We couldn’t help noticing this unusually revealing quote from former “Better Together” campaign chief Blair McDougall in today’s Times.
A couple of things leap out.
Particularly alert readers may recall this excellent documentary from 2017, exposing how Labour’s PFI scandal has cost the Scottish taxpayer countless billions of pounds and crippled local government for decades with its extortionate financial legacy, as illustrated by the case of North Ayrshire.
Well, now there’s another one of it.
The title is self-explanatory, and it’s worth half an hour of your time.
Remember this, readers? What a long time ago it seems.
And we don’t just mean Ruth Davidson being in favour of staying in the EU.
This, frankly, is something that we should have done years before now. But it’s never too late to start.
One of the most annoying and undemocratic things about modern politics is the ease with which MPs and candidates can simply ignore the electorate. I’ve attempted to politely ask my own MP, Wera Hobhouse of the Liberal Democrats, a question on several occasions and had only dead air in response, and many readers report similar from their own representatives.
What that means, among other things, is that it can be impossible to have any idea what someone stands for on a given issue before you vote for them. And that’s plainly unacceptable in a democracy.
However, when there’s an election on, there’s something you can do about it.
A new study reported at the weekend has found disturbing levels of sectarian beliefs among pupils at Scotland’s 357 Catholic schools. But there was an interesting twist – sectarianism was higher among the pupils who WEREN’T practicing Catholics.
Whatever could be the explanation?
We’ve just taken our first week off in eight years, and no sooner are we back than the whole world’s turned on its head. Because this is Brian Wilson in today’s Scotsman.
The only thing we don’t understand is: if a Holyrood majority for independence will be valid in 2021, why isn’t it valid now?
Ashby Computers & Graphics Ltd, better known under their trading name of Ultimate Play The Game, were the most reclusive and secretive videogame developers of the 8-bit era. Almost never doing interviews and giving very little away when they did, they preferred to let their stream of smash-hit games do most of the talking for them. The anti-Bitmap Brothers, if you will.
The games themselves were just as enigmatic, never really explaining your goal or even how to play. You'd be told the control keys, given a bit of cryptically florid plot waffle and left to get on with it.
But even now, 37 years after the last new Ultimate release, remarkably little is known about how they managed to arrive full-fledged on the scene, already making games that most other releases of the time paled and quailed beside.
And as I'd given myself the week off writing about politics and there wasn't a poker game on, I decided to spend last night having a bit of a dig.
Try to ignore the “regional”, and the fact that it’s framed as the Tories vs Labour. This is a new full-sample (1060) poll from YouGov today, and wow.
(The left-hand bar in each pair is 2017, the right-hand one is 2019.)
And you thought Kezia Dugdale’s nadir of 14% would never be beaten.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
