The West Lothian problem finally solved - by a £1.50 bag of sweets.

At the Scotland Bill reading in the House of Commons yesterday, there were debates over a number of issues. One was income tax. There were some Tory members who raised the issue that only devolving some aspects of income tax and not all of it, will lead to problems.

Chief amongst those was Sir Edward Leigh, who got cheers from the crowded SNP benches for his comments.

He said that, for example, not devolving the income threshold (i.e. the personal allowance) at which workers pay income tax would mean that Westminster can change the rule overnight with a consequent effect on Scotland's finances. The effect is to not make Holyrood a responsible parliament, denying it the full tax-varying powers that Westminster so dearly values. Far better to have FFA (Full Fiscal Autonomy, i.e. Home Rule).

He also quoted the finance figures that really puts the whole devolution debate into perspective:

"Scottish Parliament spends £37 billion and raises £30 billion - quite responsible, actually. The UK spends £732 billion and raises £648 billion."

Thus, he argued, giving Scotland full fiscal responsibility is unlikely to upset the UK's fiscal responsibility because Scotland's budget is so small by comparison.

Indeed, £37 billion divided by £732 billion is just 5%. Scotland's budget is 5% of the UK's. This, one notes, is below  Scotland's population share. But if the numbers are so small, one wonders why English MPs make such a fuss over them. Simply give Scotland Home Rule and make a promise that if we fall short of a billion or two, the UK will bail us out.

If I was the Tory Prime Minister, it's what I'd do to solve the "Scottish problem." It would highlight whether Scotland could go it alone or not. If it survives, then UK finances benefit; if it fails, then UK bails it out and Unionists win their case.

Even if Scotland needed a bailout of £10 billion, this is only £10/£648 = 1.5% of what the UK raises, the equivalent of a parent earning £100 per week tossing their favourite child an extra £1.50 to go buy that extra bag of sweets in the shops.

A cheap, quick solution for us all.

Why are we even debating this? What on Earth is the problem? Simply give Scotland Home Rule now and the West Lothian problem is put to bed forever.

Was Clypegate a planned response to the BBC's The Fall of Labour?

Last Monday, the BBC aired a program called The Fall of Labour, though a better name would have been The Continuing Fall of Scottish Labour. In the documentary, senior Scottish Labour figures aired their dirty laundry in public (read my write-up of it here).

One of the moments that haunts me from that program is when Jackie Bird interviews Johann Lamont, the leader of Scottish Labour during the independence referendum but who was forced to quit afterwards, and asks: "But isn't that an indictment of a Labour party which has been accused down the decades of backstabbing and infighting?"

Lamont's response is legendary: "That's only on the good days."

If you have access to the documentary, such as on iPlayer here, the section of Lamont quitting begins at around 47 minutes. Watch it. She smiles after delivering that line but she can't hold it. It quickly disappears and we see the look of hurt and trauma in her eyes.

Whatever you think of Lamont's politics, she's as human as the rest of us and has the same human rights as Nicola Sturgeon. No one needs to be treated so badly as it would appear the Labour party have treated her.

What else she confided in Jackie Bird but was never aired, we'll probably never know. But given many in the Labour party were appalled at her attack on Labour as she quit, I imagine Scottish Labour would be deeply worried about this program and Johann Lamont's contribution to it.

The very next scene in that documentary is David Whitton, a special advisor and former MSP, stating that the way she went was very damaging to the party and still damaging it today. So I can imagine Scottish Labour getting their heads together to try and come up with a strategy to mitigate the devastating impact of that documentary.

And their solution was to rope in the Scottish Daily Mail to help them whip up a storm about vile cybernats, the supposed mass ranks of independence supporters who like to send abuse via Twitter and Facebook.

First up was a front-page piece ("First Minister's links with vile cybernat trolls") about Nicola Sturgeon's supposed links with a vile cybernat, followed by more hideous details inside and accompanied by former Labour Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran's piece about a "cesspit of ugly vicious, sexist abuse" from the cybernats. Wings over Scotland details them well. (I'll assume that not even Scottish Labour can pull the strings of the Royal household and that the false rumour that Scotland would not continue to financially support the monarchy was pure coincidence and not part of the plan.)

Then on Thursday, the Scottish Daily Mail had another front-page piece ("Sturgeon: I'll purge party of cybernats"), courtesy of a piece written by Nicola Sturgeon herself. Quite how they roped her into this, I don't know. Perhaps the intervention by Harry Potter author JK Rowling a few days before the BBC programme aired was part of the plan too? Given she's a Labour supporter and donated to Better Together, perhaps she was asked to complain about Twitter abuse. Labour must have loved it when Iain Macwhirter gave them the perfect opportunity when he wrote that there was no anti-English sentiment in the SNP - but I guess anything would have done for them. Again, Wings details them well (here and here).

Then came the final cherry on the Scottish Labour damage-limitation cake: Clypegate, with the release of a 51 page dossier containing a list of all the abusive tweets SNP members had posted on Twitter. It contained the tweets of 45 people. As Wings pointed out, 20 of those users were in the dossier for using the words "quisling" or "traitor" - not exactly the vile swear word-filled abuse we'd been led to expect.

Hardly surprisingly, the press mostly ignored this collection of evidence that completely destroyed the whole vile cybernat campaign they'd been running for years. Anyone looking at the list will see that the evidence - compiled by Scottish Labour themselves - shows the press for the spin masters they are.

Even so, it has been an effective strategy by Scottish Labour. Given that the PDF of the abuse dossier contains Blair McDougall's name as author in its metadata, one can assume he was behind the whole, week-long campaign.

But the real story should have been The Fall of Labour. We finally have Scottish Labour admitting just how badly they've handled devolution and how they came to expect to be voted into power in Scotland no matter what. And the press concentrated on cybernats. They should have been concentrating on what Scottish Labour were saying.

There are deeply distressing things revealed in that show, such as:

1. an old trades union man saying "New Labour left me. I didn't leave Labour"
2. former Labour MP saying Labour's local government was "cronyism" and "near corruption"
3. former Labour First Minister saying Labour in Westminster would not publicly celebrate the achievements of Holyrood
4. former Labour MSP and Health Minister saying that when they were in power at Holyrood, they had no long-term aims and it was all about "how you'd win the vote that week, what the headline would be, how we'd be seen to be getting one over on the Nats."
5. former Scottish Labour party leader saying "the core of our problem... is the inability of the party to really come to terms with the new political context created by devolution."

I gave a brief analysis of what this meant in my post Devolution is to Labour as Europe is to the Tories. A free press in Scotland would have ran with something similar. But they didn't.

Then there were the things the programme didn't say but only hinted at. Just how much control did Gordon Brown have over Holyrood when he was Chancellor down in Westminster under Tony Blair? This isn't investigated in the documentary at all. This takes us back to Johann Lamont. She claimed Scottish Labour was being treated as a branch office and, in that documentary, former Labour First Minister Jack McConnell confirms that by stating the Scottish Labour party "did not have control over the Scottish Labour party headquarters and the tendency in the Scottish Labour party headquarters was to turn towards the Westminster leadership and Westminster elected representatives rather than Holyrood."

The BBC's programme The Fall of Labour and the airing of some of Scottish Labour's dirty laundry, with the not-too-subtle hints that there's a lot more they are keeping secret, is the story of the week. In fact, I'd say that second only to the general election result, it's the story of the year. 

Will Gordon Brown and other cabinet members from New Labour's time at Downing Street now come out and contribute to a similar programme, looking at how Westminster Labour viewed Scottish Labour and how Westminster worked to pull Scottish Labour's strings at every turn?

We know the stories are there. If Labour want to recover, they need to lance this boil. With Labour decimated in Scotland, they have nothing to lose. The party can't be damaged any further. A full and frank admission of how essentially Labour hated devolution and controlled the Scottish Parliament from Westminster could be the start of their healing process. 

If nothing else, it would at least help to remove the troubled, traumatic look from the eyes of Johann Lamont.

Slim Watch No. 006

The goings-on of the world-famous Valorie-Restricted Three: Crash-diet Carmichael, Low-cal Mundell and Binger Murray.

On Monday night, the BBC aired a programme called The Fall of Labour which chronicled just how rubbish Scottish Labour have been. Of course, Binger Murray would obviously be keen to comment on that programme. In fact, being the last Labour MP in Scotland, you'd imagine he'd be begging to be part of the documentary.

Instead, he was nowhere in sight. He wasn't included in the documentary and never made any comment about it after it aired. But he did crawl out of hiding to praise former MP and Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran's piece in the Daily Mail about vile, nasty cybernattery - even though most of the piece was made up.

Just like this blog post. It's only meant to be a little bit of fun - an attempt at a little bit of humour to make politics seem less like academics fighting a war. Who's got the time to read every report and every dossier on every subject? Not Binger. He's too busy swallowing whole curried goats and eyeing up what's on his neighbour's plate.

The restaurants at Fort Kinnaird retail park are his favourite. He probably goes there with Low-cal Mundell when he's sneakily taking a break from his valorie-restriction diet. This retail park, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, is to become an island of Britishness in an otherwise sea of Scottishness. Despite the Crown Estate being devolved to Scotland, Low-cal confirmed that properties like the Fort Kinnaird are just making too much cash for the British Treasury to let it go. It's the equivalent of an inland oil rig and they won't devolve it until they suck it dry.

But all this passed poor Crash-diet Carmichael by. He was too busy trying to re-fight the referendum, accusing David Cameron of "almost psychopathic ruthlessness" for daring to talk about England and his half-baked attempt to give it a form of devolution via English votes for English laws. But he's months out of date. The referendum is over and shouting about it won't rally the union flag wavers of Orkney & Shetland to help him keep his post. His diet is about to become enforced starvation.

So who should top the charts of this weeks VR3 news? It has to be Low-cal Mundell. Who else has the nerve to appear in Holyrood and claim that Westminster keeping the good bits of Scotland for itself and giving Scotland the rubbish bits was a great deal for Scotland? I guess he thinks if he's on a diet, then the rest of Scotland should be too. Especially an economic diet. Who in their right mind would want uppity jocks to have access to their own wealth?


Will Low-cal hold on to the top spot or will Binger surprise us all by publicly admitting Scottish Labour's past failures? Only time will tell...

Tune in next week for more unbearable goings-on of the most famous diet-group in the world, the Valorie-Restricted Three!

Last week's update: Slim Watch No. 005

It was my social-media posts wot won it for the Tories!

I just got a personal thank you from David Cameron for all my Facebook posts in support of independence and in support of voting for the SNP in the General Election - this turned England against Labour, because England hung on my every word.

He also thanked me for my cybernattery and the absolute tsunami of Twitter abuse I personally threw at Unionists because that single-handedly destroyed Labour in Scotland, clearing the way for the Tories to romp home (though he did chastise me for not first hooking up Edinburgh South to the internet and thus allowing those residents to escape my keyboard brainwashing, but he's not to worry because I'll get them next time).

Policies and personalities don't matter in politics any more, said Cameron - which is why absolutely no one watched the televised leaders' debates during the election campaign. Everyone was too busy waiting for me to abuse them online. For my efforts, he's putting me forward for a knighthood.

Yes, it was all my social-media posts wot won it for the Tories.

Honestly! Unionists will believe anything...

Is it disgusting to arrest someone in a wheelchair?

At Wednesday's Prime Ministers Questions, a group of disabled and able-bodied people tried to break in to the House of Commons to protest at Cameron's proposal to end the independent living fund. This has caused a complaint of police being heavy-handed in how they dealt with them.

As far as I can tell, the police blocked their path into the House of Commons and wheeled some of them away. They didn't arrest or beat or cause the death of anyone, which makes a nice change to their approach when dealing with non-disabled protesters.

According to the Channel 4 report (linked to above), demonstrator Mary Johnson said:

she witnessed one protester being "dragged away by police" claiming officers' behaviour was "disgusting" and that they had been "pushing wheelchairs around".

I'm no fan of the police but, to be honest, in this instance I think they acted properly. Instead of discriminating against them because they were disabled and thus just standing about wondering what to do as they broke into the House of Commons, they treated them like any other citizen and stopped them from breaching the necessary security of the House of Commons.

Mary Johnson rather ruins the idea of the poor disabled wheelchair user being picked on by the police when she also adds:

"Over 30 people, disabled activists, independent living fund users and Dpac members, have gone in, they made a rush for the House of Commons doors... A lot of these guys have very severe impairments, wheelchairs with their equipment, who are facing down police officers....they are not going to run from the government, from a fight. They are prepared to fight for their rights with everything they have." 

It's hardly the image of police picking on the disabled when the disabled make a rush for the doors, face down police officers and defiantly say they will not run from a fight!

However, I do support the disabled in their efforts. Cameron's Tories worship Thatcher's statement "there is no such thing as society" and are now trying to bring that into reality. For Scotland, the quicker we become independent - and thus mostly Tory-free - the better.

Call that abuse? Luxury!

There have been comments and tweets suggesting that JK is missing the spotlight since Harry Potter ended. If she's missing the media attention so much that it's driving her to jump on an easy bandwagon, namely SNP bashing, then it's certainly a strategy that's worked - the media have lapped it up.

However, if JK Rowling thinks she's going to win the crown for the most abused Unionist in Scotland then I'm afraid she's a million light years behind the front runners.

I imagine a scene just like the Monty Python sketch where Yorkshiremen argue about who was the most poor - you know the one, usually (wrongly) paraphrased as "Lived in crack in road? Luxury!"

So here's my brief take on that, followed at the end by a call to arms for us all to rewrite that sketch!

JK ROWLING

"I've been called an English luvvie on Twitter - now that's abuse."

JIM MURPHY

"Call that abuse? Luxury! I'd give all me fundily mundilies to be called an English luvvie on Twitter. I've been pelted with eggs, shouted at through mega phones, had Star Wars' theme tune played to me with shouts of 'bow to your imperial masters', been forced to run off the street with my favourite cross-dressing comedian - even been compared to Ridley Scott's alien. Oh my poor fundily mundilies but that's abuse."

JOHANN LAMONT 

"Call that abuse? Luxury! I've been told I was too incompetent to lead the branch office up here and then was genetically programmed to fall on my own sword. Now that's abuse."

NICOLA STURGEON 

"Call that abuse? Luxury! I've been called Britain's most dangerous woman. There were no swear words involved but the best abuse never uses them. Now that's real abuse."

Of course, I wish now I'd recorded all the insults that had been thrown around during the referendum and since. Perhaps this would be a good community effort? Could we all collectively write a similar comedy sketch, listing all the insults that have been hurled around over the past few years? What politicians and others would we have in such a sketch?

Nicola Sturgeon writes today about the abuse she's received on Twitter and calls on SNP members to be more careful with their language on social media or they'll be disciplined. All sides have hurled insults - today, Alistair Carmichael has accused David Cameron of having an "almost psychopathic ruthlessness."

A sketch 'celebrating' the best insults might just help to make us all laugh and thus diffuse the situation. Are you up for helping?

Devolution is to Labour as Europe is to the Tories

In yesterday's post, I discussed the BBC programme The Fall of Labour. I thought I'd give some thoughts on what the programme's senior Labour figures said.

My understanding is that Labour wanted to see off the rise of the SNP. To do that, they came up with the idea of devolution. Once a Scottish Parliament was created, they argued, there'd be no reason for the SNP to continue.

However once the Scottish Parliament was created, Labour didn't know what to do with it. There appears to have been a reluctance by Westminster to let go of the powers they'd given to Holyrood. Claims are made that Gordon Brown had a rather unhealthy influence over what Scottish Labour did in the Holyrood chamber; much friction between MSPs and MPs resulted.

This division is still plaguing Labour today. Although the split in the Tory party over Europe is well known, it appears that the split within the Labour party over Scottish devolution is only now beginning to be noticed. As my title says, it would appear that Devolution is to Labour as Europe is to the Tories.

This split could tear the Labour party apart. Senior voices are calling for greater autonomy for SLAB within UK Lab, others for an independent SLAB, and still others for maintaining the Westminster-led system.

If it is true that Labour only created the Scottish Parliament to kill off the SNP, then this is perhaps the biggest political blunder of our generation. Instead of killing them, it gave the SNP exactly the platform they needed and the SNP have flourished; Labour, on the other hand, have suffered.

The conclusion then is this: the threat of the SNP in the decades prior to devolution is what ultimately decimated Scottish Labour. If Labour hadn't created the Scottish Parliament, would the SNP be the force they are today?

Finally, the BBC admit that SLAB are crap

It was a long time coming. But even the BBC couldn't ignore the almost complete annihilation of Scottish Labour (SLAB) at the recent general election.

So last night, they finally gritted their teeth and aired a programme called The Fall of Labour (viewers in the UK can see it on the iPlayer here).

Presenter Jackie Bird's opening remarks highlighted the changed nature of Labour - its only Westminster seat in Scotland was in the affluent Edinburgh South constituency of million-pound homes. Affluence was now its new heartland in Scotland. Later, in a piece about the demise of the Ravenscraig steel plant under Thatcher, a former trade union man at the plant, Tommy Brennan, confirmed that picture. Asked by Jackie Bird if the failure of politicians to build the promised new town on the site of Ravenscraig was why he left Labour, he said what many former Labour members have been saying for years:

"No - New Labour left me. I didn't leave Labour - I'm still a socialist and I always will be till the day I die. Labour left me, as it did with many, many people like myself - many, many activists in the trade union movement, people who gave their life. I gave 39 and a half years to the Labour party.You don't do that and walk away from that lightly.

His pain and anger was palpable, literally spitting at the end.

The programme looked into the history of Labour, from its formation by a Lanarkshire miner to today's woes. One issue it highlighted was that the Labour party was originally in favour of Home Rule for Scotland. However, the issue has torn the Labour party apart. Jackie Bird commented:

"This was a big problem for Labour. The idea of Scotland being governed from Scotland was championed by its founding father Keir Hardie and was a key pillar of its existence. But over the decades, division within the party over devolution meant its relationship with this crucial policy was, at the very least, an uneasy one."

Speaking about the 1979 referendum on devolution, which was voted for by a majority of those who voted but was lost due to a Labour wrecking motion that 40% of the entire electorate had to vote for it, Jackie Bird commented:

"The effects of that referendum are profound. It was seen as a blow to Scotland's self confidence. But did it damage the Labour party? Well, it did see the emergence of Tam Dalyell's West Lothian Question: how could Scottish MPs, after devolution, vote on matters affecting English seats? And that question has reverberated down the years. And Labour has yet to come up with an answer."

Labour's heyday in Scotland was undoubtedly when Thatcher came to power. Having a clear enemy boosted their profile. In the first two years of Thatcher's government, Scotland lost one-fifth of its heavy industry. Scottish Labour membership surged but they were powerless against Thatcher and could not stop her destructive forces, perhaps most iconically summarised by Ravenscraig's demise.

Even though Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had to change the party to appeal to centre-right 'middle England,' and thus won a landslide in 1997, the anti-Thatcher image kept Scots voting for them. This led to complacency within SLAB.

Ian Davidson:

"There were of course some parts of local government where it was done on Buggins's turn, it was cronyism - in many cases it was near corruption. There was a degeneration of Labour in local government because they were there because they were there because they were there. They weren't really there with any particular burning purpose."

Gerry Hassan:

"It's not an accident that some of the greatest scandals of British post-war local government have happened in Scotland. One of the most significant was in Monklands. In 1993/4 this comes out and is brought to attention. And what it turned out was a Labour group that was predominantly Catholic was dispensing public funds to the predominantly Catholic area of the council. And Labour were prepared to just let that fester. It was also partly John Smith's constituency and it only came to light really when Tory English MPs continued to make it an issue in the House of Commons when Smith had become leader post-1992. And eventually the party has to act on it, to do an enquiry into it, clean up Monklands and then when John Smith tragically dies in 1994 there's then a very difficult by-election for the Labour party which Helen Liddel just very narrowly manages to win for the Labour party."

Tribalism was a real problem for Labour. Instead of representing all of the people, they simply represented their own interests.

Under Blair and Brown, who stormed to victory in 1997, devolution was brought in, championed by the new Secretary of State for Scotland Donald Dewar. The BBC obviously has a sense of humour, showing a 1995's George Robertson's statement on the idea of devolution:

"A Scottish Parliament inside and strengthening the United Kingdom would kill the SNP because the majority of people in Scotland want control over their own lives, over domestic affairs, but they don't want to wrench Scotland out of the United Kingdom."

If devolution was only a political tactic to weaken the SNP, it failed badly.

The rest of the program really concentrated on the impact on politics that the Scottish Parliament had. First up was the SLAB selection process for MSPs, with accusations that the process was controlled from Westminster via Donald Dewar. As a result, some of the best talent in SLAB was denied a seat within Holyrood. When Dewar died within a year of becoming the inaugural First Minster of Scotland, it left SLAB headless. No one in SLAB knew what to do with the SP it had created.

SLAB's problems were made worse because they had a tradition of looking to Westminster for guidance. This created friction between the MSPs and the MPs. This was worsened when Holyrood wanted to go in a different policy direction from Westminster. If Scotland gave its residents something for free, England would only want it as well.

However, Ian Davidson blames McLeish, who followed Dewar as First Minister, and then his successor McConnel, for being too weak and not doing enough - their failings were nothing to do with Westminster friction.

But there was also the accusation that Gordon Brown influenced every decision made by Scottish Labour. Did this discord between Holyrood and Westminster damage the Labour party? Jack McConnell commented on the lack of Westminster praise for Holyrood's achievements:

"You will find rarely, over the last decade, a leadership figure in the Labour party in Westminster - Scottish or from elsewhere in the UK - who has made a speech celebrating those achievements. And there was something, something somewhere, deep-rooted, that stopped those achievements being celebrated. And people in Scotland noticed that."

Former Holyrood Health Minster Susan Deacon suggested that Labour's achievements were less than stellar:

"Week on week, discussions about policy and so on were driven not by kind of long-term aims but rather about how you'd win the vote that week, what the headline would be, how we'd be seen to be getting one over on the Nats. And I know that many of my erstwhile colleagues will despise me for saying that, but I'm sorry, that's what it felt like to me, and that's what I disliked, and I firmly believe it's what an awful lot of the Scottish public disliked too." 

With the rise of the SNP as a credible Holyrood opposition, they eventually won power in 2007. McConnell comments that from then on, Labour were driven by "defensive anger" at their defeat. Iain Gray took over as SLAB leader. He comments:

"I think if you do any kind of job like that, the dangerous thing, but the thing which nobody can avoid, is you look back and think about things that you could've done differently. My view of the core of our problem - this is not the only problem but I think it's at the heart of it - is the inability of the party to really come to terms with the new political context created by devolution. I think I maybe half understood that when I was a leader. I think I understand that much better now."

With the SNP Holyrood landslide in 2011, Johann Lamont became the new SLAB leader. She describes the period then as SLAB being in "intensive care." As Jackie Bird noted, there was also a brand problem - big Scottish Labour names like Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were all at Westminster, not Holyrood.

Then, of course, came the Scottish Independence Referendum. Various commentators on the program all bemoaned the fact that Labour had to go into bed with the Tories and that the Better Together campaign was created in London and then dumped on the Scots to run. Labour had no way of putting forward their vision of progressive politics because they were chained to the Tories, so the campaign became a negative one - which Scotland didn't like.

After the indyref, Johann Lamont quit, accusing Labour in London of treating SLAB as a "branch office." Discussing the internal party fight over whether Lamont should go or not, Jackie Bird asked her "But isn't that an indictment of a Labour party which has been accused down the decades of backstabbing and infighting?" Lamont's response is legendary:

"That's only on the good days."

Jack McConnell sums up Labour's problems since the creation of the Scottish Parliament:

 "Well, I think there were two really significant problems that faced any leader of the Scottish Labour party over the last fifteen years. One was that they did not have control over the Scottish Labour party headquarters and the tendency in the Scottish Labour party headquarters was to turn towards the Westminster leadership and Westminster elected representatives rather than Holyrood."

Jackie Bird intervened to ask "Why did they not have control? Explain that to me." McConnell continued:

"Well, the party's staff are all employed by the Labour party as a whole but also in terms of the personalities - and to some extent the tradition - the tendency was to turn towards the Westminster end of the party rather than the Holyrood or the Scottish end."

Jim Murphy, a Westminster MP, then became the new leader of Scottish Labour. Iain Gray summed up their Westminster defeat in the 2015 general election:

"I think that we failed really to understand the difference that devolution had made and I think that's carried through all the way really until 2015 and the effect of that has gradually eroded our position in Scotland and in 2015 eroded it disastrously - just disastrously."

Jim Murphy resigned as leader and a leadership contest is now under way. Predictably, the programme ended with a bit of Labour's song: "We'll keep the red flag flying here."

However, for this blogger, the flag looks to be stained blue and is lying tarnished on the ground. Still, at least the BBC now have no excuse for stuffing their TV studios with Scottish Labour MPs or MSPs. Given there is now only one MP and it looks as though the 2016 Holyrood elections will significantly reduce the Labour MSPs, it is likely the BBC will struggle to find enough Labour faces to grace their studios.

I predict the BBC will instead have lots of historical programmes about the past successes of Labour. It's interesting to note that many of the quotes from the senior Labour figures that I use here are missing from the BBC News website's quote collection in The fall of Labour in Scotland - in their own words article. Perhaps some of it was just too painful to write down.

But the message of the programme is clear: the Labour party did not understand devolution and it probably still doesn't. By insisting on remaining tied to UK Labour, SLAB look to be perpetuating that exact same mistake. Will they ever learn?

JK Rowling: the SNP are not bad wizards trying to turn the English into frogs

I disagree totally with JK Rowling's stance that the SNP contains anti-English sentiments. As Twitter users pointed out to her, the movement is pro-self-determination not anti-other-countries.

It's also fair game to point out that Scotland entered into a partnership with England (the "Union") and now feel that we're not getting a good deal from that partnership. But that's an anti-Westminster feeling because it's them that call the shots, not the everyday folks of England.

During the indyref, there was also the English Scots for YES group:

They were welcomed with open arms by the wider YES movement. Their inclusion summed up perfectly what was happening in the minds of Yessers - it was all about Scotland and what was best for Scotland.

Yet there are still people who feel that the movement was really about hating England. I'm not entirely sure if JK falls into this group or not. She claims she has good friends who are SNP members but she is becoming as famous for her stories about anti-English sentiment within the SNP as for her stories about wizards.

I've never met JK and wish her all the best. But perhaps she should consider if it's her own attitude that is inviting negative comments and not her English background. It's easy to say your are being mistreated purely as a result of being black or of being a woman or of being gay or of being ginger or of being disabled or of being this or of being that and so we could all go on.

But sometimes you get treated in a less than respectful way because of your own personality. It's much more difficult to accept people don't like you because they don't like the way you conduct yourself and the views you express. That would mean you'd have to reflect on what you've been doing and why you've been doing it. Much easier to believe you're perfect and blame others for not liking you because there is something wrong with them - like being racist.

Again, I don't know JK and have never met her.

But sticking your head above the parapet to smear a movement with claims that it is racist is going to provoke a response from even the most saintliest of people.

I encourage JK to analyse her own attitudes to the independence movement and consider whether it's time she changed them. The SNP are not bad wizards trying to turn the English into frogs - they are good people doing their best to make their country prosper. Shouting racist at them doesn't really help.


If you want an alternative to boy wizard books, try my politics-science fiction one. It's only 25,000 words so could be read in an afternoon. It's main focus is really a man in his 50s who goes back in time to meet himself in his 20s to try and convince him to change his ways but without revealing he's himself. Of course, it all goes horribly wrong...

The Record Count of Westminster

Slim Watch No. 005

The goings-on of the world-famous Valorie-Restricted Three: Crash-diet Carmichael, Low-cal Mundell and Binger Murray.


Binger Murray has finally accepted he was guilty of stuffing his gob with all the valories of his fellow Scottish Labour MPs, which resulted in their downfall. To atone for his greed, he allowed himself to be publicly punished the old-fashioned way - by being placed in the stocks:

Unfortunately, it was only water-filled sponges that were thrown at him by the pupils of St Peter's Primary. Didn't stop him from catching the sponges in his mouth and sucking them dry, the greedy little glutton.

Still, Kezia Dugdale was happy. She believes it's time for the next generation to lead the Scottish Labour party. Polls showed only 5% of 25-34 year-olds will vote Labour but 80% will vote SNP. She wants to get down with the kids. Well, the kids of St Peter's Primary are ready and waiting. When the Second Apocalypse of Scottish Labour takes place in the 2016 Holyrood elections, Kezia needn't worry - her place in the Splat your MSP stocks is already guaranteed.

Unfortunately for Crash-diet Carmichael, his place as an MP is anything but guaranteed. The good folks of Orkney & Shetland are still after him for his leaking of the Frenchgate memo and then telling fibs about it. Low-cal Mundell helped his old buddy by saying it was nothing to do with him and to prove it, he'll keep everything about the memo secret. Yes, that's right. If a diet is good enough for old Low-cal, then a strict fasting of the truth is good for everyone else.

To distract the population from Frenchgate, Low-cal started talking about buses. Yes, there's a trial bus service going through his neck of the woods to help with rural transport. It's the new 73 service. Much better than that X74 Stagecoach service that wouldn't stop where he ordered it to. Still, at least there's no danger of him being served nuts in a bag on either service, so he should count himself lucky.

But the distraction didn't work. It's going to take more than buses to pull the French wool over Scotland's eyes. Perhaps both Crash-diet and Low-cal could follow Binger's example and voluntarily put themselves into the stocks? They could even do a tour round Scotland. There's nothing like Splatting an MP to cheer up the nation. And we need cheering up after the key plank of the Vow was dishonoured when Westminster voted against making the Scottish parliament permanent. Low-cal was delighted. He believes only Westminster should be permanent. It's like Little Britain's sketch "I'm the only gay in the village." Anthropomorphising Westminster, I can see it pout and claim "I'm the only parliament in the UK village!"

No, you're not. Perhaps the school children of St Peter's Primary should make a Splat your Parliament stockade too? But hold on to your haggisses! Isn't that what the general election is? Well, at least in Scotland. Just a shame Westminster is able to throw our wet sponges right back at us.

Speaking of wet sponges, a spell in the kids' Splat your MP stall may actually help Crash-diet win back the trust of the people who voted for him, which he announced he is now trying to do. The lack of valories must be going to his head though, making him sluggish and confused. Can you believe he said this?

"I understand that there are a few people who have lost a bit of trust in me."

Only a few? Well, that's all right then. No need for us to bother with that court case against him for telling porkies during the election campaign. Especially now we've got a Splat your MP stall. Thanks to Binger for showing us the way.

For being so honest, for admitting his guilt, for voluntarily putting himself in the stocks, I give Binger Murray the top spot in this weeks VR3 charts. It's just a shame he was so hungry afterwards, he terrorised the school canteen like a modern-day Pacman, chasing the kids round the tables and scoffing up any packed lunches they dropped. They would have put him back in the stocks for his shameless gluttony but he'd eaten them too.

With no stocks, bang goes the people's criminal justice system. We're back to MPs doing as they please...


Tune in next week for more unbearable goings-on of the most famous diet-group in the world, the Valorie-Restricted Three!

Last week's update: Slim Watch No. 004

My Twitter exchange with a JK Rowling supporter - and her unbelievable reaction!

I couldn't believe the reaction of a Twitter user who blocked me for having a polite debate about abuse on Twitter. I assume she's a JK Rowling fan and a Unionist from her comments.

The exchange came as part of the JKR moan against Iain Macwhirter's column in the Herald which pointed out that there was no anti-English feeling within the SNP.  I haven't hidden names here because you can easily view the tweets on Twitter, so no point. Please don't target this user - she's obviously closed her mind to exchanges so any tweets to her would be seen as abuse (and that's the last thing we need the papers jumping on).

The blog post I refer to is this one and in it I suggest:

Anyway, here's the exchange:

 

She never got to read my last two tweets because she blocked me! Rather than point me to evidence, she just closed the debate down. Is this a common reaction from Unionists? I was being extremely polite and did not expect that reaction.

Wings over Scotland has a good piece on the media reaction to JK Rowling's comments. Remember, she was never mentioned in Macwhirter's column - it was she who began the exchange. But for her followers or fellow Unionists to believe that the anti-SNP rhetoric has been 'reasoned' is the real absurdity.

Unfortunately, some fantasies are so tightly woven and so tightly clung to that there can be no hope for salvation - except from a Unionist newspaper which puts on their front page an apology to the SNP and the YES movement for the paper's behaviour during indyref. Maybe then things will begin to change.

But perhaps that's just my fantasy...

Why the car-with-children smoking ban will make Scotland a laughing stock

Scotland should have a criminal justice system that we're proud of. We don't want to be the laughing stock of the world. That means we need to have laws that are worthwhile having and not go down the road of 'bloat', where every pet belief is turned into an unworkable law.

Protecting children from cigarette smoke is a worthwhile aim. However if a parent or older sibling smokes in the living room of their own home while children are present, how can Scotland as a nation police that behaviour? Quite simply, it can't. Currently, there is no simple way of monitoring everything that takes place behind closed doors.

But because cars have windows, there is now a myth taking hold that that somehow allows us to monitor every activity that takes place inside a car. This is nonsense. However, the fear that you could be spotted might change people's behaviour. Certainly, this happened with the law requiring car occupants to wear a seat belt.

Most drivers keep their windscreens clean so that they can see out - which also allows police the ability to see the driver. It's a lot more difficult to see into the back of a car, or to see if a child is present given that they are much smaller than the car seats in front of them. So the seat-belt law is a workable law. Crucially in that case, the drive for the law came from the evidence that wearing a seat belt helped to preserve your life in collisions. Most people want to reduce their risk of death while driving and are happy to wear a seat belt.

The case for not smoking in cars when children are present is less clear cut. First of all, cars are not airtight. That means pollution from the roads seeps inside the car, causing all car occupants harm, not just to the children present. Is the negative effect of this pollution greater or lesser than that from cigarette smoke? I do not believe the answer is clear cut.

Childhood obesity is also a growing epidemic. Should the eating of sweets or the consumption of sugary drinks by adults also be banned when children are present in their car? This may lead to copy-cat behaviour, making obesity even worse.

What if the adult farts and lets out a whiff of bad gas, the child frantically waving their hands in front of their nose to dispell the smell? Should the adult be arrested? You might think comparing smoking to farting rather immature but both share something in common: sometimes, you just can't stop either. Smoking is an addiction. If you can't stop yourself from lighting up, should you be punished by the courts?

Banning smoking in pubs was easy because people could still pop out to the door and have a smoke, then pop back in to the pub. If this ban goes ahead, there'll be lines of cars stopping off on the hard shoulder just to satisfy their cravings.

What if they keep driving but open the window? Is that better or worse for the child? Does more cigarette smoke escape than pollutants seep in?

And what does a police officer do when they see a car passing them by where the driver is smoking and they see some object in the back seat but the windows are a bit steamed up? Are they to chase after the driver, pull them over only to discover the object on the back seat was a large rucksack? Just because cars have windows, there's no guarantee that you can see through them.

We are already dealing with concerns over the use of stop-and-search and consented search of children. Will such a law be abused to stop smoker's cars and check what's on their back seats? "Sorry sir, I though you were carrying a child. However, now I've stopped you, can you open your bags for me?"

I'm sure there are many Christian groups who would like to ban homosexuals from having erections. Thankfully, men don't wear boxers or jeans with windows in them or such a ban would probably already be in place. Just because a window allows you to theoretically see inside, it does not mean you should abuse that window to impose your own ideology on those with windows.

If I lived in a greenhouse, would more laws apply to me than to those who lived in brick houses? If it is legal to smoke in your own home over the top of your own child, then it should be legal to do so in your own car. If smoking is so bad, then ban it completely or also have a similar ban if children are present in houses.

Houses have windows - why don't we ban curtains so police can snoop on all of us, all of the time? Because it's a ridiculous concept. At some point, the state has to recognise the free will of the individual and recognise that the state has no right to intervene in certain areas. We can't criminalise being human just because we have windows.

The largest cause of childhood deaths in the UK is from injury, generally from road-traffic accidents. There is no evidence that smoking causes car accidents (indeed, nicotine boosts reaction speeds so smoking may help you to more quickly avoid a developing accident). Other leading causes of UK child deaths is infant mortality due to congenital defects (i.e. being born with something wrong, like a heart defect) and, sadly, suicide.

This proposed smoking ban won't save a single life but will give our citizens a criminal record for simply being addicted to nicotine. It is an unworkable law that makes the possession of windows an infringement of your civil liberties.

As a non-smoker, I strongly object to Scotland's criminal justice system being the laughing stock of the world.

JK Rowling should look through history and realise Scotland is a Land of Saints

Harry Potter author JK Rowling is again moaning about alleged anti-English sentiment within the SNP. This was in response to Herald columnist Iain Macwhirter stating:

"Any trace of ethnic nationalism, and anti-English sentiment, was expunged from the party in the 1970s. Nicola Sturgeon was the only party leader in Britain who, during the General Election debates, consistently and energetically argued that immigrants benefit society."

This was too much for JK, who tweeted in disbelief:

Quite a claim. How many English incomers were polled before the making of that confident assertion? 

But has she ever asked any Scottish incomers to England what their experience has been like, or what TV experience the Scots had when even our own news was read with an upper crust English accent? Let me share a bit of my own experience.

During the run-up to the Scottish Independence Referendum, I calculated that I had spent almost half my adult life in England. This is because I did a Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Keele University near Stoke-on-Trent, then worked in Birmingham for Wrox Press as an editor on their programming textbooks, then worked in London as a software developer.

Certainly, during that time I got ribbed and mocked for being Scottish but it was done in friendly jest not with serious anti-Scottish hatred. England has always mocked the Scottish stereotype of a red-haired, kilt-wearing drunk. For example, look at the famous Monty Python sci-fi sketch, were aliens from the Andromeda galaxy turn the stereotypical bowler-hat wearing Englishman into a Scotsman.

Should we now demand that the surviving cast members apologise for this sketch? Should John Cleese be invited to Downing St to address the nation about his racist attitudes to the Scots? And what about English comedian Russ Abbot and his CU Jimmy character?

During the 1980s, he got great laughs from ridiculing the Scots. Should he now be dragged into Downing St to address the nation after John Cleese and also apologise for his racism towards Scotland?

Scotland and England have always been rivals. Perhaps that's the universal law of neighbours: they'll always compete to see who's best. Given that England dominated the BBC, there was a lot of laughter at the expense of the Scots.

In movies, it became the fashion to have a drunk, hard-man Scot in what has been called miserablism: a poor Scottish male, trapped by his situation, turns to drink and drugs because there is no escape. Just watch the movie Trainspotting. Should the movie industry now apologise to Scotland for their stark portrayal of the Scots?

Against that backdrop, we have JK Rowling moaning that there might be some anti-English rhetoric in Scotland. Well, knock me down with a feather. What a surprise if there is a bit of banter aimed back at those who've been taking the p*ss out of us for years.

Does Scotland hate the English? No. Indeed, I love England and have many good friends down there and many happy memories of my time in England. No, we Scots don't hate the English. Are we a bit p*ssed off that English culture is packaged up and sold as British culture? You bet. Are we annoyed at the dominance of English TV and English accents and English views being broadcast into Scotland, with the result that we feel Scotland's voice isn't heard? Yes, of course we are.

But we know where the rot lies. It's not in England, it's in London and Westminster where the decisions are made. More decentralisation of broadcasting will allow local voices to be better heard, rather than London broadcasting its news to the whole of the UK and pretending that it is British news. The north of England hates the London dominance just as much as Wales and Scotland does.

So JK Rowling should take a look at the history of how Scotland and the Scots have been depicted on 'British' TV, at how Scotland is portrayed in movies, how Scotland has been depicted in the media as a result of indyref and the on-going anti-Scottish sentiments currently evident in politics today, with, for example, Westminster voting against making the Scottish parliament permanent - even though it was a key feature of the "vow."

Once Westminster and London stop demeaning Scotland, then she might have a leg to stand on. But at the moment, she's massively got the wrong end of the stick. I don't hate JK but I do pity her. As I am fond of saying, "it's easy to believe one side of the story when you only ever hear one side of the story." If she researches the other side of the coin, she might find it quite illuminating.

So I hereby encourage JK Rowling to make her next book a non-fiction one. She is a great author and could easily do it. Let her catalogue how Scotland has been portrayed in British life since the invention of the television. Let her show just how much of Scotland's voice has been heard and how much it has been London-based ridicule. Perhaps then she'll see that for Scotland to be as welcoming as it is to the English, Scotland should really be classed as a Land of Saints.

Don't disrespect the Scottish Parliament and its elections

With almost 45% voting Yes to independence in the Scottish Independence Referendum last year and 50% voting for the SNP in the General Election last month, you'd think David Cameron would have learned a vital lesson by now.

That is: the people of Scotland feel deeply about the Scottish Parliament and its elections.

For David Cameron to even suggest that the in/out EU referendum could be held on the same day as the Scottish General Election shows just how little regard he has for Scotland. Worse, our election day is also the day of elections to the Welsh and Northern Irish parliaments. It shows he thinks the devolved parliaments of the United Kingdom are not important enough to have not just a separate election day but also a separate campaign window.

In the month prior to the EU ref, the compliant media, particularly the BBC, would bombard the country with EU debates; the Scottish General Election would get second billing, or no billing at all. The Welsh and Northern Ireland elections would be similarly relegated.

Although David Cameron has now been defeated on the holding of the EU ref on the same day as the devolved elections, it still remains to be seen if he'll also avoid the campaign window for those elections. We don't want the EU ref to be held on the Tue only for the devolved elections to be held on the Thu two days later.

Such a scenario would be just as bad as holding them on the same day. We need a guarantee that the EU referendum will be sufficiently far removed in time from the devolved elections so that there is no danger of campaign window overlap. That means they must be held at least one month apart.

However, although two campaigns so close together is doable, it is not preferable. Far better to have them a few months apart. Given the devolved elections are taking place in May, then a good starting point for the EU ref would be September. And given the Scottish Independence Referendum took place on the third Thu of Sep (18th Sep 2014, to be precise), with a huge turnout, then there is no obvious reason why the EU ref could not be held on the third Thu of Sep in 2016, namely the 17th of Sep 2016.

Scotland values its parliament and its elections; to treat them as second-class to the UK parliament's wishes is similar to turning up to someone's birthday party and announcing that you're thinking of getting divorced, then calling everyone at the party to ignore the host and come and listen to their divorce proceedings.

Well David Cameron, the Scottish elections are our birthday party and we don't need your possible EU divorce ruining it for us. By so openly disrespecting us, all you've done is weaken the grip of the Union further.

Westminster is dead in Scotland

I have a guest article on Any Voice - a voice for everyone.

You can read it here.

Rod Stewart's wife in the brainwashed fantasy of a cultural superstition

Society is filled with strange beliefs and these beliefs have a direct impact on how people live their lives. Cultural superstition is not trivial.

Singer Rod Stewart's model wife, Penny Lancaster, was on ITV's Loose Women program today. Although she was in favour of women's rights, she also thought cooking robbed men of their masculinity. Here is what she said:

“If anything, when men come home I think it’s more a case of being more a part of the family, being with the children, spending more time with the children, being a strong role model but going as far as cooking and putting the apron on, I think that, not belittles men, but takes the masculinity and I would miss that.”

She added:

“We’re different… men are from Mars and women are from Venus, testosterone, estrogen, we’re different creatures, I think you’ve got to let men do it their way…”

To me, this is as silly as the belief in Thailand that if a woman's knickers touch a man, then they rob that man of his power. The impact it has on society is that women have to ride "side saddle" on the motorbike taxis in Bangkok but men can ride them "normal style," i.e. with one leg either side of the seat behind the driver. If a woman sat that way in a skirt, her knickers would touch the motorbike seat and, because the male driver was also sat on the same motorbike seat, this would rob the driver of his power.

Utter nonsense.

We had similar cultural superstition in the past in the UK, when woman weren't allowed to vote and thought of as the property of men. Without a man, women were destitute because of these silly superstitions.

Today, women have it a lot better but there's still a view clinging on that women who have sex and enjoy it are sluts and that all women should remain virgins until they're married. Again, this is utter nonsense. Woman enjoy sex just as much as men do and have the same rights as men to enjoy the pleasures of their own biology. Enjoying sex and wanting sex are natural parts of being a woman; telling women they must not enjoy sex is stupid ideology, the sort of cultural superstition that leads to cultures carrying out FGM - Female Genital Mutilation, where bits are cut off the female sex organs just to stop women enjoying sex.

In India, women on their period are seen as unspeakably dirty and the whole concept of menstruation is taboo. It is estimated that, each year, 700,000 teenage girls in India get their first period without knowing what is happening to them. A truly horrendous statistic that the biology that brought us all into the world is so despised under a cultural superstition that it is not even discussed.

Now here is Penny Lancaster adding to that cultural superstition. A man is robbed of his power if he cooks, just as if he'd touched Thai knickers. If anyone's ever seen a Gordon Ramsay program, where he shouts and swears and bullies kitchen staff, then you'll see him be very much the macho man. Men have the skill to turn everything into a competition. Hence the reason we have Michelin stars - purely so men can fight over who's best in the kitchen.

What is masculinity anyway? How does one rob something that is hard to define? Masculinity as far as I can tell was historically the act of men beating, raping and controlling women. Should we allow men to rape women because it helps preserve their masculinity?

Complete and utter nonsense.

What is real, though, is the impact a celebrity has on culture and whether superstitions are killed off or promulgated. So here is the wife of one of the most famous rock stars in history, who is also a high-profile model in her own right, willingly spreading the cultural superstition that men should be allowed to impose the duty of cook on women.

Cooking is not women's work but a survival skill. If you want to live, then eat; if you want to eat, then cook. It's as simple as that. If you can't cook, you die. That's how evolution works. Are we to believe our male ancestors, when out on a long hunt, lasting many days, would have chosen to starve to death rather than cook something up?

Penny Lancaster has revealed herself to be either a brainwashed buffoon or someone who is being terrorised at home. We all remember poor Nigella Lawson with her husband's hands around her throat. Celebrities aren't immune to domestic violence.

And what of their children? Should social services get involved to see exactly what oppression they're being taught? Are the children being culturally abused?

Society really is filled with strange beliefs, from astrology and checking your stars in the papers to believing in ghosts and all sorts of medieval nonsense. Men and women are different - of course they are. The point of equality is to not assume those differences mean certain jobs are beyond a person because of their gender.

Why couldn't Penny promote that belief, rather than talk women down?

Slim Watch No. 004

The goings-on of the world-famous Valorie-Restricted Three: Crash-diet Carmichael, Low-cal Mundell and Binger Murray.

Crash-diet Carmichael crawled out from under the thesaurus he'd been hiding under to say he now knew how to admit to lying (about when he saw the Frenchgate memo) without actually admitting to lying.

Thanks to the Big Book of Words in Disguise, he was able to select a word that sort-of meant lying but wasn't quite as bad as lying. What was the magical phrase he came up with?

He claimed he'd "misstated his awareness" of the leaked memo.

A thesaurus really does come in handy. Type in "lie" into Thesaurus.com and what do you find?

Yes, you find "misstatement" as one of the options. I wonder why he didn't choose any of the other words? For example, he could have said he'd "fabricated his awareness" or he could have combined two of the words above to say he'd "falsely invented his awareness" or he could have went for something more magical like he'd "mythologised his awareness" or something more direct like he'd been "evasive about his awareness."

But oh no. After a month of searching through the Big Book of Words in Disguise, he settled on "misstated." I'm sure it'll be in both the Ministers' and the MPs' Code of Conduct books shortly:

You may not lie but misstating is allowed.

If only the English language wasn't so rich with words and subtleties of meaning. If a thesaurus helps MPs to lie, then let's ban thesauruses. Maybe then we'd finally be able to understand what the hell some of these MPs are talking about. There must be a secret language school they go to. If anyone can find a book on how to speak MP-ese, please let me know.

It would have been useful when the Scotland Bill was debated in the House of Commons earlier this week. There are vetoes in this! Oh no there isn't! Oh yes there is! And so it went on. Low-cal Mundell was very good at claiming that he didn't have a veto on most things in the Scotland Bill by stating:

What it contains is mechanisms to allow two Governments to work together on matters of shared interest and application.

Looks like when Crash-diet was finished with his Big Book of Words in Disguise, he loaned it to Low-cal. And Low-cal showed Crash-diet how to use it properly. Even Thesaurus.com doesn't give "work together" as an alternative to "veto." But, thankfully, Thesaurus.com gives antonyms as well as synonyms. Struggling to know what they mean? Synonyms are "equivalent words" and antonyms are "opposite words" and, yes, I used a thesaurus. If MPs can do it, so can I. (Though try spelling them without computer help!)

Anyway, back to Low-cal and those antonyms:

That's right - the opposite to "veto" is "allow" and so Low-cal went with that. Once he had "allow" as the core of his phrase, he could build it up by adding things like "mechanisms" and "work together" - a spectacularly gutsy usage of a thesaurus. And all done on the floor of the House of Commons too.

Opposite Low-cal that day was Binger Murray, fresh from stuffing his face with a whole curried goat. He likes the cultural melting-pot that is London. Especially if it contains a good sauce. True to this little gluttons style, he wasn't content with the all the words that were in the Big Book of Words in Disguise. Oh no, he was hungry for more. He complained that

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is chuntering from a sedentary position, does not seem to be starting off on the right footing.

At least Dictionary.com gives the definition of "chunter" as a Scots word meaning "to grumble." But it's not a word familiar to this Scot. Perhaps I'm just too lower class compared to the luxuries of Edinburgh South. But poor Thesaurus.com couldn't handle it and simply says "no thesaurus results." It's typical of Binger to eat up all the words in the thesaurus and then go binging for more, stealing them from a list of Scots words. Doesn't he realise the language of the UK government is English, not Scots?

But introducing new words into Hansard isn't enough to top the VR3 charts. Pete Wishart correctly characterised Low-cal's Scotland Bill performance when he interrupted to say:

I do not think that I have ever seen such a shambling Front-Bench performance.

During the Scotland Bill debate, Low-cal was up and down and spluttering and trembling and gasping and gesticulating like a children's TV show's star muppet. For that performance and for using a thesaurus to look up the antonyms, not the synonyms, he tops the VR3 charts this week.

So each member of the VR3 has now reached the top spot at least once. It's too early to tell who will dominate these influential charts over the years to come. But we'll be here, watching and wondering what the hell they're talking about. The moral of this week? Don't watch politics without having by your side the Big Book of Words in Disguise.


Tune in next week for more unbearable goings-on of the most famous diet-group in the world, the Valorie-Restricted Three!

Last week's update: Slim Watch No. 003

Is all fair in love and war?

If it is, then the Holocaust was justified.

If it is, then Guantanamo Bay was justified.

But these are not justified. Even prisoners and those unlawfully held have a basic set of human rights that should not be violated.

Charles Kennedy also had human rights. He should not have been subject to abuse during the "war" of a general election campaign; robust debate does not mean abusing your opponent or taunting him over an illness.

If it really needs to be said, then let me say it.

All is not fair in love and war.

Scottish Labour's EU ref rants at the SNP

Ian Murray, the last Labour MP in Scotland, is again spending his time thinking up ways to attack the SNP rather than getting on with doing something useful.

He used the appearance of SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh on BBC's Question Time program last night to continue his attack against Angus Robertson. I admit that in my post on Wednesday, I was too kind by far to Ian Murray - my fault for still very much being a beginner in the world of politics (I was awakened by indyref and still have much to learn).

This time, Murray even references a piece about his Twitter spat with Angus Robertson on FullFact, claiming that it proves Murray's point: the SNP are liars.

Of course, it does no such thing.

The Tories want to have a referendum on our EU membership and thus need to pass a Bill through the House of Commons to do that. Given the Tories have an outright majority, the Bill is easily passed by them alone. If it didn't pass, the Tories would have to submit a new referendum Bill. This, apparently, is all part of the parliamentary process. If a Bill doesn't pass, modify and resubmit; if it fails again, modify and resubmit; continue until Bill is modified enough to pass.

So Labour could have stood with the SNP and voted against the bill in its current form because it excludes EU nationals and 16 & 17 year olds from voting. If they had succeeded with voting the bill down, the government would have been forced to modify the bill's "voting franchise" to allow EU nationals and 16 & 17 year olds to vote, and then resubmit the corrected bill to the House of Commons.

This, to me, seems a sensible approach.

Of course that didn't happen. Even if Labour had voted against, the Bill would still have been passed by the Tories because there's more Tory MPs than Labour & SNP MPs combined. It would then move on to the committee stage where both Labour & SNP could table amendments.

Given that the Bill could have been passed without Labour's help, it is disingenuous for them to claim that they are against the Bill's voting franchise but have chosen the committee stage to make their opposition known. There is no logic in thinking that a Labour amendment will be passed when they don't have enough MPs to make that happen.

Murray's defence of his position is laughable:

Yes, Labour campaigned in the election against a referendum but with a majority Conservative Government we have taken the decision to support it, make sure the Bill is amended and encourage the Government to get on with it ASAP to limit damage on UK economy.

My reading of that statement is this:

• Since the Tories won outright, we've adopted their policies.
• We can't "make sure" anything happens as we don't have enough MPs.
• The Government bandwagon is unstoppably rolling so we may as well jump on it.
• We'll pretend it's for the good of the economy but because we have too few MPs to effect the Bill, it's really about making our party more appealing to a centre-right English electorate.

So Ian Murray, the last Labour MP in Scotland, should stop pretending he's a victim and start admitting the truth. Labour had a choice and they wholeheartedly chose to jump on the Tory bandwagon. The SNP are right to point this out.

Ian Murray finally concedes Scotland is hamstrung by Westminster

Well, it was a long time coming. Finally, a Labour MP has admitted that Westminster controls Scotland's purse strings and that that can be a bad thing.

Of course, it was all wrapped up in a rant about how bad SNP's ideology was for Scotland, particularly Full Fiscal Autonomy.

But Ian Murry did make one concession:

The Tories cut Holyrood's budget by over £100m last week. 

(Note that a revision of figures has seen the proposed cut of £176.8m drop to £107m.) 

Hopefully with this admission, Labour will stop ranting that Holyrood should stop blaming Westminster for its problems. When Westminster cuts Scotland's budget and thus makes delivering services in their current state impossible, forcing centralisation and unwanted cuts to key services like college places to reduce costs, it is entirely right for the SNP to point the finger of blame at Westminster.

Perhaps Labour will now be more honest about the extent to which Scotland is controlled by Westminster. Even devolved issues ultimately are controlled by Westminster because Westminster controls the budget Scotland has to spend on these.

I imagine Labour will quickly change their tune when they realise they've allowed honesty into their rhetoric...

Need a good but short read? Something stimulating for a sunny afternoon?

My politics-science fiction cross-over novella is now globally available via Amazon.

If the Labour party are reading this: you sowed this poison, now you're reaping its rewards.

Comments on a Facebook post by Ian Murray, Labour's last MP in Scotland, are quite hysterical in their outrage at the SNP.

From Ian Murray's Facebook page.

In fairness to Ian Murray, his post is actually quite sensible and highlights a bit of mischievous SNP hay-making at the expense of Labour. But the commenters go further, complaining - unbelievably - that the media is now biased in favour of the SNP! They also suggested that there is a cult of personality taking hold, with worship of Sturgeon, and that ideology has replaced reason.

But let's look at the evidence.

During the two-year campaign for the Scottish Independence Referendum ("indyref"), the mainstream media (MSM) and the traditional Westminster parties (TWP, i.e. Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats) bombarded Scotland with lie after lie and scare story after scare story. TWP even got foreign leaders and foreign diplomats to speak against Scottish independence, each poisoned word gleefully lapped up and reported by the MSM.

What was the result?

Surprise-surprise, indyref supporters learned not to trust any statements from the TWPs or the MSM. Simply put, you reap what you sow.

If Labour really want to regain their previous position in Scotland, they're going to have to apologise to Scotland for all the lies they told during indyref.

On the current evidence, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

If the Labour party are reading this: you sowed this poison, now you're reaping its rewards.

Some quotes:

•  I'm getting seriously concerned that some kind of national psychosis has infected the public. The cult of personality is being deliberately pursued, with Sturgeon now wooing the USA, and being successful in that too. 
• Alas, for some it is now way beyond reason. It's becoming their cult. Ideology replaces reason.
• It is seriously concerning that very few of the SNP failings are reported in the media. The failings at the flagship hospital in Glasgow given fleeting reference yet Ms Sturgeons trip to USA covered at length. Is there some sort of press censorship going on?

Need a good but short read? Something stimulating for a sunny afternoon?

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