An alert reader got in touch with us this evening to tell us that they’d been clearing out an old hard drive and found an interesting web page they’d saved from several years ago. They asked if we’d like to see it.
“Sure”, we said. “Let’s have a look.”
It turned out that they’d had an exchange several years ago with Kezia Dugdale on her old (now deleted) blog, where she tended to be a bit more candid than she is now, and were so startled by an answer she’d given them that they’d felt the need to keep it.
We don’t often wholeheartedly agree with anything “Rape Clause Ruth” Davidson says at First Minister’s Questions, but we can’t fault this observation from earlier today.
One of the most famous tales of the celebrated British hangman Albert Pierrepoint is that concerning James Inglis, a murderer who in 1951 sprinted the short distance from the condemned cell to the noose, enabling the entire execution to be concluded just seven seconds after Pierrepoint had first laid hands on him.
It’s the holidays, so the papers are desperate to fill space and the political parties are all trying to help out by sending them helpful press releases which can be slotted directly onto pages, titled “PARTY X CONTINUES TO SUPPORT POLICY Z WHICH IT HAS ALWAYS SUPPORTED. ALSO, THE OTHER PARTIES ARE BAD”.
Scottish Labour’s contribution is a piece in most papers today reiterating their demand for the Scottish Government to hike the top rate of income tax – a policy on which Labour stood at the last Westminster and Holyrood elections and which was quite stupendously comprehensively rejected by voters, but which Labour inexplicably feel the SNP should implement anyway.
And that’s all very well and good, because Kezia Dugdale gets paid the best part of £80,000 a year by taxpayers and she’s got to say something all day to justify it. The trouble, as we’ve noted at great length on this site, is that so many of the things she says aren’t actually true.
We’ve never been quite sure why that’s supposed to be a great selling point for how fabulous the UK is – “Don’t leave us or we’ll starve you to death” – but in any event it was dealt something of a blow yesterday by McDougall’s own party.
The John Beattie Show on BBC Radio Scotland today hosted a 20-minute-long debate between Professor Richard Murphy and an amateur Unionist blogger who for the last several years has used the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures to prove that an independent Scotland would be economically unviable.
Below is a very short extract from it. (The full debate is here.)
We’re glad that’s finally settled. Though we have to admit, given that all parties to the discussion now absolutely concur on those facts, we’re a bit confused about what the amateur blogger’s been doing for the last five years.
Most of the Scottish media today reports the latest Lord Ashcroft poll, which found Nicola Sturgeon to be by a distance the most popular political leader in Scotland.
All three opened with almost identical paragraphs observing that the First Minister was the only UK politician to record a net positive approval rating in Scotland, putting her a thumping 32 points ahead of her nearest domestic rival.
The Scottish Daily Mail, though, had a slightly different take.
Conservative list MSP Murdo Fraser is Scottish politics’ undisputed king of rejects. He’s had a 16-year career in the Scottish Parliament without once winning any sort of election, trousering close to a million pounds of taxpayers’ money in the process, and there’s pretty much nothing anyone can do to get him out of it.
First of all he was firmly rejected by the electorate of East Lothian in 1997, picking up under 20% of the vote. Then when the Scottish Parliament came into being in 1999 he tried his luck at winning its North Tayside seat and was rejected again. He had a go at the Westminster version of the seat in 2001, and was rejected there too.
He hadn’t managed to come in the top three of the Tory regional list either, but when one of the list MSPs who HAD been elected resigned later that year after a bout of pneumonia, Fraser got to walk into his vacant seat unopposed, elected by no-one.
He tried to win North Tayside again in 2003 and 2007, and was rejected both times. (In the four attempts he made at the seat, his vote share decreased every time. The more people saw of him serving as an MSP, the less they liked him.)
By 2011 North Tayside had been abolished and replaced by Perthshire North, which Fraser contested in that year and in 2016, but was rejected twice more. In between he stood for leader of the Scottish Conservatives, but was rejected by Tory members.
After eight humiliating failures out of eight, though, today Murdo finally won one.
BLMac on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “No doubt the result of any enquiry (it may just be another carrot for the remaining gullible SNP members) will…” Sep 30, 23:16
charlie on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Time to start kicking the can down the road, slowly and judicially with only the public paying.” Sep 30, 22:38
Hatey McHateface on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “@ am firinn says:30 September, 2026 at 8:58 pm “Exactly what legislature do you think passed the Scotland Act 1998?”…” Sep 30, 21:32
am firinn on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Exactly what legislature do you think passed the Scotland Act 1998?” Sep 30, 20:58
am firinn on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Remind me what institutions “Scotland” had to raise against these sections in 1998?” Sep 30, 20:57
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Apologies to Mark Beggan. I was 2 minutes later than you.” Sep 30, 20:05
agentx on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Adopting Alternative International Frameworks The review is explicitly tasked with examining alternative Law Officer models used in other jurisdictions. The…” Sep 30, 19:57
Hatey McHateface on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “And he’s back. And he’s put the cracked record on again. Readers new to this saga might not know that…” Sep 30, 19:37
Ross on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Playing devil’s advocate… Who will the Lord Advocate be accountable to if not the Govt? The Parliament?” Sep 30, 19:34
Hatey McHateface on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “When required to register for the daily attendance allowance. Just like in the HoL.” Sep 30, 19:07
Hatey McHateface on Whatever Can Have Happened?: ““This really is a “made in England” problem” Of course it is. How many times must we be told? Scotland…” Sep 30, 19:05
Alf Baird on Whatever Can Have Happened?: ““which is what puts the Lord Advocate above the law” Indeed, which also tells us that it is not the…” Sep 30, 19:04
agentx on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “No major institutional or governmental objection was raised by Scotland against section 44(1)(c) of the Scotland Act 1998, which makes…” Sep 30, 18:36
am firinn on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “It’s all very well the Scottish Government consulting on this. However, s44(1)(c) of the Scotland Act 1998, which establishes that…” Sep 30, 18:01
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “« They will attend meetings of the Scottish Government cabinet only when required. »” Sep 30, 17:39
Mark Beggan on Whatever Can Have Happened?: ““…only when required..” Required for what? Not that we don’t trust a word they say.” Sep 30, 17:37
Spartan 117 on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Hmm. To quote Mr. Spock, “Fascinating”. Entirely disconnected to certain recent going on, I’m sure.” Sep 30, 17:18
robertkknight on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Must be an election in a couple of days and our rancid SNP Government needs to appear, I stress appear,…” Sep 30, 16:18
Hatey McHateface on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “As a matter of fact, Andy, Memmi predicted exactly this in one of his publications. But I’m not telling you…” Sep 30, 15:45
Hatey McHateface on Whatever Can Have Happened?: ““the former judge leading the review is himself a former Lord Advocate” I see. Everybody else must have been already…” Sep 30, 15:37
Sean Duffy on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “There will be no meaningful change. The politicians have the police and the judiciary firmly within their grasp. They won’t…” Sep 30, 15:34
Willie on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Interesting nugget Colin Dawson about arrangemnts not so long ago being considered as ” appropriate “. Well according to Big…” Sep 30, 15:28
Stuart MacKay on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Sadly no. You forgot a pithy quote from a prominent intellectual who was working with the CIA.” Sep 30, 15:16
Colin Dawson on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “In March 2026, just two months ahead of the last Holyrood election, the Scottish Government published an initial internal report…” Sep 30, 14:30
Willie on Whatever Can Have Happened?: “Cannot for the life of me guess why this has arisen Rev. Maybe Big John of the Independent minds she’s…” Sep 30, 14:15
Hatey McHateface on The Turning Point: “@Aidan You can see why it’s so important to sell the “colony” lie. Real former colonies don’t have to shoulder…” Sep 30, 13:52
Hatey Mchateface on The Turning Point: “Farage comes out swinging: “The state pension is not a handout, nor an act of government charity. It is a…” Sep 30, 13:34
Aidan on The Turning Point: “Yes and you could always take the view that since Scotland would be a new state, it cannot have any…” Sep 30, 13:26
