Some of the more cynical independence supporters among our readership may today be asking themselves “What is it that Labour are trying to bury today with all this ludicrously farcical ‘Labour For Independence’ business?”
Allow us to suggest a few possibilities.
We’re just going to leave these here, okay?
Labour voters are going to be key in deciding the outcome of the independence referendum. Even if everyone who voted SNP, Green or SSP in the last Holyrood election voted Yes in 2014, it wouldn’t be quite enough to secure a 50%+1 result.
But with polls consistently showing 15-20% of Labour voters are already in favour of independence, and also that a huge majority are dissatisfied with the status quo, it can be no surprise that the Unionist parties and media are extremely nervous of any growth in the Labour Yes faction.
But while nerves are one thing, blind panic is another.
For some reason which escapes our understanding, the operator of the misleadingly-named “Scottish Labour” Twitter account chose to tweet this message this afternoon.
We know the answer, but we’re jiggered if we get the point.
We’re now in the sixth day of our attempt to arrange a public debate between the respective chairmen of the Yes and No campaigns, Dennis Canavan and Alistair Darling. Yes Scotland director Blair Jenkins accepted on behalf of Mr Canavan some days ago, but despite his “Better Together” counterpart Blair McDougall initially agreeing (on the misunderstanding that we were inviting him rather than Mr Darling), he’s yet to respond to several further enquiries.
We rang the BT offices in Glasgow just after two o’clock this afternoon, but Mr McDougall was “in meetings” (though he was posting tweets two minutes beforehand) and the person we spoke to couldn’t tell us when we might be able to get hold of him. We left a message asking him to get in touch when he had a minute. We’ll let you know when we hear anything.
It’s very rare, viewers, that we get so angry in the course of writing a post that we have to stop.
But when we ran a picture last night of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander MP, opening a foodbank with a cretinous smile on his face as if being a member of the government of a modern industrial nation in need of foodbanks was something to be happy about, a reader suggested making a gallery of similar images.
This is as many as we could bear.
The internet’s been enjoying itself since last night knocking up satirical versions of The Sun’s wraparound cover today. For no immediately apparent reason (except perhaps that it’s a slow time for news) the paper has suddenly decided to give a “State Of The Union”-type address explicitly setting out its beliefs on a variety of subjects.
We thought that it might pass a few idle moments to compare the UK and Scottish editions, and see how closely those beliefs matched up on either side of the border.
Some people in Britain can’t afford to eat and are having to go to foodbanks to survive.
So open your heart (and wallet) for this hungry little ginger fella. There’s only so far an expense account will stretch when you’re on a tightly-controlled public sector salary.
You’ve bravely waded through a 3500-word book review already this morning, so let’s give you something a little more bite-sized to digest.
This one could be a game-changer, folks. Brace yourselves.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
