The Tories kicked off yesterday’s reaction to the budget with a straight-up lie.
No promise has been broken. The basic rate HAS been frozen, at 20p, and low and middle earners HAVE been protected. Nobody who’s on less than £33,000 – which is considerably higher than the average (£23K) or full-time median (£28K) wages – will pay a penny more tax, and the large majority of Scots will in fact see a small tax cut.
(The weasel-wording justification is of course that pretty much everyone who pays tax pays some of it at the basic rate, and are therefore in a sense “basic-rate taxpayers”. But “nobody will pay any more tax” wasn’t the promise. Indeed, the manifesto pledge is a pretty clear implication that better-off people WOULD be taxed a little more.)
But the numbering was interesting. In order to try to obscure that fact that most Scots would be paying LESS tax as a result of the budget, the Tories went with a nicely vague but high-sounding “hundreds of thousands” for the number of people who’d lose out a little. And then the Scottish media went to work.
Scotland has 2,174 miles of trunk roads, of which 1.7 miles (that’s just under 0.08%) comprise the Queensferry Crossing. For the next few days those 1.7 miles are going to be subject to some partial lane closures on the southbound side for maintenance.
They’ll cause almost no disruption, because as it happens there’s another very similar bridge conveniently located just a couple of hundred yards away – linked directly to all the same roads – that traffic will use instead.
Not much of a story, is it? We don’t know how many miles of Scotland’s roads have roadworks on them on any given day of any given week, but we suspect it’s quite a lot. It tends not to make the news beyond a few seconds on the traffic bulletin at the end, but today was different.
Yesterday’s Daily Record (which would increasingly be an accurate three-word name for the paper) ran an innocuous piece of page-filler fluff rubbish, and for once we’re not talking about a David Torrance column.
It featured the “psychic” predictions of a man who, the Record told us – no fewer than FIVE times in the opening few lines – previously predicted Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, and who had a track record of “incredible accuracy”.
Quite a few remarkable things were said on last night’s STV debate between the two prospective leaders of the Labour Party branch office in Scotland. This one, though, was especially striking.
That’s Anas Sarwar denying three times that he was a part of the “Better Together” campaign with the Tories. A startled Colin Mackay claims to have seen photographs of Sarwar campaigning with BT, at which point Sarwar insists no, he merely appeared on TV debates which happened to also have Tory guests.
The Daily Record have continued to run Kezia Dugdale’s weekly column despite her resignation as Scottish Labour branch office manager (North British division), and this week we were interested to note her assessment of the devolution years, which could be summarised neatly as “Labour devolution good, SNP devolution bad”.
We raised an especially quizzical eyebrow at the claim that the 1999-2007 Labour/Lib Dem administrations had apparently ended homelessness. So we thought we’d do that thing we do when Kezia Dugdale claims something.
The Scottish media this week has started to rather resemble Argentina under General Galtieri’s military junta – everywhere you look are the ghosts of the disappeared.
The best we can say is that at least this time it took four months for the Secretary Of State’s promise to completely and utterly collapse, not 48 hours.
“Colonel” Ruth Davidson took time out from her holidays yesterday to unleash an extraordinary (and unusually defensive) 35-part Twitter tirade about the reaction to her appointment as an honorary military commander. So barren is the summer political news desert that two newspapers put it on their front page today, giving the BBC an excuse to deem it the day’s biggest story.
This was David Mundell on Sunday, guaranteeing that any extra money produced for Northern Ireland to secure DUP backing for the Tory government would be matched by more funding for Scotland (as much as £4.5bn under normal Barnett Formula rules, because Scotland has nearly three times the population of the province):
We hadn’t been planning to talk any more about the curious case of Claire Austin, the suddenly publicity-shy Edinburgh nurse who – how can we put this? – seemed a rather ill-chosen figurehead for the good cause of getting more pay for a group of people who are rightly well-regarded by the public.
But yesterday, the release of a letter from Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale re-opened political hostilities after last week’s hiatus for the Manchester terror attack by shoving the now-reticent Ms Austin right back into the spotlight.
The Labour general election manifesto is officially launched today, as if it mattered. It will reportedly say that the party will block a second independence referendum if it’s in power at Westminster, which of course it won’t be.
And while Labour’s position on anything – particularly anything involving Scotland – is a complete irrelevance, it’s still quite fun to listen to them tying themselves in knots.
So with no further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you Duncan Hothersall.
Alf Baird on The Wheels Of Industry: ““Maybe we need to spend a few years wondering what’s to be done before we work out what’s to be…” Jul 20, 23:17
Harper (Kenneth John) on The Wheels Of Industry: “Who funds the National ? as I doubt its sales revenue, hope its not the missing Yes Scotland funds” Jul 20, 22:10
Spade on The Wheels Of Industry: “This is the post-apocalyptic political landscape that was anticipated a few years ago, the inevitable consequence of the SNP crime…” Jul 20, 21:34
sam on The Wheels Of Industry: “Professors Henderson and Wyn Jones have done studies on the “Future of England” over a number of yeaars. The findings…” Jul 20, 20:33
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “I didn’t know the devil bought soles.” Jul 20, 20:25
Knuckle_Heid on The Wheels Of Industry: “Seriously, who pays money to read this garbage? Endlessly promising a better future (we just need to be patient &…” Jul 20, 20:15
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “Thank god you told us the nitty gritty. To be honest I’d rather sell my sole to the devil than…” Jul 20, 19:57
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “@Dan Your final paragraph is exactly right.” Jul 20, 19:46
sam on The Wheels Of Industry: ““The findings showed: 60% of voters in England say current politics makes them feel angry 55% say it makes them…” Jul 20, 19:26
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “robertkknight A parasite is a living thing the SNP is dead.” Jul 20, 18:33
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “John Swinney leader of the SNP, just been elected on a huge lie, but his top priority is the cost…” Jul 20, 18:27
Dan on The Wheels Of Industry: ““He doesn’t cite any evidence for that figure, although it does pretty much correspond with what pro-indy parties got in…” Jul 20, 18:22
Neil Singleton on These Words Are My Own: “Do remember that Sturgeon is one of the two “Shipman Sisters” with the now departed Freeman. And never forget that…” Jul 20, 18:19
twathater on The Wheels Of Industry: “What grinds my gears is the amount of gullibility surrounding independence supporters, FFS are they blind can they not see…” Jul 20, 17:53
sam on The Wheels Of Industry: “Depressingly accurate demolition of BiS. Next up AUOB? Funds misappropriated? I do hope not. We need a few marches in…” Jul 20, 17:42
Neil Singleton on These Words Are My Own: “The ferries scandal has all the hallmarks of a corrupt, money laundering scam. Obscene and unjustifiable cost increases throughout the…” Jul 20, 17:34
Dan on Progressing To Oblivion: “But does that really matter when you probably have a really fancy ass coffee machine and an expensive fountain pen……” Jul 20, 17:25
Ex President Xiden on The Wheels Of Industry: “Your reference to the greatest book on politics ever written reminded me of the greatest political speech ever given. I…” Jul 20, 17:24
robertkknight on The Wheels Of Industry: “I scribbled 6 paragraphs and tossed the lot with the exception the last line… “The SNP is a parasite”. All…” Jul 20, 17:07
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “A Citizen’s Convention is a con if run by anyone put in charge by the SNP.” Jul 20, 17:07
MaryB on The Wheels Of Industry: “I’ve often heard it said that Gordon MK is really an arm of the SNP. He’s tried to split the…” Jul 20, 16:29
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “England and America will drain Scotland dry of all oil and gas while the SNP sit back and look onward…” Jul 20, 16:26
duncanio on The Wheels Of Industry: “GMK doesn’t know what Swinney and the SNP are going to do next. So he’s just keeping all ‘options’ on…” Jul 20, 15:06
Confused on Progressing To Oblivion: “Manchester’s Finest as the new PM does excite as a concept, but – Stephen Patrick Morrissey – is still in…” Jul 20, 14:49
Colin Alexander on Progressing To Oblivion: “In Scotland, about 80% of the electorate did not elect a UK Labour or colonial SNP government, yet we are…” Jul 20, 14:15
agentx on Progressing To Oblivion: “The national ” Breaking John Swinney looks forward to ‘constructive’ talks with Andy Burnham on independence” ———————————- I am sure…” Jul 20, 14:09
Aidan on These Words Are My Own: “Aye well this is the problem Hatey, an independent Scotland can’t be everything to everyone even when people have conflicting…” Jul 20, 14:09
Captain Caveman on These Words Are My Own: “😀 Fair do’s Dan. I’ll try and do better next time!” Jul 20, 13:50
Dan on These Words Are My Own: “CC says: “SIX goals!” & “Sadly I drank far too much “Cheshire Cat” ale at the pub.” Such a lacklustre…” Jul 20, 13:19
