And that’s something we can’t say every day.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: qft
Category
scottish politics, video
That was always a pretty silly lyric. But anyway.
We had to switch the telly off after about 10 minutes of the news this morning. The piety was too much to take. So intead we’re just going to quote two things from the avalanche of comment that’s appeared this morning on the death of Nelson Mandela.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
comment, culture, world
We all know there’s something strange about Britain. Germany and China have their factories, France and Japan their nuclear power plants. America has Google and Apple and the world’s largest navy. But how is it that Britain, a country that closed its mines and shuttered almost its entire manufacturing industry, is still a major world economy?
The answer is Britain’s best-kept economic secret. It links Grangemouth, the obscene cost of housing in London, the Royal Mail sell-off, Channel Island tax havens and George Osborne’s disregard for the poor, and explains why an incomprehensible financial crisis triggered by bad American mortgages led to the closure of municipal libraries and swimming pools across the UK and a programme of permanent austerity.
And more to the point, it explains why only London, not Scotland or Wales or Yorkshire or Wearside, matters to the British political class today.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: Alistair Davidson
Category
analysis, uk politics
Last night’s edition of Scotland Tonight saw a clearly nervous, rambling and seemingly well-refreshed ex-Labour spin doctor Simon Pia called upon to defend “Better Together” chairman Alistair Darling (“as good a frontman as I can imagine to save Britain”, said the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson in that extraordinary accent of his) from a series of attacks by his own side over his stewardship of the No campaign.
Pia played the usual cards that Labour types do when called upon to defend a man who is now distrusted by a majority of Labour voters. Darling was “substance not style”, a serious man with “cross-party appeal” (if you exclude Labour, the SNP and now seemingly a lot of Tories) who had “filleted” the White Paper (without reading it or understanding the one page he did look at) and saved the nation in 2008 “when we looked into the void”.
But not everyone shares Pia’s view of Darling’s integrity and competence.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
analysis, disturbing, scottish politics, uk politics
When it comes to oil and gas, Scots are used to being treated like backwoods yokels by Westminster, deemed incapable of looking after this valuable resource and lied to about its value. Oil and gas is a priceless treasure to the UK, and Westminster is terrified of losing control of it.
That’s because not only are the billions of pounds in oil and gas tax receipts valuable in and of themselves, but they also halve the balance of payments deficit, thereby protecting the value of the pound.
But how exactly does Scotland turn oil and gas into money?
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: Scott Minto
Category
analysis, scottish politics, uk politics
About 1,000 more and LFI will be bigger than Scottish Labour’s actual membership.
Category
comment, scottish politics
Surely that must be Project Fear at the bottom of the barrel now?
The lead story in today’s Herald, folks. If “story” isn’t putting it much too strongly.
Tags: project fear
Category
media, scottish politics
We had to give the BBC a nudge before it replied to the last of our three Freedom Of Information requests, but at least this time we didn’t just get the standard fob-off.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
