This is hereditary Westminster Labour MP Anas Sarwar in yesterday’s Evening Times:
“Now, it’s been said by some that there is no passion in the case that we are better together as part of the United Kingdom.
Well, the people saying that obviously haven’t been at any of the rallies I have been at across Scotland, and where I spoke about an idea much bigger than independence; the pooling and sharing of resources across the UK for the benefit of everyone in the UK.”
Hang on – “rallies”? Were we watching the wrong channel when we missed the tens of thousands of people packing the streets for the Great Rally Of The Union? Were we passed out in a cupboard for the whole time when the Anas Sarwar Evangelical Roadshow filled football stadia in every corner of the land with crazed disciples waving Union Jacks and chanting “POOL AND SHARE! POOL AND SHARE!”?
Rallies? What on Earth is the truth-averse wee twerp talking about? We need a doctor.
Category
comment, scottish politics, wtf
Alert readers will already know how cranky we can get about badly-formatted comments, which waste a lot of our time and are disrespectful to other readers. In fairness, however, our shonky comments plugin didn’t help. So after much poking around we’ve switched to a new, sleeker system. It’ll be second nature to anyone with experience of HTML, but for everyone else here’s a simple pictorial guide.

(Click the image to enlarge.) There are numerous other HTML tags in existence, but the <i> and <b> ones should be plenty for most purposes – don’t go mad making everything purple and different fonts. The new preview pane below the actual comment box shows you exactly how your comment will appear before you hit Submit, so now if you post one with no paragraph breaks in it there isn’t a court in the land that would convict us for smashing your head in with a jagged rock.
That is all.
Category
admin
We’re quite keen to peruse the results of this poll, which was conducted a few days ago by YouGov alongside their World War 1 one, but hasn’t yet published.

We got in touch, but the company was unable to tell us when, or whether, the responses to this question (and some others about independence, along with some on Welsh education) would be made public. It doesn’t seem like the kind of question that would be particularly useful as a piece of private polling, so keep your eyes peeled.
Category
misc, uk politics
…about the shameful, despicable sectarian comments by TV celebrity and occasional politician George Galloway in an Edinburgh Evening News article today, about how he’s been refused permission by West Lothian Council to put on his anti-independence “Just Say Naw” roadshow at a municipal venue in Livingston.

But then we kept reading, because we don’t like to go off half-cocked without getting the full story, and were richly rewarded for our effort by a magnificently deadpan line from the paper’s reporter. We’ve unsubtly bolded it for you below.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
comment, idiots, scottish politics
A must-view for those of you who missed last night’s Scotland Tonight. Watch and marvel (mainly from 2m 28s) as a man falls apart in front of your eyes, reduced to a babbling, incoherent shambles by a calm, eloquent gent in a sharp tweed suit.
Our favourite bit is the desperate, plaintive “Just ask Alistair Darling!” at the end.
Category
media, scottish politics, video
(Now to questions typed by someone with a rudimentary command of written English.)

Because as we know “Better Together” will have quite a lot of trouble coming up with any coherent replies, we’ve had a bash ourselves while we wait for them to get started.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: and finally
Category
analysis, comment, scottish politics, uk politics
This is going to be tough. Alistair Carmichael’s list of the “top 20” reasons for staying in the UK, issued today, is a document so farcical it’s actually quite hard to analyse.

It’s difficult to react to it in a rational manner, because the rational response is a torrent of angry invective at having one’s intelligence so heinously and crassly insulted. And going for the satire angle isn’t easy either, because it’s quite tricky to think of anything more ridiculous or idiotic than some of the claims the Secretary of State for Portsmouth makes. Striving as ever for balance, then, this is the best we can do.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: the positive case for the union
Category
comment, reference, scottish politics, uk politics