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Quoted for truth #29 17

Posted on August 18, 2013 by

Ben Riley-Smith in the Telegraph, 15 August 2013:

“Prof Jim Gallagher understands the intricacies of picking and choosing powers to be devolved. He was secretary of the Calman Commission, whose recommendation formed the basis of the Scotland Act, and has co-authored a book about what will happen after the referendum.

According to Prof Gallagher, the idea of Scotland winning some version of ‘devo max’ in the aftermath of a no vote is fantastical. The term as understood by most people is ‘just independence light’ and will never be accepted by Westminster.”

Our emphasis. Don’t ever say you weren’t warned, folks.

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Category comment, scottish politics, uk politics

Quoted for truth #28 58

Posted on August 12, 2013 by

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, 12 August 2013:

“Labour’s senior figures, notably Ed Balls, have assuaged their contortions of guilt with much sound and fury, but little by way of alternative policies. Miliband and Balls have concentrated on noisy performances in parliament, with some effect, but have failed to emerge as plausible national leaders.

Their programme has been a pale imitation of the Tories. They are for cuts, but not too deep, for glamour projects, for monetary caution, for the Afghan war. A fear of seeming too leftwing has led them to fudge every opportunity the ineptitude of the coalition has offered them, on welfare capping, on immigration, on the NHS, on housing.

It is hard to see the British Labour party as a leftwing party at all.”

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Category comment, uk politics

Quoted for truth #27 117

Posted on August 11, 2013 by

George Orwell, “The Freedom Of The Press”, 1943:

“‘If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.‘”

We hear you, George.

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Category media

Quoted for truth #26 90

Posted on August 08, 2013 by

David Aaronovitch, The Times, 8 August 2013:

“Next year is the centenary of the start of the Great War and some nationalists in Scotland think Mr Cameron is pulling a Salmond. Coming as it does in August between Bannockburn and the referendum vote, they believe the commemoration has been planned as an artificial booster to Britishness. ‘There’s no conceivable justification or precedent in British history’, complained a Reverend Stuart Campbell, ‘for celebrating the start of a war.’

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Category comment, disturbing, uk politics

Vote No, close Holyrood 78

Posted on August 05, 2013 by

You might find this an interesting read.

dalyell

(No, we have no idea why his face is so shiny.)

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Category scottish politics, uk politics

Ideological arithmetic 29

Posted on July 20, 2013 by

ComRes for ITV News, 20 July 2013:

“After a fortnight which included high-profile debates around Labour and Ed Miliband’s relations with the trade unions, Britons are saying they do not believe that the Labour leader will be the next Prime Minister. Fewer than one in four (22%) expect Ed Miliband to be the Prime Minister in 2015.

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Category stats, uk politics

Quoted for truth #23 131

Posted on July 12, 2013 by

Former Labour MEP Hugh Kerr in the Herald, 12 Jun 2013:

“I am on holiday in Denmark and independence is the topic all Danes want to discuss when they learn you are from Scotland. I have met no-one yet who is opposed to Scotland’s independence. One said to me yesterday: ‘Surely it is natural to want to run your own affairs, we certainly wouldn’t want to be run by Sweden.’

I have also discussed it with some former colleagues from the European Parliament who are certain Scotland would be warmly welcomed as members of all European institutions; as one put it: ‘After all, you have been members of the EU for 40 years, you are hardly going to be excluded now’.”

To be honest, readers, if Scotland votes No in 2014 our main life priority is going to be developing a convincing Welsh or Irish accent. It’d just be far too embarrassing and depressing to constantly have to try to explain it to the rest of the world otherwise.

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Category comment, europe, scottish politics

Quoted for truth #21 67

Posted on July 02, 2013 by

Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, 2 July 2013:

“The only place to cement social change is in the hearts and minds of voters. Blair and Brown were defeatists, convinced Britain was essentially conservative, individualist, imbued with Thatcherism.

Confronted with the Mail, Sun, Times and Telegraph, the culture looked immutable, a force to be appeased. Not even when ordinary living standards plummeted as banks were bailed out did Labour seize the chance to make a stronger social democratic case.

Ideas matter. Had Labour changed the political climate (as Cameron briefly thought), this government could not dismantle the social state. But like tumbleweed, Labour policies put down no roots to anchor ideas of collective provision and social protection.”

In the full article, Toynbee rather glosses over some of Labour’s failings in power in her eagerness to present a rosy picture of 13 years in which inequality grew almost constantly. But the paragraphs above concisely and surgically extract the heart of the party’s betrayal of not only its own voters, but the whole concept of British democracy – and inadvertently also the reason why it won’t win the 2015 election.

The only mistake Toynbee makes is to imagine that it matters.

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Category analysis, uk politics

Quoted for truth #20 33

Posted on June 25, 2013 by

Stephen Noon in the Scotsman, 25 June 2013:

“The No campaign thinks its biggest strength is fear. However, its biggest weakness is an equally powerful emotion: regret.

Just think how we will feel if there is a No vote; if in 2015 we get another government we didn’t vote for; if in 2016 we’re taken out of the European Union against our own expressed wishes; if in 2017 there are new welfare changes that introduce a lower rate of payment for people in Scotland; or if in 2018 we are still wasting £250 million a year on nuclear weapons.

We’ll regret the lost opportunity that was a Yes in 2014, with an intensity that will be brought to mind again and again. The pain of what could have been will go on.”

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Category comment, scottish politics

The story of Project Fear 77

Posted on June 23, 2013 by

There’s an intriguing interview in today’s Sunday Herald with ‘Better Together’ campaign director Blair McDougall (described by the paper as a “Labour apparatchik”), to mark the anniversary of the campaign’s launch. We recommend buying the paper – our digital copy costs just 69p from PressReader – and reading the whole thing, but if you’re pressed for time the last few paragraphs sum up the content pretty accurately.

blairmcdougall8

And if you’re really in a rush, the last two sentences will do.

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Category analysis, scottish politics

Quoted for truth #19 74

Posted on June 20, 2013 by

One last snippet from “Road To Referendum” episode 3:

“I think Alex Salmond is offering something in terms of independence, whether you like it or not. The Unionists are not offering, in my view, anything. And you can’t go into an independence poll in 2014 saying, you know, ‘We’ve been together since 1707, let’s be together for the next 300 years’. For a lot of young Scots in particular, that’s not an attractive proposition.”

That’s Henry McLeish, former Labour First Minister and still (as far as we know) a firm advocate of a No vote. The comments seemed especially pertinent this week when the two competing parties in today’s Aberdeen Donside by-election both tweeted pictures from the local Aberdeen newspaper the Evening Express, quoting vox-pops with some of their respective voters.

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Category analysis, comment, scottish politics

Quoted for truth #18 36

Posted on June 19, 2013 by

Scotland on Sunday, 17 June 2013:

“[Johann Lamont] can be awful on telly. One recent encounter, in which she was asked repeatedly whether or not she favoured keeping Trident, has been transcribed on a politics blog and makes grim reading – a masterclass in prevarication, hesitation and the making of fudge.”

It’s nice to know those horrible hours of painstaking effort pay off sometimes.

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Category media, scottish politics

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