In a post earlier this morning we made passing reference to the Scottish “cringe” – a sociological phenomenon by which Scots develop a subservient inferiority complex about their culture and abilities, predominantly compared to England. It’s not something we’ve ever suffered from personally, but every once and a while its malevolent force can still be felt nagging at the corner of even the strongest psyche.
An illustrative example was provided by an interview that Liam Byrne, the Labour spokesman for work and pensions, gave to Radio 4’s “Today” programme yesterday on the subject of the party’s proposed reforms to social security should it somehow win the 2015 UK general election.
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.
willie on The Turning Point: “The reorganisation of local government is not pointless Peter. The cull of the 32 Scottish Councils into 5 is a…” Sep 29, 08:53
Hatey McHateface on The Turning Point: “What’s the chances you and the rest of the tribe don’t recall how you’ve voted, in election after election, eh,…” Sep 29, 08:40
Hatey McHateface on Cowering From Destiny: “Zat you hating there, James? Ye can hae a speshul dispensation tae tak yer maw doon intae the tunnel wi…” Sep 29, 08:34
Hatey McHateface on The Turning Point: “Aye, Bob. “We wus roabbed” Ye’ve learned the wirds aff by hert. If only ye’d haud some spark of ability,…” Sep 29, 08:30
factchecker on The Turning Point: “I understand your frustration. But that is why we have a Scottish parliament stuffed with (largely) incompetent SNP apparatchiks who…” Sep 29, 08:27
robertkknight on The Turning Point: “Just as well I had spent a penny a mere two minutes before reading this, else I may have had…” Sep 29, 08:21
Angus on The Turning Point: ““But she stalled and stalled until she ran out of time and the chance was gone.” Isn’t that exactly what…” Sep 29, 05:12
Peter McAvoy on The Turning Point: “Some may say that the SNP no longer support Scottish Independence,they could be easily convinced by many recent actions some…” Sep 29, 02:57
robertkknight on The Turning Point: “Time to play “Idiot Bingo” on October 1st… I’ll be placing an X in the box next to all 7…” Sep 29, 00:39
robertkknight on The Turning Point: ““Nationalists easily forget that the Scottish people stopped independence at the ballot. Not MI5.” Utter bollocks as usual… 53% of…” Sep 28, 23:50
Spartan 117 on The Turning Point: “Leftist political parties are inevitably of the destructive kind, following the Soviet model of “burn everything down and rebuild in…” Sep 28, 23:34
Ebok on The Turning Point: “Cuphook says: ‘The surge in the Green vote was due to Polanski’ Spartan 117 says: ‘The surge in Green voting…” Sep 28, 23:20
James on Cowering From Destiny: “And don’t forget; “Pricks” like you too, wee man.” Sep 28, 22:34
Hatey McHateface on Cowering From Destiny: ““I try not to hate anyone” Dinna hold yersel back, James. Nobody you hate will ever give a damn.” Sep 28, 21:50
Hatey McHateface on Cowering From Destiny: “All antisemites should dig themselves a tunnel, descend into it, and never come up again. If we’re talking kids, they…” Sep 28, 21:41
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Turning Point: “Rev Stuart Campbell writes @ 5:54 pm: “Swinney has closed down all routes for the membership to do anything except…” Sep 28, 20:15
Cuphook on The Turning Point: “They’re not at odds with each other. They describe different attributes. A party in favour of workers’ rights and free…” Sep 28, 20:10
Confused on Cowering From Destiny: “Anyone who gives a shit about U is suspect – if you care enough then fuck off over there and…” Sep 28, 19:47
Spartan 117 on The Turning Point: “Not bollocks, largely the truth. Especially the last two points.” Sep 28, 19:32
Spartan 117 on The Turning Point: “The terms “left wing” and “conservative” are at odds with each other and quite frankly the absolute last thing we…” Sep 28, 19:29
Aidan on Cowering From Destiny: “lol – what has R done; – invaded its neighbours in an aggressive territorial expansion campaign. The latest one, which…” Sep 28, 19:24
Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Turning Point: “Swinney has closed down all routes for the membership to do anything except leave.” Sep 28, 17:54
Cuphook on The Turning Point: “The surge in the Green vote was due to Polanski in England. Look where the Green vote did well and…” Sep 28, 17:34
willie on The Turning Point: “It is utterly no surprise that so many of independence supporters distrust the SNP and will not vote for them.…” Sep 28, 17:20
