First the gaffer gaffes.
Gordon Brown misreads an exchange with a real voter in Rochdale and turns a robust but unremarkable encounter into a possible hinge of fortune in the race for the tape on 6th May.
Then Alex Salmond and the SNP, having expensively pushed a pointless challenge on the leaders debate to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, lose.
And Argyll is in the news with allegations in the Daily Mail that party activists are trying to swing the election the SNP way by encouraging party insiders and their friends to take out a £5 bet on the SNP candidate.
While all this was going on, Francis Maude, Conservative Shadow Minister quietly visited Dunoon on a walkabout with Gary Mulvaney, the party’s candidate for the Argyll and Bute seat. And the Liberal Democrat campaign went modestly on its way.
Yesterday was quite a day.
The Brown clown
Brown’s judgment as well as his character were seen to be as profoundly flawed as suspected in yesterday’s lark – from which the national media yet again emerged badly.
The woman who spoke to him actually spent most time on her own pension issues, followed by her concern with the scale of the current national debt and a demand to know how he was going to sort that out. Then she mentioned immigration, en passant, via the number of eastern Europeans coming to Britain and their impact on local jobs markets – and went on to talk about tuition fees and the life ahead of her grandchildren.
There was nothing bigoted about anything she said. She simply raised – straightforwardly and among a series of equally germane concerns, one of the buried issues in this campaign. Immigration is an issue on which others may well adopt a bigoted stance – but not she.
Brown called her ‘a good woman’, then got straight back in his car and branded her a bigot via a radio microphone, which, in the absence of Nurse Rached, he had left on. This was off the scale of logic. Along with his clear rage and speed in passing the buck to the nearest target for what he saw as ‘a disaster’, this told the story of the man.
The only thing unusual about the incident was that Brown actually met an unprogrammed voter in front of the cameras. She was real and vigorous, He was an unlistening, press-button policy-vomit – but there were no surprises there. It might have made the news in a minor way because she wasn’t a ready-made and because she pushed the national debt issue – but now, thanks to the man himself, it’s top dollar.
And no one’s talking about the compound abuse.
Brown brands the woman a bigot on national television. When she’d told about this she is horrified, disgusted and says pointedly that she does not want to see him.
But he needs to be seen to see her and, although he has already damaged her, his needs still come first. So here comes the compound abuse.
He does come to see her, regardless, trailing clouds of media, adding to the swell encamped outside her house.
He emerges after 40 minutes – she clearly wasn’t a rollover – and holds a press conference standing on her doorstep, in her territory. If only she could have gone upstairs with a bucket of water , opened a window and done a ‘gardyloo’.
Any bets that Nurse Rached won’t leave his side for the rest of the campaign?
The SNP failure
This was far less a failure in the Court of Session than a failure in the judgment that took them there.
What on earth was this about?
In the SNP vision of things, Westminster is irrelevant. All the party needs is a decent swathe of MPs to watch over its interests and embarrass the UK government where possible. Remember it was a SNP MP who flushed out Tony Blair and the cash-for-honours scandal. This was a notable score.
The best strategy for this election was to ignore it – standing quietly above it, treating the leaders’ debates as a chimps tea party in another place and putting all available effort and resources into the campaign for seats. Will the party hold Glasgow East, for instance?
Being in a position to take 20 seats might have had some plausibility when it was first made at the height of the Scottish Governemtn;s success. Repeating the claim in this general election campaign, when the bell-weather of politics has swung the other way as the Scottish Government lost momentum, is evidence of a hardening of Alex Salmond’s political arteries.
He used to read the runes better and to be a lot more nimble than this.
Not this time.
We got what was never going to seem like anything other than the whinges of the excluded – in a constitutionally confused context where there is no clear structure and no obvious answer.
The SNP were never going to win this silly and self-sought conflict. The core lesson in politics as in life, is ‘Don’t start something you can’t win’. But they did and they did.
It’s been an unhelpful distraction, It’s been costly – money was raised from party members to fund the legal challenge when the fighting funds are needed for the election campaign.
And they’ve made themselves losers.
This has been a mad diversion and one that smacks of existence in a vacuum where perceived wrongs cook away and all perspective is skewed.
And the betting operation
The Daily Mail’s allegations of a betting scam seem well enough evidenced. The report is that the SNP are alarmed about the extent to which the Argyll vote does not appear to be swinging in its direction as it had hoped.
The alleged attempt to swing opinion by manipulating bookmakers into reporting a steep rise in betting on the SNP candidate was, again, short on stable values and ill-judged.
First of all, bookies are the least naive of all. There is no way that the world of the odds-layers would not notice a sudden rush of £5 punts on a particular candidate.
Mike Mackenzie, the SNP candidate, is an honourable man who did not deserve to have his campaign tarnished by this sort of stunt. In fairness to him it should be noted that the Daily Mail expose did not even suggest that Mackenzie knew a thing about it.
And the other parties?
Are doing what they should be doing – quietly going about their business, smearing no one, gathering votes.
Yes, the election literature pushed through people’s doors is often misleading – but when was it ever anything else – in all camps?
And few voters read them. We ignore then as the bottom-feeding waste of trees they are.
increasing signs of desperation from the snp in argyll ……..is it fourth place for them again ?
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I don’t know about £5 pound bets, but has someone who has been out on the doorstep all over Argyll and Bute and talking to people I am so sure that the SNP will take Argyll and Bute that I have put £100 on us to win !
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What utter nonsense.
Well below the standard of reporting that I would expect from For Argyll.
The clue is in the report. Whoever was responsible for above piece reads the Daily Mail.
No need to say any more.
The decision to exclude the SNP from politcal debates on an election involving Scotland is an absolute disgrace.
I don’t believe any serious and sensible Scot or any serious and sensible democrat could have written the bilge above.
These debates are reducing politics to the level of the X Factor anyway.
There is nobody going down to the polling station a week on Thursday to vote for a Prime Minister. They are going to vote for a constituency MP and any resemblance betweeen Nick Clegg and Alan Reid for instance is purely accidental (though we know even less about what Nick Clegg thinks about anything significant than we know about Alan Reid’s political opinions).
The winning party will chose who is to be PM. That’s how it is done. There is no guarantee nor any constitutional condition that says that any if the three debaters we have been watching will in fact be chosen by their party to be Prime Minister should that party win.
This “Prime Ministerial Debates” title was chosen to replace the original “Leaders Debates” title in order to justify the exclusion of the SNP, Plaid, UUP,SDLP,UKIP etc from the format. Simply put we do not have Prime Minister Elections and the dishonesty of the UK establishment is reaching a level which is now being picked up by decent democrats across the country.
If Nick Clegg becomes Prime Minister I will knit a meringue. The Tories with one seat in Scotland are on the telly and the SNP with seven are not?
I can assure For Argyll that there has been a surge of applications to join the SNP over the last week and the party could have easily raised the £50,000 twice. As it is a very substantial part of the £50,000 was donated by persons not members of the SNP and some not even supporters of the SNP. This issue will run and run and is already rebounding on those responsible for it (“Ladysmith relieves Gordon”)
In Scotland the TV debate tonight will be dominated by the SNP who are not there.
This is a major boob by the union and will resonate on and on.
As for the betting issue.
Give over.
Totally harmless and part and parcel of every election since Noah built the ark. I suppose if you take your information from the Daily Mail you are quite likely to get a very peculiar slant on things.
For the information of For Argyll quite a lot of us have done as Mark has done and invested a few bob on the completely ludicrous odds the big bookies are giving on the Scottish results. The bookies are using the results of the last general election to make their odds and they haven’t factored in the results of the Scottish Election and the Euro election which followed. I could recommend a little touch on SNP to win both Falkirk seats, Argyll and Bute, Livingstone, Dundee West, Ochil, East Lothian – all at ridiculously generous odds.
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I am not a betting man but I fancy my chances on that SNP accumulator of Dave’s. Might make the election night result show a tab more interesting but I will have to wait for the Argyll results the following day before picking up my winnings.
The BBC have been really unfair by anyone’s measure and Salmond was right to challenge their shameful stand in a court of law, even if it was destined to fail at this point. A message had to be delivered and next time the BBC might not be so lucky. This is also not over Newsroom it has only begun. Salmond has a long memory and the BBC will come to rue the day they made this shameful decision to deprive the people of Scotland their democratic rights. The leader’s debates as entertaining as they are have been folly. We are not electing a president, we elect MP’s to represent our interests. I fear people will forget this when entering the polling station. They are not electing Brown, Clegg or Cameron they are voting for one of our local candidates to fight our Argyll corner in London and Alan Reid is not Nick Glegg by any stretch of the imagination and I do not believe we have been fighting at our weight this last five years. This time round I will not be backing Alan Reid, it is time for a change and as pointed out above in your piece Newsroom it is the SNP that flushed out Tony Blair and the cash-for-honours scandal.
As for the bottom feeding waste of trees I did like the personal letter thing that Gary Mulvaney dispatched through everyone’s door. Did not sway my voting intention but I did read and like it. Nice touch and in the presentation and design department the Conservatives are streaks ahead of the other parties. I do wonder if the SNP and labour party consider good design and taste to be a negative vibe for their core voters, a bit to Tory.
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John
We’d love to send an individually addressed letter to every elector. That one letter would cost more than all the funds we have for this election. That’s the fact we face at every election.
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Was that rubbish written to provoke us? I cannot remember being so annoyed by such an anti Scottish article ever. I think Dave and John say it better than me but I cannot believe any Scottish person wrote that. Even my friends who don’t support the SNP are shamefaced about that decision. And as for Lady Smith, she is surely guaranteed her place for ever in the rogues gallery.
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I thought the audience from Birmingham who participated in QT after the “great” debate mostly got it about right tonight. They know they are bing lied to and the debates are phony. It was very noticeable that Alex Salmond and Janet Street-Porter got the most applause.
Brown is sunk and Clegg is sinking. Cameron will have an overall majority I fear.
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In September last year when Sky TV began the campaign for what was then called the leaders debates I wrote to them in protest at the lack of inclusion of all parties taking part. This was reported by “For Argyll” and the following text is the editors comment”
“Councillor Simon’s point underlines how far we remain distant from grasping the consequences of constitutional change and devolved governments.
It also highlights the instinctively colonial perspective of London-based media stations. What is see there as a ‘national debate’ is a long way from being such in ay of the devolved administrations where the issues, values and choices are very different.
Councillor Simon has done all political persuasions a favour in highlighting this persistently skewed perspective”
I therefor find it surprising that For Argyll now does not think that the SNP should have challenged the BBCs impartiality during of election coverage. Almost every day of my political life, albeit as a humble Councillor, I take on, challenge, scrap and fight to represent constituents on matters where they are the small fry, the underdog up against often faceless organisations and bodies who would sweep them aside as soon as look at them. Sometimes we lose, sometimes we compromise and often we win. I would never for one minute contemplate not trying because I thought we might lose. Thats not the Scottish way!
The full article can be veiwed here
http://forargyll.com/2009/09/ron-simon-sees-sky-news-party-leaders-debate-as-misrepresentation-in-scotland/
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I should also refer readers to this “For Argyll” article published in October. I have copied an extract below, again this is editorial and what I would identify as an opinion peice. I would point readers to the last four words.
“The Scottish National Party and its Leader, Alex Salmond, have demanded that – for some of the reasons listed above – in any national televised debate in the forthcoming General Election campaign, the Leaders of the governing parties in the devolved administrations must be included.
Failing that, the SNP has demanded – and established that it is technically achievable – that the proposed televised debates between Brown, Cameron and Clegg should not be screened in Scotland.
An examination of the post-devolution positions outlined above shows that the request for inclusion in the debates is a well-found case and, if it is disregarded, the SNP has made it clear that it may mount energetic legal challenges.
Yesterday (4th October) speaking to the Telegraph online, UK Conservative Leader, David Cameron dismissed Mr Salmond’s claim, saying: ‘Alex Salmond is not standing for Westminster. Alex Salmond is not standing to be UK Prime Minister. This is a British General Election. The choice is between Gordon Brown and a modern Conservative Government led by me’.
This does not quite square with assurances that David Cameron gave this morning to the Conservative Party Conference – that, in Government, he will ‘respect’ the Holyrood administration and work collaboratively with the devolved administrations as a political family.
You do not ‘respect’ the elected leader of a country – as Mr Cameron is not yet himself – if you attempt to patronise. In the piece in the Telegraph, Mr Cameron went on urge Mr Salmond: ‘to concentrate on his job as Scottish First Minister’, rather as if Scotland were a playpen and Mr Salmond was spending his time commanding the toys.
However, Mr Cameron’s single defence of his call for Mr Salmond to be excluded from these debates betrays further confusion.
Mr Salmond does not personally have to be standing for a Westminster seat to be qualified to take part in a national leadership debate in these circumstances.
He is the Leader of a party – one currently in Government as Mr Cameron’s is not – which is putting forward candidates for that election, campaigning on a manifesto with policies relevant to that election.
The UK does not elect a President. It elects a party. Mr Salmond is Leader of a party contesting the election in a part of the country governed by his party and in a situation where the battle for seats will essentially be fought between his party and the UK Labour Party. He has a case”
To view the article in full context http://forargyll.com/2009/10/televised-leadership-debates-at-the-general-election-as-cameron-calls-for-ban-on-salmond/
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Re Ron Simon’s comments:
These are, of course, accurate and we remain steady in the views expressed at those times.
The issue was a real one and worth a punt. The political reality is that the SNP were unlikely to win it. When that quickly became clear, the astute action for that party would have been to let it go and adopt a different tactic altogether: sideline and mock.
The SNP’s obsession with porting Alex Salmond into the leaders’ debates distracted from a wholehearted focus on the sole purpose of business – getting their candidates elected.
Holding Glasgow East was crucial from the moment the SNP took the seat. That looks like the headline loss of this campaign’s misdirection.
We hold by both positions we have adopted on this matter. Times change and, beyond the verities, tactics must change with them.
Raising money for the pockets of lawyers on a mission bound to fail and leaving room for the intellectually inadequate Lady Smith to make a pronouncement on the case was foolish.
This has damaged the chances of a later successful return to this issue.
There are matters that, morally, one must persist with regardless of the chances of success. This was not one of them. Adopting a fixed position and sticking in it was, in this instance, poor political judgment.
It simply made a party – which has set an example in so many ways, look like a whinger and, ultimately a loser, This has been self-inflicted and avoidable damage.
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So in the logic of For Argyll, a point of principle has only a short shelf life! In October the SNP were arguing on a fundamental point of principle but a mere 6 months later this argument has deteriorated to becoming ‘silly’.
I believe that the SNP has been consistent in it’s opinions and that it is For Argyll that exhibits silliness!
(Still waiting on For Argyll commenting on whether Gary Mulvanney’s record of attending 2 out of a possible 9 Council Meetings is acceptable behaviour for an elected and paid Councillor??
Dorothy Macdonald
Oban
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For Dot Macdonald:
Two things, Dot: the SNP stance was pragmatic rather than principled – the constitutional position, post-devolution, is so unclear and so unthought that no political principle yet has a secure structural foundation. We backed the Scottish Government’s initial attempt to leverage a place in the national debate- we still support that initial approach – but we moved on as circumstances dictated a more effective stance – and damage limitation. The party retained its fixed position.
We have been a stout supporter of this Government – because its performance has earned that support. But we can be of no use to anyone if we do not maintain an independent stance based on objective analysis. And of course we accept that everyone will – serially we hope, rather than all at once – fall out with us.
In terms of Councillor Mulvaney’s attendance record at the Council – of course this is unacceptable. It would, however, be quite wrong to make an issue of it without knowing the attendance record of each Councillor. Is this pattern normal, abnormal or somewhere in between?
We congratulate you on your research initiative to date and look forward to your extended evaluation of the other Councillors’ attendance performance. This is a very interesting issue, Dot.
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I too am saddened by the take you have put on SNP efforts here.
The bookie story was a joke, plain and simple. When you are pounding the streets and highways of Argyll spending your hard won funds it is good occasionally to take a break and have a laugh. Nobody seriously suggests that the odds offered by a bookmaker up a side street in Oban or Dunoon has any significant effect on voting intentions across the county. For a Labour party “spokesman” to suggest that this was an attempt to subvert democracy is beyond parody.I too had to buy a copy of the Daily Mail to read the story -it is still a consistently nasty publication.It is somehow reassuring to see that there are things that don’t change.
Far more important is the way that you loftily dismiss the SNP efforts to contest the cosy London media arrangements to exclude Scotland’s party of government from the central discussion point of the General Election. Of course the SNP contested, from the outset, the idea that such “leaders” debates should exclude them.If you are not allowed a seat at the table, or a stand at the podium, your interests are ignored, your arguments are unheard; it has been our experience first at Westminster and at Brussells for years. It is reflected in the present rise in LibDem support in opinion polls.It only required some exposure of Brown and Cameron to make Clegg look good.
Sadly the SNP has to be at Westminster , even as a still small voice, and I well remember the horrendous treatment accorded to Winnie Ewing and Donnie Stewart in the early days.I personally cannot imagine any worse prospect than to be obliged to turn up week after week at the Palace of Varieties but selfless men and women have done this with a sense of duty.You are right to point out that it was Angus MacNeil that raised the matter of peerages and priviliges for sale but you omitted to state that his campaign was very effectively closed down by the joint efforts of the “three main parties” Do you think for a moment that the practice has stopped? Had to smile when I saw a Scottish LibDem press call this week with Lord Ashdown, Lord Steel and Lord Wallace -all three doing nicely within the cosy UK establishment but it also demonstrates that the LibDems have little sense of irony. There cannot be much that is Liberal or Democratic about the House of Lords yet they scramble for the ermine like feral stoats.
I was happy to send a donation towards the Court of Session costs. I had no expectation that the appeal would be successful although I was intrigued to see that Lady Smith felt that to deprive Scottish viewers of access to the third debate would mean that they would have “an incomplete view.” Precisely the point that the SNP was making from the outset! There is a serious matter of principle involved here and the decision had to be contested on that alone. Of course there was also an element of getting to the front pages at a time when we were being deliberately shut out from the electoral process.I suspect that the decision will come back to haunt the political scene in the future.
Meanwhile, you suggest, that the other parties go quietly about their business. Well they might as their publicity material is pumped directly into our living rooms by a compliant national broadcasting company. I see absolutely no evidence of these other parties on doorsteps. I have received four seperate letters through the mail from Nick Clegg -shows how much he knows! – and two pages of photographs of Alan Reid visiting a fictional Post Office that he claims to have saved. Perhaps if his promotional material was printed within Argyll & Bute rather than somewhere near Birmingham he would not have been at KILGREGGAN Post Office. Anyone who prints credits from the oleaginous McCaig of the Oban Times must have exremely low self regard.
The unlamented poll tax was defeated by a well organised “Can Pay Won’t Pay” campaign. I would be more than willing to join a campaign to stop paying for a TV Licence until we receive a more balanced treatment from the BBC.If it were to go to the wall in its present form it would be no great loss.
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While the Leaders’ Debates are clearly putting the Scottish National Party at an immediate disadvantage in this election there are longer term benefits that will undoubtedly derive from the decision to hold these events.
This is effectively the end of the old two party system at Westminster. Those sad people like me who sometimes watch the proceedings at Westminster will know that it is normal practice when members of the LibDems or any other smaller party speaks they are drowned out by yobbish jeering and interference from the other “Honourable” members. Things are about to change.
Who knows, we may even see some form of PR voting being used to get a fairer more respresentative parliament at Westminster. The Labour Party, after 13 years of UK power state that they are now interested in revising procedures, but they may not be entirely truthful in this.I say this because in Edinburgh only yesterday they joined forces with the Tories in opposing the principle of PR voting for Westminster elections!
The prospect of a hung or balanced parliament is yet another crack in the status quo. The main parties hate the prospect but it can be a very positive indication that the people rather than parliament should be calling the shots.
Next we may see the House of Lords being replaced by an elected chamber?
The exposure of the expenses scandal and the Purcell affair in Glasgow has also started a process that has surely further to run. There cannot be many people who think that Jim Devine was either the only or even the worst case of a Scottish Labour MP abusing the system and it would seem that our Scottish broadsheets have either lost interest, or been bought off, pursuing the strange case of the Glasgow Council leader and his closet clique in the city. Small time drug users in Oban are pursued by the authorities with much more enthusiasm!
As they used to sing back in 1997, “Things can only get better!”
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I believe that attendance and the voting records of all elected persons should be a matter of public record. I have attended a few planning committee meetings in the past and was shocked at the personal statements and voting of some of our local councillors. But this information never filters back to us, the electorate and the councillors work with total anonymity.
When I lived in Canada the council meeting for the burgh where broadcast live on a public TV channel. The advantage of cable I guess. Not huge ratings but interested parties could watch in on issues that affected them and this is what passes for daytime TV in Toronto. This would be significantly more useful than the round of useless leaders debate I have just sat through. I am neither more informed or politically literate for the exercise. We don’t have cable but we do have For Argyll.
The only way to ensure public servants are accountable is to have attendance and voting information readily available in the public domain. In fact it should published weekly on For Argyll. I have floated this idea before. Give a politician nowhere to hide and then we will have a proper democracy. Politicians need to be constantly watched and where the news papers do a good job on the big stuff we need to be watching the daily small stuff to get an overall view of what is being done in our name.
Super number of replies to a piece that has clearly got everyone stepping of the side lines and participating in the debate.
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For Dave McEwan,
thanks for the reply on personalised letter thing above. I had not considered the financing of the election in my reply. One just assumes that because the SNP are in Government that money would be no object. I had not considered the fact that big party donations to the Tory and Labour parties would be used north of border to swing seats needed to secure a Westminster Government.
Clearly this an alarming fact of election life and shows what a great result the last Scottish and European election in Argyll was for the SNP when facing down these kinds of financial odds. I take my hat off to the army of local SNP volunteers that are doing their best to level the playing field and hopefully secure an election outcome based on policy and substance and not the depth of the party’s pockets.
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In reply to Newsroom!
The attendance records of all Councillors are available on the A&B Council website.
I highlighted Councillor Mulvanney’s attendance because it was significantly worse that that of any other A&B Councillor.
I am a retired person! You are supposed to be the investigative journalist! but like too much of the current Media in Scotland at present you want comment passed to you without incurring any effort.
Look up the Council website on Attendance over the last year and then comment, please!
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For Dot Macdonald:
Had your own investigative work – which we commend – been properly based, your comment on Councillor Mulvaney’s attendance record would automatically have set it in the context and facts of the general picture; and benchmarked it against examples of both ends of the spectrum and the average performance.
The attendance is so minute that it does clearly stand as inadequate but stating only the bald fact leaves it bereft of the focus of context.
You could know, by reading the site, just how much serious investigative and campaigning work we manage to do, with the tiniest imaginable team and alongside the running news service. Our current home page carries stories relating to two very successful pieces of continuing investigative work – on the ships in Loch Striven (in particular, the conduct of Clydeport); and on the Machrihanish airbase situation. There are others.
We cannot speak for the practice of other news outlets but we can stand over our own. We doubt if anyone, however much we may have offended them, would cite lack of effort in any criticism of what we do.
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I’m considering making up a quick poster “SNP Victory – You Can Bet On It”
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Before I comment, I would like to point out that I am no relation to the other contributor here, although I fully endorse his views.
I would like simply to ask your readers to google “lady smith q.c.” and I think they might be even less surprised by the result that the ‘establishment’ arrived at in the court of session recently.
Excellent comments, very strange editorial on the article
Gavin Hill
Ayrshire
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I make no criticism of many other ‘For Argyll’ articles for the lack of effort but I close with the distinct impression that you are not interested in ‘exposing’ Councillor Mulvanney’s lack of effort!
Councillor Mulvanney failed to attend the annual Council Budget Meeting which probably ranks as the most important meeting of the year.
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Just back in from work and would like to comment on Newsroom’s comment that as the SNP were ‘unlikely’ to win the Party ought to have sidelined itself and effectively allow the Unionist parties a clear run.
As the defenders of Scottish interests the SNP would be guilty of a dereliction of duty in not challenging the BBC’s anti-democratic decision to exclude the party from the leaders’ debates.
Scottish viewers have been ill served by a British – in other words, English – ‘debate’, which has wilfully misrepresented the political realities of the devolved nations.
In last night’s debate alone, there were repeated references to education, policing and housing, none of which applied to Scotland.
However, it was the issue of immigration that manifestly demonstrated the false choice on offer from the London parties and the need for a distinctively Scottish voice to be heard. All three of the London parties huddled together on the same right wing ground normally reserved to the bigots in the BNP, effectively conceding that immigration was a ‘problem’ and trying to outdo each other in their frantic attempts to trawl for votes.
Yet in Scotland, we have both a falling and ageing population (another Union Dividend), and desperately require greater numbers in order to both deliver and pay for (via taxes) our public services. Neither this nor the SNP Government’s policy to attract skilled workers to close this gap was given an airing in this ‘national’ debate, skewering the issue and offering a false prospectus to voters in Scotland.
Combined with the massive increase in exposure and credibility that the Unionist parties have gained over the SNP, and Scotland, by the BBC’s transmitting of the 3 debates into Scotland, the SNP was absolutely right to stand up for democracy and fairness by taking this case to court.
.
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There were two elephants in that room last night and I suggest that an SNP spokeperson would have shone some light on both of them.
First is the quite horrendous level of debt that we are all saddled with in spite of Gordon Brown’s fabled financial genius and that none of the three “main ” parties are even starting to think about resolving it -and the consequences that we all face for cuts in services and work.
The second is the question of Trident -surely an issue of huge importance in Argyll & Bute where we sit at the centre of the bullseye. The SNP have a very clear and distinct policy of not renewing Trident and doing away with the present weapons system. That system is unsustainable on financial grounds and indefensible also on moral grounds. The savings would be useful to start to offset our indebtedness and would give a superb lead and example to watching world.
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Irony has not died, as someone observed when Tony Blair was appointed “peace envoy” to the Middle East. It’s very much alive as the Labour party try to sell as Brown as “good with the economy”.
One trillion pound in debt. That is £1,000,000,000,000,000 if I’m not mistaken. My eyes are glazing over. The interest on that is £500 million per day. Our economy is actually 12% worse off than the Greek economy. The only collateral keeping UK out of bankruptcy is Scottish Oil revenues against the monumental sums Brown and Darling have borrowed. And to think that the party governing Scotland has the express intention of removing this collateral yet apparently is not significant enough to merit a place at the “great debate”.
Get real.
I actually think it is very miuch in England’s interest to hear the thoughts of a party that is working towards the removal of a third of UK’s landmass and its major generator of funds.
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Listened to our Deputy First Minister on Any Questions on Radio4 tonight. On a panel with Shaun Woodward, who defected from the Tories to become a Labour Minister, Michael Gove the Tory Education spokesman that English commentators apparently think has an impenetrable Aberdonian accent and Charles Kennedy, Nicola’s calm assurance and sound good sense shone like a beacon. We have another star.
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Councillor Simon , you say Scotland’s population is falling . You are wrong it is rising .
Will you apologise for misleading the public ?
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Oops. It’s a different kintyre1 today. This one knows how utilise upper case letters on his keyboard.
As was made perfectly clear the rise in Scotland’s population is entirely due to immigration.
Terrific day in Campbeltown today.Very warm response for Mike Mackenzie indeed
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4600 more births than deaths in Scotland last year the biggest difference for 18 years , Scotlands population INCREASING , another gaff from Councillor Simon .
At least Gordon Brown apologised when he made a mistake in Rochdale why won’t Councillor Simon admit he got his facts wrong ?
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It is nice to see that Kintyre 1 is back with us, is he taking a rest after putting up Alan Reid’s Sign.
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kintyre1
There are more births than deaths virtually every year in Scotland since 1897. So what is you point?
The fact is that this is cancelled by people leaving Scotland most years.
In some recent years there have been more immigrants than emigrants (like last year for instance).
The increase in Scotland’s population is entirely down to this as more Scots left Scotland than were born in Scotland last year.
This historic trend will continue until all the decision making about Scotland and all the serious employment that this offers is returned to an independent Scotland which will have the rebuilding of Scotland’s destroyed and colonised economy as its number one priority.
I and my family are fairly typical. As children there were five of us. There are two of us now in Scotland and we have both returned basically to retire. This is Scotland’s story.
I am still searching for some point to your post though I know I shouldn’t bother.
Did you know that the population of Norway, of England and of many other countries has virtually doubled over the 120 years while Scotland’s has stayed the same. I mention those two countries because of a number of telling comparisons that can be drawn.
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kintyre1 why should I apologise and be accused of misleading the public for something I havent said.
If you would care to carefully read through the posts again you will note that it was another contributor who posted that. Its quite easy to check on here as each post has the contributors name on it! Anything I contribute has my own name on it and doesnt hide behind an alias!
Ooops I forgot that you hadnt grasped that concept.
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kintyre1
As its you who made the gaffe, and you are obviously very enthusiastic about the principle of people saying sorry when they get it wrong, I now look forward to your apology!
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Councillor Simon , I apologise to you .
The incorrect statement that Scotland’s population is falling was made by your fellow nationalist Ron Wilson , perhaps you would be good enough to tell him the true position ie Scotland’s population is GROWING.
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Accepted!
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The indigenous population of the country continuous to follow a downward trend, with a lower birth rate, a high degree of migration furth of the country and, to cap it all, an ageing population.
The headline increase in population is entirely due to immigration. Indeed the Register General highlighted the net gain of 17,500 people as being ‘the highest net gain from overseas migration since current records began in 1991-92’.
http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/press/news2010/population-highest-for-generation.html
The same trend was evident 2 years ago
http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/press/news2008/scottish-population-highest-since-1983.html
where ‘mothers from Eastern Europe accounted for one in three of the increase in the number of births between 2006 and 2007′
Immigration can in itself be a positive affirmation but equally points up a deeper malaise if the host community’s population is declining either via birth rate and/or emigration. We need to be asking why it is that as a nation we continue to see more Scots leaving the country than were born here, rather than playing silly beggers with selective figures aka Kintyre1.
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Good contribution Ron.
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