Negative Equity for the London Parties in Scotland

Its sometimes difficult to decide which of the UK party leaders actually has the most problems when it comes to Scotland. But the problems that they face are of their own making. By showing no interest in anything north of Berwick, it is apparent that they are unaware of how their parties are operating.

Ruth Davidson may well turn out to be an inspired choice to lead the Conservatives north of the border. So far however, her tenure of leadership has been one contradiction and uncertainty.

David Cameron's vow to preserve the union with “every fibre of that I have” was always going to fall on stony ground. The reason being that while most people in Scotland recognise that although he may have many things, they do not believe “fibre” is one of them. His “vote no” and “we might give you a wee bit more” approach has been tried before and found to be a lie. In Cameron's defence though, the damage was done long before he came along. What the Tories would have to do to win back Scottish voters is anybody’s guess. But they won’t do it with this guy at the helm.

In an ideal Tory world, well as ideal as it can be for them, they might have hoped that Labour and the Lib-Dems might have carried the day for the unionists north of the border but alas for them this is proving quite difficult.

Meanwhile, the other half of the “Smarmy Brothers”, Nick Clegg, has led his party to the edge of oblivion.

Willie Rennie of the Lib-Dems is not in an envious position. Having to reinvent his party, after the London leadership committed suicide by coalition, he is continually hampered by his party’s association with the Tories. They have become the party of coalition, north and south of the border, and struggle to reassert the traditional values of the old Liberal Party.

While Labour in Scotland has become the party most likely to try and lie its way through any debate, it appears to be coming apart at the seams in its one time stronghold of Glasgow. Here it managed to bully and threaten some of its own councillors into passing the city’s budget. In Falkirk their MP, Eric Joyce, has been suspended while he waits to go to court for assault. He will not be resigning as Labour fear a by-election defeat to the SNP. One party member even suggesting that they would prefer a “nutter” in the seat that a nationalist. New leader Johann Lamont not only seems unable to prevent the endless stream of misinformation coming from her colleagues but appears to encourage it. She recently led an attack on the Scottish Government over the awarding of contracts for the new Forth Crossing, criticising it for not giving all of the contracts to Scottish firms. EU procurement laws of course forbid discrimination in favour of Scottish companies. These regulations were implemented in 2006 when Labour was the major partner in a coalition executive with Lib-Dems.

Miliband’s speech at the party’s conference shows that he is as out of touch as the rest. While telling people that the union was the best option for a fair distribution of wealth, he spectacularly failed to remember that the gap between the rich and poor grew under Blair and Brown just as it did under the Tories and does under the Coalition.

All three leaders have seen their ratings in Scotland continually plummet into negativity. A negativity that mirrors their approach to Independence in particular and Scotland in general. All three Scottish leaders are hamstrung to varying degrees by their London leadership’s general disinterest in all things Scottish. But cutting them loose is not on the cards as this would highlight the differences that they hope to obscure.

So how do the UK leaders measure up in the approval ratings?

A YouGov poll for the Sunday Times shows that Cameron scores minus 31% with Miliband’s approval rating standing at minus 45%. Clegg manages a minus 64% which is 17% less than his UK standing.

Paxman the Younger

The latest astonishing intervention in the Independence debate has come from Giles Paxman who said that even after a majority vote for Independence the Westminster Government could simply say “no” and that would be that.

Giles who?, I hear you say. 

Well, he is the British ambassador in Spain. He is also the younger brother of Brit-nut Jeremy.

He made his remarks to Spanish journalists during a breakfast briefing in Madrid.  

Paxman obviously felt he had to say something after the Spanish Government denied London based reports that it would block and Independent Scotland’s entry into the EU. The Spanish pointed out that they would treat both new entities the same.

Although what our man in Madrid says is true. In fact Westminster Parliament could vote Scotland into Independence tomorrow if they chose. One imagines that even they has a better grip on reality than the Paxman brothers.

Still he may only have been pointing this out to the Spanish media who may be unaware of just how much the so called “equal partnership” union is skewed in favour of the old imperialists. If so, then I suggest his ambassadorial skills are found wanting. 

When Taxes Actually are Criminal

I’m not so sure that the punishments handed out to those involved in the “black fish scam” in Shetland and Peterhead are severe enough.

However, they were caught after accountants discovered that the earnings the processing plants were paying tax on far exceeded their declared landings of fish.

What I wait to hear now is what the court plans to do about the tax collected by HMRC from this illegal activity. It must surely be considered proceeds of crime and therefore confiscated by the courts.

It would be unthinkable that the guardians of the moral high ground at the HMRC would hope that this went unnoticed and that they plan to keep it. 

Take note Danny Alexander. 

Lies, Damned Lies and BBC Scotland

Even after Chris Patten and the BBC Trust’s promise that the corporation would have to mend its ways when it comes to reporting the Independence campaign, the lies just keep coming from BBC and in particular, Auntie’s dutiful half-siblings in Scotland.  

When Alex Salmond recently expressed a view on the proposed redevelopment of Union Terrace Gardens in Aberdeen, Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald saw an opportunity to make an unfavourable association between the First Minister and Donald Trump on the basis that Alex Salmond had supported the American’s golf course development in Aberdeenshire. This was notwithstanding the fact that it was his own party’s Jack McConnell who ferried the tiresome tycoon around Scotland in a helicopter to find a spot where his ego could land.

Following up on Macdonald’s inference, the London lackeys at Reporting Scotland blatantly lied when asserting that Mr Salmond had been “rapped over the knuckles” by the Scottish Parliament over his dealings with Trump. Despite the hysterical ravings of the opposition parties in Holyrood to set up a committee to investigate their own malicious allegations of sleaze and corruption, the said committee found no evidence to support the claims.

Then there is BBC Scotland’s Seonag MacKinnon. Now, I’m not for a second suggesting that her reporting is in any way coloured by her politics although some may disagree. She is a former Education Editor at the Scotsman and is married to Peter MacMahon, one-time press secretary to former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish and political editor of the Scotsman and Mirror newspapers. She tells us that she gets private tweets and emails from teachers who may be under pressure to withdraw requests to delay the Governments Curriculum for Excellence.

One would hardly imagine that an unsubstantiated claim of private tweets and emails constitutes the evidence required for this to broadcast by a supposedly impartial publicly funded news outlet.

Next up was the astonishing claim made by Labour’s Health spokeswoman, Jackie Baillie that patients at a Paisley hospital had to share blankets. The BBC reported it without any investigation on its own part and Baillie a platform to attack the government based on the claim. When Baillie was challenged about her allegations she suggested that health board were involve in a cover-up.

Suffice to say that when this story was shown to be yet another fabrication, the BBC did not give the same high profile coverage to Labour’s admission that their spokeswoman had not told the truth. (Baillie has a record for this sort of thing though. In January she claimed that NHS Scotland topped the European league for hospital infections. Well, it did, way back in 2006, when her Labour Party was in power in Edinburgh.)

Meanwhile, the BBC in London, who recently barred Alex Salmond from appearing on a Six Nations pre-match programme, saw nothing wrong with asking a panel of unionists on Dimbleby’s dumbed down version of “Newsnight” to give their reasons why Scotland should not be Independent. There is little that can be done about London’s approach to the Independence Referendum, which is usually comes over as misinformed, condescending and parochial. Ah, that it was ever so.

There can no longer be any doubt that the BBC in Scotland has a unionist agenda. But with its reputation for balance in tatters it is unclear who it thinks it is persuading with this continuous Westminster propaganda. While it may still offer some succour to the dyed in the wool “North Britishers” the unremitting mantra of “Britain Good” – “Scotland Bad” is, unlike in the good old days before the internet, not going unchallenged.  

Moore Gets it Wrong Again

One of the things many have been waiting on during the Independence debate has been the business friends of Scottish Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come up with a sound and reasoned argument as to why they would not invest in Scotland between now and the referendum. That they think that they have found a champion in Scottish and Southern Electricity (SSE) whilst showing an ever developing desperate ability to grasp at straws.  

No matter how this story is reported by the BBC or the increasingly embarrassing Scotsman, SSE at no point said that the timing of the referendum would lead to job losses or have an effect on any future jobs and investment. The company merely pointed out that future investment would have to take into consideration any regulatory and legislative changes to the industry that may take place after independence.

The company is not interested in whether Scotland leaves the union or not, only what it means to its profits.

There is of course no prospect of any changes in the way the industry operates across borders.

The SSE story is not an example of what Michael Moore has been promising. What it is though is a one of the big power companies throwing its weight about and trying to influence democratic government. They have done this successfully at Westminster and probably see no reason why they shouldn’t try it on with Edinburgh.

What should concern SSE though, is that a Government of an independent Scotland might not be as compliant as Westminster when it comes to allowing them to put thousands more people into fuel poverty every year in name of profit. Especially when renewables, such as hydro-electricity, in Scotland might be seen as way of subsidising prices in the south of England.

If the Coat Fits

So David Cameron gave a speech in Edinburgh standing behind a lectern bearing the royal coat of arms of the UK that is reserved for England and Wales rather than the Scottish royal coat of arms. Not a big deal when compared to the ever growing list of blunders and gaffes that has, so far, accompanied the unionist campaign against Scottish independence. But, whatever the excuse Cameron’s minions give for this, it does show yet again that those in London who profess to uphold the constitutional values of the Union know absolutely nothing about how it is supposed to function.

Pie in the Sky if You Let Independence Die

Vote “No” and I’ll consider giving you a bit more.

That was David Cameron’s message to the people of Scotland if they reject Independence at the referendum.

We’ve heard it all before. And the last time that we were sold such nonsense, and ultimately betrayed, it came from a previous leader of the Tory Party.

Thatcher promised that a “No“ vote in the rigged Devolution Referendum of 1979 would not kill off devolution but would “open the door for all parties to explore together a lasting alternative arrangement which can enjoy the support of the whole British people.”

When Thatcher became Prime Minister, Scotland was subjected to unparalleled contempt from the triumphalist Tories. Devolution was dead and Scotland paid a heavy price for believing in London promises. High unemployment, massive cuts in public spending and policies that favoured the rich over the rest were to follow. Sound familiar?

So, should the people of Scotland believe this Tory?

To be fair to Cameron he has only indicated that he would “consider” further devolution. So if he can bribe enough people all he will do is tell us that he “considered” it and then rejected it. Of course he won’t do anything of the kind.

There are more Giant Pandas north of the border than there is Tory MPs for a very good reason. This is a party that cannot be trusted when it comes to Scotland.