Margaret Curran on last night’s Scotland 2014:
Well, we don’t think anyone can say she didn’t give a full and comprehensive answer on the subject of Scottish Labour’s membership figures there.
This is how many Scottish Labour M/SPs turn out to save their own cushy jobs:
David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative conference today:
Scottish Labour, having seemingly faced up to their shortcomings as a political branch office and thereby despaired of being able to win any arguments, have now resorted to what appears to be a final strategy: telling undecideds to vote No for no reason at all.
“If you don’t know, Vote No” is the very basest sort of political message. A direct appeal to people’s fear of change, a call for blind faith in a party that’s proven itself unable to earn that faith from the Scottish or British electorate for the past nine years and shows no sign of doing so in the future. It’s a message that has very little going for it other than a sort of crude animal simplicity.
(Emphasised by the fact that “If you don’t know – vote No!” is the very first line, but Johann and Gordon feel the need to batter it into what we must presume they think are their voters’ thick, primitive brains by repeating it as a PS mere moments later.)
But Scottish Labour being Scottish Labour, they can’t even get THAT right.
Who’s this? A bunch of lairy, pissed-up neds on a stag weekend?
Nope. Labour members of the Scottish and UK Parliaments, out “campaigning” in Glasgow today. This is their job. You’re paying them to do this. Be proud, Scotland.
From a press conference a few minutes ago:
We must admit, this is our favoured mode for the First Minister.
Here’s an image we made back in October 2012:
It’s based on a graphic from the movie version of “V For Vendetta”.
We’ve long argued that whatever the small print, when it comes to an independent Scotland’s membership of the European Union common sense and realpolitik will prevail, because nobody wants Scotland to be out of the EU for even a day and it’s in nobody’s interests for it to be.
Of course, we’re just some idiots with a website and nobody should listen to OUR opinion about anything. But it seems as though people like Graham Avery (Honorary Director-General of the European Commission), Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, (the former Deputy Secretary-General of the UN) and Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, (author of a book on EU constitutional law and professor of European law and human rights at Oxford University) ought to have a pretty good inside track on Europe stuff.
And if all those still aren’t enough, how about the esteemed Pat Cox, former President of the European Parliament? He ought to know what he’s talking about, right?
We just watched, jaws agape, as the BBC news channel gave Scottish Labour an uninterrupted 50-minute party political broadcast for no immediately obvious reason. It mainly took place at Loanhead Miners’ Welfare, and featured speeches from a warm-up man, then Johann Lamont, and finally Gordon Brown.
The ostensible event justifying this extraordinary coverage lasted just 2m 36s.
And having sat through the whole circus, we still have no idea what it was for.
The alert readers of this site have encountered currency trader Alpesh Patel of equity company Praefinium Partners before. We were more than a little bit scathing about a previous appearance of his on the BBC News channel back in February, on which it seems fair to say that he nailed his Unionist colours very firmly indeed to the mast.
So this clip from the same channel this morning was interesting.
We don’t think his words need any comment from us, save perhaps that we commend Mr Patel for having learned from his previous errors when it comes to assessing the attitude of businesses to the prospect of Scottish independence. Anyone can make a mistake. The key is to not keep repeating it when the evidence proves you wrong.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
