The Two Or Three Stooges 49
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
The rest of the story 142
Alert readers of The National will have noticed an article by me in it today. It reads slightly weirdly, jumping from subject to subject, because it was originally done as an interview but they then decided to cut the questions out to get more text in.
That’s all absolutely fine – they okayed it with me first – but some readers may be interested in seeing the full original piece, which is about twice as long. If you are, you can read it below. If you’re not, um, do what you like. I’m not your mum.
The Persuader 258
Nobody else is going to do this, so we’ll do it ourselves.
Vote Labour, get Tory 163
There’s a remarkable story on the BBC News website today about the latest findings of the British Election Study, last seen destroying the myth that fear of the SNP damaged Labour in England. The piece focuses on the discovery that being seen as “too left-wing” does NOT, in fact, cost Labour votes, despite the hysterical warnings of supposedly leftist pundits.
But there’s a more startling fact buried right at the end.
Better not together 254
Dear Blairite MP,
I’m writing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Labour Party members; some new, and some, like me, who have been loyal party members throughout our adult lives. I’m not writing to any one of you in particular.
The ones I’m addressing will know who they are.
It’s time to talk about us.
Movin’ on up 247
All five of the opinion pollsters who regularly poll on Scottish politics (Panelbase, YouGov, TNS, Ipsos Mori and Survation) have now published surveys in the past two weeks asking the independence question. So it seems reasonable to expect there’ll be no more polls before the anniversary of the referendum on Friday.
Given the conventional wisdom that the economy, underpinned by that pesky volatile oil, was the main reason not enough Scots could be persuaded to take the leap into self-government, readers might expect that the dramatic collapse in the oil price since last year (when we checked today it was trading at just over $47 a barrel, less than half the $97 it was at the start of September 2014) would only have cemented voters’ feeling that they made the right decision.
So why is the opposite true?
Your half and their half 85
There’s been a veritable flurry of polls commissioned to mark the impending one-year anniversary of the independence referendum. In the last 48 hours alone we’ve seen ones from Survation, YouGov and Panelbase, making a variety of interesting findings. As ever, though, the trick is in the interpretation.
Indyref finances at a glance 291
As we were poking around with this, we thought it’d be useful to have all the basic donations and spending information about the referendum in one place. It’s normally scattered around different places and hard to access easily, and it’s quite interesting.
Alan Cochrane is a liar 102
Comedy buffoon Alan Cochrane in the Telegraph:
Actual donations received: No campaign £4.3 million, Yes campaign £2.8 million.






















