All change in Moray 655
The mess we’ve made 362
Last night the UK government lost a vote which, while largely symbolic, was designed to hamper its ability to generate its finances in the event of a no-deal Brexit (and therefore to try to incentivise it to avoid a no-deal).
A handful of Tory MPs voted for the motion, combining with the opposition to defeat the government by 308 to 296. No Scottish Tory MPs rebelled, however – despite having pledged when they were elected that they would vote to defend Scotland’s interests, something pretty much everyone agrees a no-deal Brexit would be a catastrophe for.
A reader contacted one of them, Douglas Ross, and forwarded their exchange to us, because it raises enormous questions about the entire UK political system.
Brass neck gleaming 261
Wow. That’s Monica Lennon sat directly behind him, by the way.
That must have taken some amount of polishing.
Facing the wrong way 537
Scottish Labour mounted another of their infamous stunt “protests” today, as always dutifully assisted and advertised by the Scottish media.
STV reported it as an event organised by a small rail union – not the RMT or ASLEF, but the little-known Transport Salaried Staff Association – which would feature “other campaigners”, but in fact it was a Scottish Labour shindig from top to bottom, with no union branding visible anywhere and Scottish Labour on all the placards.
Well, we say “all”.
Taking back control 155
Gloom-tinted glasses 414
STV News gets the new year off to a cheery start today:
The headline, as alert readers will be accustomed to by now, is a flat-out lie. As far as the article reveals – and there’s nothing on the company’s website offering any more detail, nor in the longer quotes we found elsewhere – chartered accountants French Duncan LLP have in fact made no predictions whatsoever as to the number of Scottish insolvencies in 2019, merely recorded the number that took place in 2018.
STV’s claim that the 2018 figure of 12,000 “could be even higher by the end of 2019” appears, then, to have been entirely invented. But the depressing tone – which the Daily Express turns into a full-blown crisis, roping in Murdo Fraser for some SNP BAD rentaguff along the way – is even more inexplicable than simple fabrication.
The one we’ve waited for 481
The last two years, particularly 2018, have been a pretty miserable time in the annals of Scottish independence. Not because support has fallen – it hasn’t budged an inch, however much Unionists might try to desperately convince themselves otherwise – but because there hasn’t, in essence, been anything we could usefully do.
Faced with a brick wall of “now is not the time” intransigence from a UK government elected by England and determined to frustrate the democratic will of the Scottish Parliament, we could talk all we wanted but had no means to determine our own fate, locked in the boot of a car speeding towards a cliff edge with a lunatic at the wheel.
That age – and it’s felt like an age – is very nearly at an end.
It’s time to get ready.
The broken telescope 539
An alert reader spotted this today:
Because with Scottish Labour, lying is for life, not just Christmas.
Merry Christmas, England 518
There’s a digital edition of the Times out today, but the normal Scotland section doesn’t make the cut. (There’s normally an Ireland section too – although it doesn’t get billed on the Contents list – which is also missing today, and there’s never a Wales section for some reason.)
Maybe if we all keep really quiet they’ll completely forget we’re here and not Brexit us either. Have a good one, readers.


























