The unpayable ransom 234
Alert readers may have noticed something of a glut of articles in the press recently by right-wing commentators angrily challenging the SNP to prove its left-wing credentials if and when the new Scotland Bill ever becomes law and grants Holyrood more powers over taxation, some minor aspects of welfare and – of course – road signs.
The zenith of the phenomenon must surely be today’s eye-rubbingly bizarre Scotsman story in which the Scottish Tories urge the SNP to increase tax in order to reverse, er, Tory cuts. But there’s method behind the seeming madness.
Lying to Scotland 290
From a bizarre, rambling Torcuil Crichton column in today’s Daily Record:
It’s Torcuil Crichton, so we’d better check that, eh?
The boys in the bubble 237
The battle-cry of right-wing Labour apologists all this week has been “realism”. It’s all very well people like Jeremy Corbyn having crazy old principles about what Labour is supposed to stand for, runs the argument, but you can’t argue with public opinion and public opinion is desperate for Labour to become Tories with a slightly softer edge.
“Mental John” McTernan, for example, told the readers of the Telegraph yesterday that Labour’s disastrous, shambolic abstention on the welfare reform bill was the right thing to do because the party “had to show the public it got the message over welfare”.
But what actually IS the public’s message on welfare?
Don’t you just hate nationalism? 231
Our hearts are bleeding 101
From “Record View” in today’s Daily Record:
If only there’d been some way of ensuring Scotland was never “skewered by political decisions made on the basis of English priorities”, etc etc.
Not getting what you don’t not wish for 182
We’re sorry to keep going on about this, readers, but we’ve been going over and over it in our heads and we just can’t get it to make sense.
Below is the failed Labour amendment to the Welfare Reform And Work Bill:
As you can see, its sole intended purpose was to refuse a second reading to the Bill. Labour voted for their own amendment (an achievement, we suppose), which means they didn’t want to see the bill get a second reading.
You’re with us so far, right?
Ian Murray is a liar 110
In fact he abstained, along with roughly 80% of his Labour colleagues.
(NB The glitch in the middle of the clip is on the original broadcast.)
The apologists’ parade 95
After last night’s debacle in the House Of Commons, various Labour activists and cheerleaders have been scrambled on social and print media to firefight the appalled reaction from voters on the left to the party’s abstention on the Tory welfare bill.
And as usual, they’re talking cobblers.
The end of irony 246
The government’s brutal, monstrous welfare reform bill passed its second reading in the Commons tonight by 308 votes to 124, meaning that somewhere in the region of 80% of Labour MPs abstained on it.
Half an hour earlier the party tweeted this:
Presumably as a joke.
Our lords above us 169
We weren’t going to do anything on last night’s episode of Australian news show 60 Minutes, because we assumed it would be all over the newspapers today, but they seem to be more concerned that an SNP MP followed someone who may have said some nasty things on Twitter. So here it is.
Be warned: some of it is difficult to watch. More details here.





















