Kezia Dugdale spoke for almost exactly 45 minutes to the Scottish Labour conference in Perth today. But we know you’re busy people who don’t want to sit through all of that, and that you trust us to endure it on your behalf so that we can sift through it and present you with only the important bits.
We’re big fans of socialism ourselves, so when a number of delegates at the Scottish Labour conference today, including UK leader Jeremy Corbyn, revived an old Keir Hardie line we were quite excited.
Asking the question is the easy bit: “If the all-new, super-autonomous Scottish Labour decides to oppose the renewal of Trident, and UK Labour continues to support it, which way do Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster vote on it?”
The answer, unsurprisingly, was a lot more difficult to ascertain.
There’s an extraordinary article in the Daily Record today. Here’s a bit of it:
Alert readers might feel that a few lines have gone missing somewhere between paragraphs four and five. And the fact that they have has nothing to do with dead football clubs, and everything to do with the dying Scottish media.
As we observed last night, the BBC’s Andrew Neil has reacted with rather poor grace to his chiding at the hands of respected statisticians Jim and Margaret Cuthbert. Neil embarked on a Twitter blocking spree and tried to rewrite history, claiming that he’d “simply offered” the blunt claim that there had been no cuts to the Scottish budget in the last five years “as one measure” of the money available to Holyrood.
The problem for Neil is that we recorded video of his Sunday interview with the SNP’s Angus Robertson, and anyone can see for themselves that Neil made an unequivocal assertion with no suggestion whatsoever that there were any alternative measures.
“In real terms there’s been – no – cut”, said Neil, spitting out the last three words with dramatic pauses between them for emphasis, in a statement whose stark absence of ambiguity unfortunately left him no wiggle room when the Cuthberts politely but firmly pointed out that it was “ridiculous” to argue that there hadn’t been any cuts, and that the budget “clearly has gone down”.
But Neil’s embarrassment is illustrative of a much wider delusion.
We’ve had no answer from the BBC’s Andrew Neil to the question we asked him at the weekend. There has, however, been an interesting development in the debate over whether there have been severe real-terms cuts to the Scottish Government’s budget since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.
The extremely highly-respected economic analysts Jim and Margaret Cuthbert (the former of whom was Chief Statistician for the Scotland Office) have today written an article for Bella Caledonia seeking to establish the truth of the argument between Mr Neil and ourselves. Their conclusions are expert, detailed and very clear.
We were excited to find out what they were, because we’re sure this time they’ve definitely happened, not like all the times when they said they had but were joking.
Lorncal on The Idiot Rodeo: “Listened to another Martin Geissler podcast. Couldn’t believe it. The female presenter said that the judge might yet prove to…” Dec 16, 00:32
Hatey McHateface on The Idiot Rodeo: “Have you seen photos of our MSPs? If the bints were forced to undress in front of the blokes, the…” Dec 15, 23:25
Marie on The Idiot Rodeo: “They are not required to undress in changing rooms at Holyrood and put on a uniform in order to do…” Dec 15, 23:08
Aidan on Let’s make this simple: “@Dan – I’m sorry that all this discussion about Scottish politics bothers you on this Scottish politics blog.” Dec 15, 22:42
bobo bunny on The Idiot Rodeo: “And who are you suggesting we vote for?” Dec 15, 21:10
bobo bunny on The Idiot Rodeo: “As the saying goes – never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake. The SNP government have lurched…” Dec 15, 21:08
Captain Caveman on Let’s make this simple: ““Honesty, drive, determination, competence, and above all, a solid grounding in reality” That’s one hell of a checklist for most…” Dec 15, 19:59
Charles (not the R3 one) on The Idiot Rodeo: “Tommo was, in my opinion, exactly correct when he wrote : “These people are obsessives – toilets seem to figure…” Dec 15, 19:38
Hatey McHateface on Let’s make this simple: “@Aidan One heck of a lot of “ordinary”, “normal” Scots would welcome the chance to vote for a party of…” Dec 15, 19:00
Hatey McHateface on The Idiot Rodeo: ““got a genuine logical argument against Scottish independence I can rip tae shreds?” Sure. There’s yersel. A genuine contender for…” Dec 15, 18:45
Hatey McHateface on The Idiot Rodeo: “@Stuart, leave Oor Northy alane. If he wisnae oan here, posting his repetitive mince/shite combos, he’d be oot oan the…” Dec 15, 18:25
Northcode on The Idiot Rodeo: “I’m thinking “rip to pieces” would have been a better expression to round off my last comment… “tear to shreds”…” Dec 15, 18:03
James on The Idiot Rodeo: “As expected. Another 90 minute patriot.” Dec 15, 17:45
Northcode on The Idiot Rodeo: “Ach! I I meant to post my last comment here. Oh, well… I’ll just have to post it again -…” Dec 15, 17:42
agentx on The Idiot Rodeo: “Northcode is really having a bad day – he has replied to the wrong post now.” Dec 15, 17:30
Northcode on The Idiot Rodeo: ““Will it come on 10 stone tablets?” Knaw, it’s aw digital – it disnae weigh onythin’ at aw… idiot (dae…” Dec 15, 17:20
Mark Beggan on The Idiot Rodeo: “That’s ok. We never read the first one either.” Dec 15, 16:47
Tommo on The Idiot Rodeo: “Is there not an odd similarity between the above ‘ooot for indy’ nonsense so well eviscerated and the ‘judgement’ in…” Dec 15, 16:39
Dan on Let’s make this simple: “Ooh, there’s excellent potential here. After the summer of dung beetle battles, we could now piss away even more time…” Dec 15, 16:23
Stuart on The Idiot Rodeo: “PAPER ONE IN THE 10 PART BAIRD SERIES! 10 parts, I cannae wait! Will it come on 10 stone tablets?…” Dec 15, 15:53
diabloandco on The Idiot Rodeo: “OT RSPCA heavily advertising their appeal , please remember that we have the SSPCA and they need anything we can…” Dec 15, 15:51
sog on The Idiot Rodeo: “The NHS Fife legal team may have dug deeply. One off-colour joke was all they presented.” Dec 15, 14:17
sog on The Idiot Rodeo: “It saddens me that the Greens are following the same downward path.” Dec 15, 13:16
sog on The Idiot Rodeo: “I worked in Engineering. Post-9/11 I read a report, I think by the NY City, on the sequence of events,…” Dec 15, 13:14
Northcode on The Idiot Rodeo: “Oops! Just realised I’ve posted this that last comment already… apologies.” Dec 15, 12:58
Northcode on The Idiot Rodeo: “Alf Baird posted an excellent (I think so, anyway… and that’s all that really matters) comment yesterday. I feel it’s…” Dec 15, 12:35
Northcode on The Idiot Rodeo: “Here’s a spare and random thought I had about some stuff… NORTHCODE’S SPARE AND RANDOM THOUGHT BEGINS… There is no…” Dec 15, 12:12
SilentMajority on The Idiot Rodeo: “Does our ‘government’ awaken each morning, and go through a rendition of “Eeny-meeny-miny-moe!” to decide which opinion to support today…’are…” Dec 15, 11:35
Aidan on Let’s make this simple: “What is the “cunning plan” that you refer to here? As far as I can see, and perhaps there’s something…” Dec 15, 11:24
Alf Baird on How Far To Go, How Far: “Sovereign Scots voted in successive majorities of SNP ‘nationalists’ to withdraw Scotland from the UK charade and to prevent an…” Dec 15, 11:12
