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 Before Action: “One to sadly note tomorrow; Disgusting anniversary of the 1305 judicial show-trial and judicial show-murder mob spectacle of William Wallace…” Aug 22, 01:31
Old John on Before Action: “One hopes that, as the “Turbulent Priest” of the 21st century, you will not suffer the same fate as Thomas…” Aug 22, 01:29
Young Lochinvar on Before Action: “Amen to that.” Aug 22, 01:12
gm on Before Action: “It confused me after the referendum, everything had changed. It took me until 2018/2019 to get a handle on it.…” Aug 21, 23:09
Captain Caveman on The Land Of Do-As-You-Please: “”did you think you acquitted yourself well yesterday?” In comparison to you, my meths-imbibing, solvent-sniffing pal? Fuck yeah. Who wouldn’t?…” Aug 21, 22:55
Stevie on Before Action: “All the Brit political parties are disgusting, but the worst is the SNP – they betrayed everything and everyone including…” Aug 21, 22:27
GM on Before Action: “Good news is shy these days. Well done to councillor Higgins. Any analysis yet on the repercussions?” Aug 21, 21:54
GM on Before Action: “Absolutely spot on. The paid UK trolls on here are similar to the paid UK trolls squatting under an upturned…” Aug 21, 21:44
Alf Baird on Before Action: ““When did the Indy movement become the post colonial movement?” I think you may mean ‘become the liberation movement’. According…” Aug 21, 21:21
Mark Beggan on Before Action: ““You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need.” A Rolling Stones…” Aug 21, 20:17
James on Before Action: “That right, aye, Einstein?” Aug 21, 19:56
Alf Baird on Before Action: “Scotland is not “the colonialist mother country”, Hatey, that’s the country next door that annexed us in 1707 and has…” Aug 21, 19:55
Confused on The Land Of Do-As-You-Please: “come on then caveman and spartan – say something interesting, or insightful, or the slightest bit funny that indicates an…” Aug 21, 19:39
Mark Beggan on Before Action: “Badges? Badges! We don’t need no stinking badges!” Aug 21, 18:32
twathater on Before Action: “So gobshite what are you doing about making Scotland a better place ,who did you and your fellow unionists vote…” Aug 21, 18:29
Hatey McHateface on Before Action: “If you’re coming to the colony, form an orderly queue behind the flood of formerly oppressed and crushed colonised victims…” Aug 21, 18:06
Captain Caveman on The Land Of Do-As-You-Please: “Another day, another stellar display of rank, ignorant stupidity I see Confused. You’d be banned anywhere else, ten times over.” Aug 21, 18:03
Mark Beggan on Before Action: ““What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play Life is a Colony, old chum Come…” Aug 21, 17:45
Hatey McHateface on Before Action: “Very true, Alf, we can only imagine. In fact, the rest of us don’t even have to imagine while we…” Aug 21, 17:36
Hatey McHateface on Before Action: “No referendum, section 30, or UDI required? It’s bold, James, but I guess you wouldn’t have posted it if you…” Aug 21, 17:29
Spartan 117 on The Land Of Do-As-You-Please: “You can’t help yourself, can you. You’ve just proven my point, yet again. What an arse to make of yourself,…” Aug 21, 17:14
Mark Beggan on Before Action: “The cash incentive is one thing but I prefer, ” tell us what we want to know or it is…” Aug 21, 17:10
Alf Baird on Before Action: ““The Scottish establishment will always kowtow to Westminster until we manage to get out from under the “union”.” Yes sarah,…” Aug 21, 16:03
Gavin on The Aims Of Justice: “Thank you for sticking with this, Stu. What you are doing is really important. Without your courage and tenacity, we…” Aug 21, 15:37
James Che on Before Action: “All this effects and affects how the law is dealt with in Scotland. If a Colonial Country comes to light…” Aug 21, 15:35
James Che on Before Action: “For instance is the 1800 Anglo- Irish agreement in 1800 with the parliament of England or the supposed parliament of…” Aug 21, 15:27
James Che on Before Action: “Alf, Indeed this is not Scots laws but the justice and laws of England, That said Scots know now that…” Aug 21, 15:18
Mark Beggan on Before Action: “I reckon the Scottish establishment will fight this with every means at their disposal. If they lose the legal battle…” Aug 21, 14:37
And Spouse on Before Action: “What is the chance that there might be a long game here. If they, SNP, can summon up the money…” Aug 21, 14:21
Confused on The Land Of Do-As-You-Please: “arday got the martyr’s death alright – he also fills a more pagan role; the “fool”, the “king for a…” Aug 21, 14:18
