With apologies to both The Jungle Book and Animal Farm.
But seriously – how DOES one tell Tories and Labour apart nowadays? Policies?
(JOKE.)
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending, for the sake of a change of scenery and a few convivial drinks with the estimable Lallands Peat Worrier and others, a meeting of the Oxfordshire branch of the Green Party. The subject of the meeting was Scottish independence, which as you might imagine is something of a niche interest in Oxford (let alone among Greens in Oxford).
I don’t precisely recall the number of people who turned up (see “convivial drinks”), but if it wasn’t more than the Scottish Tories drew to the above meeting, hosted by party leader Ruth Davidson, it was certainly within two or three people of it.
For some reason nobody filmed us for the telly, though.
ANDREW NEIL, 5-6-2013: Would you keep child benefit for better-off taxpayers?
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?
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.
A FOREIGN POLICY
Margaret Curran should know the truth
Of engaging brain before opening mooth;
Using the word “foreigner”
Like a profanity
Offends large sections of humanity.She should know better and be more carin’Each one of us is a Jock Tamson bairn;To hear an apology would be divine,
But don’t hold your breath – I won’t hold mine.
We were hunting through a load of 1980s issues of 2000AD earlier today, looking for something else altogether, when we stumbled across this. It seemed somehow timely.
We can’t think why.
Johann Lamont used to be an English teacher. We presume she was a conscientious and caring educator. We imagine she’s as horrified and embarrassed by this press release from the train-drivers’ union ASLEF yesterday as we are.
No, honestly, they’re just dancing.
(And Finally… #36)
Five points if you get the joke.
(Tilt o’the topper to Dr. Morag Kerr.)
It’s indescribably beautiful that the No camp’s much-trailed “500 questions” PDF about independence actually features 507. At least they’re getting their arithmetic wrong downwards for a change. When all those are answered they promise hundreds and hundreds more, so we thought we’d give them a head start on Volume 2.
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones yesterday:
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones today:
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
