Kezia Dugdale in yesterday’s Scotsman:
“There’s three sort of tests being set for me, and that I’m setting myself.
So how are those looking 24 hours on?
Kezia Dugdale talking about her dad in today’s Scotsman:
Just a couple of things.
Today’s Herald reveals that the new Labour leader of Glasgow City Council, Frank McAveety (who was last seen in the headlines leering at a 15-year-old girl visiting the Scottish Parliament), has hired Bob Wylie as a special adviser.
Wylie was communications director of the scandal-riddled Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), which readers may recall from last year’s banning of an advertising campaign for this site on the city’s Underground after receiving one complaint about it.
But he’s somewhat more famous for his part in an expenses junket which saw several of the quango’s senior management bill taxpayers for a 2008 “fact-finding” mission to Manchester whose timing just happened to coincide with the UEFA Cup final between Rangers and Zenit St Petersburg being played in the same city.
Wylie’s appointment follows the controversy which arose when Labour gave convicted drunken arsonist Mike Watson a job as education spokesman in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. And the two hirings threw some light on a thought we’d been thinking since reading a Kevin McKenna column in last weekend’s Observer.
Kezia Dugdale made a spectacle of herself again at First Minister’s Questions earlier today. Using time intended for holding the Scottish Government to account over its devolved responsibilities, Dugdale once more decided instead to ignore her duty to the people of Scotland and attack the FM over a matter which is entirely outwith the Scottish Government’s control, namely the past actions of a Westminster MP.
Pausing only to demand that Holyrood interfere in the running of the independent Law Society, Dugdale then abandoned her casual endangerment of a live police inquiry by focusing instead on the morality of the aforementioned MP’s business practices:
But Ms Dugdale’s own ethics left a few things to be desired.
An extract from First Minister’s Questions earlier today:
That was Kezia Dugdale’s opening question. Despite the Presiding Officer making it absolutely clear that the question was improper and outwith Holyrood’s remit, the Scottish Labour leader went on to use her entire allotted time on the issue. She was then followed by Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson doing the same.
The people of Scotland are being done a grave disservice.
Readers will probably recall that we’ve been trying to get to the bottom of Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale’s recent claim on national TV that “50% of the poorest kids leave our schools unable to read“.
It appeared on any possible interpretation to be complete nonsense, but Ms Dugdale – who’s pledged to make education the issue at the heart of her leadership – has been somewhat reluctant to clarify the statement.
Several queries from her Lothian constituents have gone unanswered, but one Wings viewer did manage to get a single tweet of response.
So let’s take a look at that link.
Alert readers may recall that a few days ago we queried a dubious-sounding statistic from Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who claimed that “50% of the poorest kids leave our schools unable to read“.
We didn’t think that could be right, and dug up some figures suggesting that it was nonsense, but of course “the poorest kids” is a highly-flexible metric. Strictly speaking you could just mean the two poorest children in the country, and if one of those two can’t read there’s your 50%.
Luckily, we’ve now had some meat put on the bones of that claim.
Maybe check anything Kezia Dugdale tells you before you go on telly with it.
Let’s just quickly run through those facts, shall we?
Given that he’s the last Labour MP left in Scotland, it’s perhaps just as well that Ian Murray is a quite interesting figure, because there’s going to be a lot of attention on him in the next five years.
Unlike the over-promoted, under-skilled, Buggins’-turn knife-and-fork-operators who’ve disgraced what were previously weigh-the-vote Labour constituencies in Scotland for decades, the member for Edinburgh South has some genuinely admirable qualities. As we noted before the election, he’s earned a reputation as a hard-working local MP: holding surgeries, replying diligently to letters and speaking up in the Commons.
He’s got a sense of humour about his lonely role, he’s the only Unionist politician ever to talk to Wings on the record, and on account of running a large tent at the Bath Festival most years he’s well known to several of our good friends in the city, who all speak highly of his personal character and work ethic.
So in all seriousness, we’re not without respect for the man. Which makes it all the more painful every time he opens his mouth.
Kezia Dugdale on the BBC’s “Good Evening Wales” yesterday.
“Wales and Scotland are so much smaller in size than the rest of the… the rest of England.”
The impressive bit is that that’s what she said AFTER she paused for thought.
Kezia Dugdale in the Scottish Parliament yesterday:
The daughter of two teachers, there.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
