The Daily Record today outlines what it’s pushing hard as a triumphant intervention from Gordon Brown which justifies a No vote in the referendum. (It also claims the credit, comically suggesting its Monday front page drove Brown’s announcement.)
It lists “12 new powers” in Brown’s plan. Let’s take a look.
We just watched, jaws agape, as the BBC news channel gave Scottish Labour an uninterrupted 50-minute party political broadcast for no immediately obvious reason. It mainly took place at Loanhead Miners’ Welfare, and featured speeches from a warm-up man, then Johann Lamont, and finally Gordon Brown.
The ostensible event justifying this extraordinary coverage lasted just 2m 36s.
And having sat through the whole circus, we still have no idea what it was for.
First Owen Jones’ stinging rebuff to the odious fauxcialist John McTernan, now this:
As another famous Unionist might say: Oooft!
The alert readers of this site have encountered currency trader Alpesh Patel of equity company Praefinium Partners before. We were more than a little bit scathing about a previous appearance of his on the BBC News channel back in February, on which it seems fair to say that he nailed his Unionist colours very firmly indeed to the mast.
So this clip from the same channel this morning was interesting.
We don’t think his words need any comment from us, save perhaps that we commend Mr Patel for having learned from his previous errors when it comes to assessing the attitude of businesses to the prospect of Scottish independence. Anyone can make a mistake. The key is to not keep repeating it when the evidence proves you wrong.
We apologise for any images conjured by that headline.
Above is our Chris Cairns cartoon from June 2013. And here’s today’s news.
You have to laugh.
Anyone would think WE were the ones who’d had to remove, apologise for and pay compensation for defamatory articles about THEM.
Owen Jones in the Guardian, 7 September 2014:
Many Scots look at the Britain built by this political elite, they don’t like it and they want out.”
Seems to pretty much cover it.
Here’s what George Osborne actually said on today’s Andrew Marr Show:
“You will see in the next few days a plan of action to give more powers to Scotland. More tax powers, more spending powers, more plans for powers over the welfare state.
That will be put into effect – the timetable for delivering that will be put into effect – the moment there is a no vote in the referendum. The clock will be ticking for delivering those powers – and then Scotland will have the best of both worlds.”
(From 32m 40s.) It’s not actually very hard to follow.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
