1. Scottish Labour says universal free bus travel for pensioners is unaffordable.
2. Scottish Government manages to reduce the cost of universal free bus travel.
3. “CUTS TO CONCESSIONARY TRAVEL WILL HIT HARD-WORKING SCOTS”
4. Repeat ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
There’s very little room for ambiguity in the Electoral Commission’s request that both sides in the independence debate provide voters with information in advance of the referendum about the likely consequences of either a Yes or No vote. Here’s how the Scotsman reported their comments, for example:
In the case of (what we’re finally now able to officially call) the No campaign, that only means – indeed, only can mean – one thing. After all, their platform is the status quo. In every immediate respect, the consequences of a No vote will be that nothing changes, so nothing needs explaining. There is but a single exception.
This front page from the Sunday Herald is almost two years old, but seems apt today.
Your jaw just drops sometimes at the sheer cheek of it.
“I am pleased that this impartial body has […] rejected the nationalist attempts to silence their opponents by setting spending limits that would have given them an unfair advantage.” – No campaign leader Alistair Darling, in a post on the “Better Together” site today.
Remember: the “nationalists” wanted to let the No campaign spend £250,000 more than the Yes campaign – a funny kind of “silencing” and a quite unusual definition of “advantage”, let alone “unfair”. Instead, the Electoral Commission has recommended that the Yes campaign be allowed to spend more than its opponents. We’re trying for all we’re worth to work out why Mr Darling considers that a victory.
In a Twitter conversation yesterday, we suggested that a solution to the problem of biased reporting in the Scottish media might be to adopt a variant of the “Whizzer and Chips” approach. That is, you’d have two newspapers in one – one way round the news would be presented from a Unionist perspective (as it is now), but if you flipped the paper over and read it from the other end it’d have all the same stories, except covered by independence-friendly journalists.
It looks like the Guardian has tentatively taken the idea up already.
[This piece was originally titled "Why Piracy Is Good" when I wrote it in August of 2004. I figured I'd make it gratuitously offensive clickbait this time, just for teh funz. If you don't understand the new title, start here.]
It's weird how the simplest games can have the longest stories. Today we're going to talk (well, I'm going to, anyway) about a couple of games (well, four games, but we'll get to that) that are about as Zen-basic as it's possible for electronic entertainment to be.
They're a pair of games which could be played by the one-armed dishwasher from Robin's Nest (one for the mums and dads, there), a duo that require all the brainpower of a starving dog pondering the best course of action to take with a pound of sausages that's just fallen out of an old lady's shopping bag right under his nose.
And yet, by the time we're done we'll have covered inspiration, plagiarism, moral flexibility, flagrant copyright infringement, public-spiritedness, cultural history, corporate pragmatism, collective short-sightedness and the proudest moment in your correspondent's career to date. Which is a lot of stuff, so let's get on or we'll be here all day.
Scottish Government proposals for regulated referendum spending limits:
YES side: £1,250,000
NO side: £1,500,000
(advantage of £250,000 to NO campaign)
Electoral Commission recommendations for regulated referendum spending limits:
YES side: £2,994,000
NO side: £2,931,000
(advantage of £63,000 to YES campaign)
Oh no! It’s another defeat for the SNP!
We’ve already offered our opinion on the Electoral Commission’s report on the question for the independence referendum. The Commission also made two other main recommendations: that both sides should provide information on the consequences of their preferred outcome (something the Unionist side has steadfastly refused to do until now), and that the campaign spending limits should be higher than the Scottish Government’s proposed figures, at £1.5m per side for politicial parties, and the same for other organisations – a total of up to £6m.
The former will be intriguing to watch, but for now let’s talk quickly about the money.
You can download the Commission’s full report on the question here.
This is the referendum question the Scottish Government wanted:
“Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country? YES/NO”
This is the referendum question the Unionist parties wanted:
This, we’re told today, is what the referendum question will be:
“Should Scotland be an independent country? YES/NO”
Yep, sounds like another “comprehensive defeat” for the SNP all right.
Chris Cairns on the price of dignity.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
