One broken promise too many 76
Posted on
April 26, 2014 by
Chris Cairns
(See also here.)
The weekenders 170
Posted on
April 25, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
If you’re a politician in Scotland and you want to do something with the smallest possible amount of scrutiny, Friday is the day you choose. Neither of the major nightly current-affairs shows have Friday editions (we’re actually not entirely sure why that is), so unless you make a REAL mess of something you can be sure the news agenda will have moved on by the time Monday rolls around.
We suspect that the CBI’s mind-boggling decision to abandon its position of being part of the official No campaign falls firmly into that category and will be pretty thoroughly chewed over in the next couple of days (despite them doing their very best to bury it by announcing it at six o’clock on a Friday evening), so we’re going to stick to our original plan and talk about Ed Miliband instead.
A catastrophe for Africa 368
Posted on
April 25, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This clip comes from yesterday’s “Good Morning Scotland”, around 2h 35m in.
It features Professor Paul Collier, who is apparently the Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and therefore an obvious choice for the BBC as a go-to guy on the subject of Scottish politics.
We think you’ll find it a stimulating and thought-provoking opinion.
A slight change of position 59
Posted on
April 25, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We read yesterday how Labour and the Tories have both, in rather different ways, been expressing their concern about the demographic timebomb that will affect Scotland unless it can attract a major increase in immigration.
And just a few months earlier:
“Economists believe the population needs to grow by 24,000 people a year just to keep pace with European economies. Conservative finance spokesman Gavin Brown said: ‘A country like ours needs people, particularly young people, to come in to work and increase the tax base. That is absolutely essential for the economy.”
So we’d imagine that’s always been the Labour and Tory policy, right?
The bulldog whistle 328
Posted on
April 24, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Earlier this week we mentioned a nasty bit of politics from Scottish Labour MP Gregg McClymont warning that Scotland would need “a million immigrants” to be able to fund old-age pensions in the future. We were too busy picking holes in Gordon Brown to look into the story in depth, but when it handily appeared again in today’s Daily Record (this time attributed to Yvette Cooper) we checked it a bit more closely.
The Record went with the same dramatic figure for its headline, but it’s not until several paragraphs down either article that you get to the rather less attention-grabbing reality.
Bring me sunshine 112
Posted on
April 24, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Remember how the No campaign was definitely going to be much more positive from now on, pushing a feelgood “sunshine strategy” to persuade Scots that the UK was the best of both worlds?
Let’s see how that’s going, shall we?
The independence debate at a glance 65
Posted on
April 24, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Three years summed up in two tweets:
(We’re kidding, of course. Normally the media isn’t nearly that balanced.)
Actually lost for words 166
Posted on
April 24, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Tomorrow: “‘Eat that pie and you’ll get fat’, says Pickles”.
One step closer 179
Posted on
April 23, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Earlier this week we did a little poking and prodding of the Scotsman’s last ICM poll, and now the full data tables are in for the latest one, so to while away an hour before tea we figured we may as well do a bit of comparing and see how things had changed.
Wait! Come back! There’ll be Miley Cyrus at the end!
Untied with Labour 106
Posted on
April 23, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’ve just endured Gordon Brown’s 45-minute “old man shouting out a series of random unconnected facts from Wikipedia” speech at Glasgow University. (You should be able to find it later on the iPlayer under the programme title “Briefings”, if you really want to.) It doesn’t bear a lot of analysis, being just the same old cobblers you’ve heard a thousand times before, but delivered in a more rambling manner.
There was one vaguely interesting thing about the event, though.
A nice easy one 117
Posted on
April 23, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Here’s the Scottish Labour finance spokesman Iain Gray on last night’s Newsnight Scotland, discussing Gordon Brown’s speech in Glasgow on pensions because Mr Brown himself refused to answer any questions about it.
As ever with Mr Gray, he packs a lot of entertainment into a short space of time.
The empty helicopter 164
Posted on
April 22, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re still trying to make sense of some confusing arithmetic in Gordon Brown’s latest doomspeech about pensions, which was delivered this evening at Glasgow University and which we examined in some detail here.
One part in particular had us scratching our heads in bafflement, so we’ve pulled it out for some closer scrutiny by itself. Tell us if we get anything wrong.
