to poll
“Nearly half would vote to leave while only 37% would vote to stay.”
3. The reason voters feel powerless: because it’s the truth
“Public services are so fragmented there are no clear lines of accountability. Parents who are worried by what is happening in a school will try to pull levers and discover that no one is at the other end. They are left to fume impotently.”
4. Trussell Trust told ‘the government might try to shut you down’
“The chair of [foodbank charity] the Trussell Trust has said that the charity made a decision to tone down its criticisms of the benefit system after someone in power warned them that they could get shut down.”
5. Britain’s first secret trial
“Two men, known only as AB and CD, have been charged with terrorism; journalists were forbidden from disclosing even this simple fact until newspapers overturned a gagging order. But for the first time in centuries – and in a direct challenge to the Magna Carta of 1215 – the entire trial will be held in secrecy.”
Vote No if this sounds like your sort of country, readers.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
