Here’s Ruth Davidson at FMQs today, telling the chamber that “last week the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors said the real problem facing investment and jobs in Scotland was [Nicola Sturgeon’s] threat of a second referendum”.
Would you like to know how many actual people that was, readers?
Following our news report at the weekend that Kezia Dugdale had gone to the USA to help Hillary Clinton, a concerned reader etc etc with inevitable results etc.
Anyone who’s donated to this site’s fundraisers in the past will be familiar with the excellent work of AyeMail, the not-for-profit fulfilment company set up to help all sorts of pro-independence groups raise money by taking care of all the tedious admin and letting them get on with their campaigning.
They’re also raising money themselves at the moment, both for their own costs and to produce a series of projects to help groups strapped for cash. They’ve got almost 60% of their target in the bag already, but with only a day to go they’re running around £5000 short of being able to do everything.
They provide a hugely valuable service and resource, producing tangible and practical benefits for the Yes movement – Wings would be utterly lost without them – and if you’ve got a couple of quid spare for the cause you couldn’t find a better use for it.
Just over three and a half years ago, we ran an article about how being an opposition MP or MSP is the cushiest gig in politics. You get all the pay, benefits, holidays and status, but you don’t have to actually do very much except whinge about how rubbish the government is, which most people are happy to do for free as a hobby.
Most of the time you don’t even need to turn up at your workplace.
(Sure, there are all your constituents to deal with, but if you’re not in power all that really amounts to is forwarding their letters to the government and demanding action.)
Tomorrow, the Holyrood opposition will give us a virtuoso demonstration.
Old media and new media spoke with one voice in Scotland today:
But for once it was the dead-tree press that held the moral high ground.
We were hugely excited earlier on today to receive news of a long-hoped-for team-up between two of our very favourite people on the internet: catastrophically thick Daily Express hack Siobhan McFadyen and popular lawsuit enthusiast JK Rowling.
What we hadn’t expected was a starring role.
Saturday 11.34am:
Saturday 8.02pm:
Wow, that’s fast. We can only assume she took John McTernan with her.
Back in May we wrote this:
The prediction duly came true, as most of ours do. Sometimes we hate being right.
A member of an MSP’s staff posted an image on Twitter this morning of a flyer that had apparently just been shoved through their office letter box:
But after having a merry old chuckle at the layout, colour choice and language, we wondered what sort of person might produce such a thing. So, ably assisted as ever by a team of alert readers, we decided to see if we could find out.
We realise that there’s some stiff competition for that accolade, even if you restrict it solely to things said by Kezia Dugdale, but this needs preserving for posterity.
A couple of questions do spring immediately to mind: (1) how does every country on Earth that isn’t Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland do it, and (2) given that Scotland has now been in the Union for 309 years, how much longer is it going to take before the two things are finally eradicated?
We look forward to hearing the answers from Labour any day now.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
