I had no idea what to expect from the UKIP public meeting in Bath tonight. The city is genteel, wealthy and has been solidly Lib Dem for over 20 years. While there are of course some sketchier areas and it hasn’t been immune to the UK’s recent economic troubles, generally speaking it has little to complain about.
So when UKIP booked the 730 downstairs capacity of the Forum (a rather beautiful old Art Deco former cinema from the 1930s) for a public meeting, I hung onto the hope that there was at least a reasonable chance it’d be half-empty.
No luck there, then.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
analysis, comment, culture, disturbing, europe, scottish politics, uk politics
Alert readers will be familiar with a phenomenon we often like to highlight in these pages – that of the dramatic newspaper headline which rapidly turns into something completely different by the time you read the text of the story.
There’s an especially fine example in today’s Telegraph.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: headline ferret, project fear
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
Alert readers will be aware that this site spends a not-insignificant amount of time pointing out how few and how trivial are the actual political differences between the three UK parties. Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats all basically offer slightly tweaked and rebadged versions of the same centre-right policies, in an unhealthy consensus set in concrete by the UK’s undemocratic electoral system.
There does, however, remain one major issue on which there’s still clear blue water between the only two parties who might provide the next UK Prime Minister, and it’s one that’s a lot more important to the independence debate than is generally thought. Have you guessed what it is yet?
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
analysis, comment, europe, scottish politics, uk politics
If you were by any chance wondering what all the hysterical media coverage today of some innocuous comments by Alex Salmond about Vladimir Putin in GQ magazine was trying to distract attention from, it was this.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
europe, scottish politics, transcripts
The transcript below is taken from a public meeting hosted by the Scottish Office at Murrayfield in Edinburgh last Thursday (24 April), featuring Alistair Carmichael.
You can listen for yourself by clicking the above image.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
audio, comment, scottish politics, transcripts, uk politics
Anyone involved in the independence debate for any length of time will probably already have lost count of how many times they’ve heard the plaintive we-cannae-dae-it wail of “But how will you pay for all of Alex Salmond’s milk and honey promises?”
So here’s a clue.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
comment, scottish politics, stats
We absolutely love the fact that only one of the stories in the “Referendum News” section of the Herald website this morning is headlined in all capitals:
It paints a rather lovely picture of everyone at the “Better Together” HQ running around shouting “THERE IS NO PANIC! EVERYONE HERE IS TOTALLY CALM!” at the tops of their voices to anyone in the general vicinity.
But there’s something less amusing about the very short piece.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: hypocrisy
Category
comment, scottish politics
The Glasgow Subway famously only ever goes round in circles, but that’s certainly not something you can say for Labour-run Strathclyde Partnership for Transport’s excuses for banning our adverts from it last month.
Because those are flying about all over the place.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
comment, navel-gazing, scottish politics, stupidity
We don’t exactly have high expectations when it comes to the Daily Mail.
But a piece in today’s edition is despicable even for them.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: smears
Category
comment, media, scottish politics, scum
Yesterday, Ed Miliband came to Scotland to yet again trot out the Unionist mantra that an independent Scotland would result in a “race to the bottom” between it and the rUK over Corporation Tax (and to marvel that no interviewer ever pulls him up on the fact that Labour cut the tax twice the last time they were in power and promised to cut it further as soon as they could).
We thought it would be interesting to see if that might be true.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
analysis, europe, reference, scottish politics
