A tried and trusted strategy 96
Posted on
March 04, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Does any of this sound familiar, readers?
Why we shouldn’t do walking away 107
Posted on
March 04, 2014 by
Andrew Leslie
When former chancellor Alistair Darling said the following during the currency row, he should have known better (and no doubt did):
“The nationalist threat to default on debt if they don’t get their way on currency is reckless. The impact of Alex Salmond’s default would be to say to the world that we cannot be trusted to honour our debts.”
The empirical fact is that an independent Scotland would not be defaulting, reneging on, or walking away from anything. That’s because the UK government has already taken full responsibility for all debt accrued up to the date of Scottish independence.
So we can just forget about it, right?
Agents on the scene 344
Posted on
March 04, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
So, wow. Still in its first week, the Wings 2014 fundraiser broke £100,000 last night. We suppose that means we better start fleshing out our “stretch goals” a bit.
And if you’re one of the 99% of readers who haven’t donated yet – perhaps because you’re wasting your money on trivialities like feeding your family or paying bills or something – this is where you can offer us some help that’s just as valuable instead.
Remember what they think of you 114
Posted on
March 04, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Prominent New Labour writer Dan Hodges has a piece in the Telegraph today (because where else would a New Labour commentator have a column?) about UKIP now being an openly racist party. It contains the following passage:
We’ll leave aside that the protest was nothing to do with the SNP or Scottish nationalists, that it was organised by a radical left-wing group and that one of the two men arrested in connection with the incident was in fact English himself. None of those factual inconveniences are allowed to get in the way of Hodges’ bigotry.
Damn that uncertainty 139
Posted on
March 03, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The price of the BBC 204
Posted on
March 03, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’ve been writing for quite a while now about the absurd-yet-deathless “Project Fear” scare story that an independent Scotland would lose access to BBC broadcasts (and thereby shows like Strictly Come Dancing, Match Of The Day, EastEnders, Doctor Who and, we dunno, Homes Under The Hammer or something), which was given another tired run-through last week by UK government culture secretary Maria Miller.
We’ve pointed out in some detail that it was complete nonsense, because the BBC is a commercial organisation which would actively seek to sell the rights to its output to Scotland, but what we haven’t been able to do previously was put a figure to the likely cost. Thanks to an alert reader, though, we can now fill in that gap.
The difference a day makes 96
Posted on
March 03, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Scotland on Sunday yesterday:
The Scotsman 24 hours later:
Rinse, lather and repeat for the next six months.
The Eton Rifling 177
Posted on
March 02, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Heavens above. We thought that being reduced to sending out chain letters might have been some sort of rogue effort, but it seems “Better Together” really is as desperate for cash as it’s appeared to be in recent months, with barely a week going by that we don’t get an email from Alistair Darling, chatting about some aspect of the debate before suddenly going “SO WE NEED MONEY! MONEY! SEND MONEY NOW!”
But the piece above appearing in this week’s Sunday Times (where we initially missed it because it was in the “UK News” rather than the “Scottish News” section) was backed up by another piece of extraordinary panhandlery.
The case as it is 72
Posted on
March 02, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
If you missed it live, here’s the audio recording of the debate held at the Volunteer Rooms in Irvine on Friday. (The event wasn’t video-recorded, despite Clan Destiny Films having a high-quality camera team there, because the Labour MP for Central Ayrshire, Brian Donohoe, refused to give his permission.)
Click the image for the two-hour MP3 file.
The meanings of life 81
Posted on
March 02, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This week’s edition of the Sunday Herald is a “referendum special” marking 200 days of the campaign to go (although actually it doesn’t have an awful lot more referendum coverage than a normal issue).
There are lots of things worth reading – as ever, we recommend spending a modest 69p for a digital copy via PressDisplay – but what really caught our eye were the two interviews with the heads of the Yes and No camps, Blairs Jenkins and McDougall.
Pay your money, take your choice 83
Posted on
March 02, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A tale of two cities 65
Posted on
March 01, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Yes Scotland campaigning today in Edinburgh:
