We had a wee fond chuckle to ourselves this morning when we woke up at some ridiculously ungodly hour and saw the front page of the Scotsman.
Not, you understand, at the thought of millions of Scottish people getting cancer, and certainly not at the Duke of Edinburgh being admitted to hospital, but rather at the staunchly-Unionist paper inexplicably missing a chance to add the words “after independence” or “under SNP” to the headline, as would be its more common practice.
MARGARET CURRAN: Well, what we are saying, and Ed will make his own speech tomorrow, and I don’t have foresight of that… What we are saying is when you get into government, and when we come in in 2015, we won’t be able to do all that we wanted to do… Will child benefit for the wealthiest people be our top priority? I’m not sure about that.
ED MILIBAND, 6-6-2013: When it comes to the decisions of the next Labour government it won’t be our biggest priority to overturn the decisions this government has made on taking child benefit away from families earning over £50,000 a year.
We must admit, for someone who hasn’t seen the speech it’s a heck of a guess. Does anyone want to ask Ms Curran if she’s got a score forecast for Croatia vs Scotland?
It seems worth updating this piece from last September, for the 40,000 of you who weren’t around then. Today, Labour leader Ed Miliband gave a speech on his party’s welfare plans should it win the 2015 UK general election. It contained the following line:
One of the odder quirks about the BBC iPlayer is that it’ll let you rewind live TV broadcasts for up to two hours, but not radio, despite radio using vastly less bandwidth. So at the moment we can’t bring you a verified quote that Liam Byrne really just told Radio 4’s Today programme that the idea of rent controls as a solution to the UK’s housing benefit bill was “going a bit too far”.
But there’s another new Labour welfare policy that’s missing a fairly vital chunk of information this morning, which is even more worrying than the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions having less intelligence, insight, principle and moral courage than a starving weasel.
Heaven’s sent us an angel, folks. Alert reader Jack Deeth is stranded far from home shores (really very far indeed) and stuck for something to do in the long winter nights, he very generously offered us his transcribing services.
We leapt on the offer with undignified haste, and you can read the first results below, in the shape of today’s interview between Margaret Curran and Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics, in which the shadow Scottish Secretary clearly and unambiguously laid out a future Labour government’s spending and welfare plans.
Please don’t make us transcribe this nine-minute trainwreck of an interview with Margaret Curran on the subject of Labour’s welfare and spending plans, from this afternoon’s edition of BBC2’s Daily Politics. We don’t know if we could take it.
Click the image to listen, if you have a high pain threshold.
Along with more direct, overt scaremongering, it’s probably fair to say that the core theme of the “Better Together” anti-independence campaign to date has been “uncertainty”. Day after day sees the media and public assailed with neurotic demands for definitive answers about every conceivable aspect of an independent Scotland that in most cases couldn’t be answered by any nation on Earth, including the UK.
The No camp disastrously overplayed its hand with the “500 questions” fiasco, which saw it subjected to literally worldwide mockery, but it suffered an arguably even more wounding blow today with the release of some figures which blew gaping holes into pretty much everything it’s spent the last 18 months saying.
From the excellent Part 1 of STV’s new documentary “Road To Referendum” (based on the book by Iain Macwhirter, out this week), Labour PM Harold Wilson and Scottish Secretary Willie Ross punt a rather familiar line four decades before Ed Miliband.
We’re sure there’s nothing at all sinister in the fact that the show was unavailable to most viewers due to an unprecedented cross-media technical failure, which also wiped out the STV news at 6pm and this evening’s Scotland Tonight, incidentally.
This morning’s Daily Record carries a story about Ed Balls’ policy speech on welfare yesterday. Commendably, the Labour-supporting paper isn’t shy of pointing out the implications of Balls’ comments:
“Scots could get welfare benefits at lower rates than people in wealthy parts of England under plans being worked on by Labour. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls yesterday raised the idea of a regional cap on welfare, opening the door to variations in a range of social security benefits.
Balls said the welfare cap of £25,000 a year per household should be higher in London but could be lower in parts of the UK where housing is cheaper.”
We’d have been even more impressed, though, if Wings Over Scotland hadn’t revealed the reality of what Labour’s future plans meant for Scotland almost three weeks ago.
Particularly alert readers may recall a shock-horror story from the Scottish media earlier this year relating to a sharp rise in the number of people waiting over four hours for treatment in hospital A&E departments, which came complete with some dramatic (and highly misleading) graphs.
Labour’s ironic Scottish health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie poured opprobrium on the Scottish Government both for the figures and for changing the treatment-within-four-hours target from 98% to 95%, with the Tories enthusiastically joining in as usual.
So we were naturally quite curious to see what the corresponding figures for the English NHS would be, and they were finally released today.
Young Lochinvar on A matter of class: “What has happened to this site? What has happened to the BTL/ Below the Bridge comments more like? Just sample…” Dec 23, 03:35
twathater on A matter of class: ““If only Wings BTL provided a forum where adults could maturely discuss and debate stuff like this. What fascinating dialogues…” Dec 23, 02:04
twathater on A matter of class: “You will notice Alf that as soon as the Franchise Fanny rolls up with his usual round of progressive poncy…” Dec 23, 01:55
DaveL on A matter of class: “Concerning your reply to my above request all you came up with was a sort of pantomime ‘they’re behind you’…” Dec 22, 23:15
Dan on A matter of class: “@Lorna What post of mine are you actually responding to with that wordy spiel? A Ctrl F search of page…” Dec 22, 23:05
Lorncal on A matter of class: “Dan: the problem is that this stuff is not going away any time soon. It has infiltrated every aspect of…” Dec 22, 22:10
Dan on A matter of class: “John Bot sounds a bit weary and lacking in accuracy as it churns out more drivel. A quick refresher, perhaps……” Dec 22, 21:16
agentx on A matter of class: “Alf Baird says: 21 December, 2025 at 2:05 pm Hatey, I assume you have good reason for suggesting that ethnic…” Dec 22, 20:27
Hatey McHateface on A matter of class: “You’ll eat and enjoy the traditional denner (not dinner) of True Scots everywhere: mince.” Dec 22, 20:20
Hatey McHateface on A matter of class: “Sure, Dan, you’ve stated a lot of things, in between the insults, the hair-trigger rants and the potty-mouthed childishness. And…” Dec 22, 20:16
Scot Finlayson on A matter of class: “North Briton`s Judges,everyone a public school twonk, Craig Murray was jailed by Judge for eight months for contempt of court…” Dec 22, 19:52
Dan on A matter of class: “Jesus fuck, if I’d wanted to hear from an arsehole, I’d have farted. But what a sad little bot twat…” Dec 22, 19:41
Hatey McHateface on A matter of class: ““decade’s worth of posts on here on a myriad subjects” Sure, Dan. I don’t doubt that. Just as I don’t…” Dec 22, 19:21
Dan on A matter of class: “Aidan says at 2:09 pm “The bigger picture Dan is that the only thing you seem to be in favour…” Dec 22, 18:32
Hatey McHateface on A matter of class: “Oh dear, Northy. If there are any psychologists reading here they’ll be in no doubt about what ails you. Get…” Dec 22, 17:05
Hatey McHateface on A matter of class: “Hey, Northy, you’ve succeeded in conveying a real sense of hysteria through your prose. If it’s genuine, and not just…” Dec 22, 16:54
Hatey McHateface on A matter of class: “Good one, Sam. “Sovereigntists”. Like it. Throwing a spelling error though. “Sovereign tits” doesn’t, so perhaps that’s what the author…” Dec 22, 16:51
Hatey McHateface on A matter of class: ““Surely any self respecting native Scot would communicate solely in their own language, not that of their oppressor?” This. 100…” Dec 22, 16:45
Insider on A matter of class: “For Christ’s sake ! Will ye just shut up woman and pit ma dinner on !” Dec 22, 16:44
Hatey McHateface on A matter of class: ““Bawbag”, eh, Dan? Let me guess – you’ve packed in the calls for productive dialogue on here as part of…” Dec 22, 16:40
James on A matter of class: ““…I actually worked in industry in the early 80s…” LOL. Aye,right.” Dec 22, 16:29
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “When England went Solo as an English parliament in 1800 so did Scotland, When the monarch of England went Solo…” Dec 22, 16:15
James on A matter of class: “Who’s “we”? LOL. You think anyone reads the shite that you post? What you might think you “know” in your…” Dec 22, 15:57
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “North Code, Scotland does need to wake up, and pretty quick, If England claims only Scotland is bound by the…” Dec 22, 14:29
sam on A matter of class: “https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.13214 “Exploring Sovereignty in Scotland” David McCrone Michael Keating “The largest proportion in the sample, 30 per cent are ‘Scottish…” Dec 22, 14:21
Captain Caveman on A matter of class: “I couldn’t care less whether the likes of you believes me or not – as I’ve already told you. Feel…” Dec 22, 14:09
Aidan on A matter of class: “The bigger picture Dan is that the only thing you seem to be in favour of is highest taxes on…” Dec 22, 14:09
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “@Alf Baird 8.24pm Like any peoples language the Scots language plays ‘a vital role in shaping and defining ethnic identity’,…” Dec 22, 14:07
James on A matter of class: “We’ve only got your word for that though, haven’t we sweetie? You’re a Reform shill so probably a born liar.” Dec 22, 13:53
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “Alf Baird. Even with the trickery, bribery and deceit it must be remembered that the Scottish participation was only set…” Dec 22, 13:48
