Disrespect!!!

Are the SNP losing the plot? Is this really what people care about (people outside the cult, that is).

"With speculation mounting that No 10 has pencilled in Thursday 23 June as a favourite contender for the referendum date, the Scottish first minister said this would be “disrespectful” to her country because it meant campaigning would cut across the Scottish elections"

And now they're upping the anti - they've got together with their pals from Wales and NI to draft a letter!

Strange that the largest electorate voting in May are actually in London. And they seem to think they can manage two votes within six weeks of each other! Well, we can't.
I know the Scottish council elections and Holyrood elections were held on the same day in 2007, but that was then. This is now. Whine! Grievance! Whine! Westminster bastards! Corbyn! Tory bastard.

Yooorope

Cameron had “promised nothing less than a fundamental renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe."

Ahem.

Trident

The major issue of debate! Strange then that a very straightforward point escapes so many commentators.

The cost (which we'll not get into debating) comes out of the defence budget. Now, all our major parties are committed to spending 2% of GDP on defence, as it's a NATO edict. Clearly, if we didn't spend the money on Trident we could spend it on helicopters or ships, but what cancelling Trident won't do is free up a single penny for hospitals or schools. Unless you renege on that NATO commitment of course.

And here's another point, seeing you started it. Y'see, proponents are understandably as keen to downplay the cost (£31Bn) as opponents are to inflate it (£160Bn). Here's a question for Nicola who likes the convenient round £100Bn pricetag - if it was £100,000, would you drop your objection? No she wouldn't. It's not actually about the money.
It's morality.
Strange then that we'll happily go along with the NATO first strike strategy and joint exercises with nuclear armed forces.
Maybe it's not about morality either. Perhaps it's just the same old playing to the gallery for votes. Still, that's democracy.

 

The Curse of Thatcher

The curse being that we can never get to the nitty gritty; instead we all must agree she was an awful woman. She destroyed our industries, didn't she?

Typical is this bozo-ish twaddle from the SNP's Martin Hannan in the Evening News -

The woman had almost single-handedly destroyed much of Scotland’s heavy manufacturing industries, not to mention the Scottish coal industry, with her economic policies that made efficiency her God....
Instead of the state investing in renewing those heavy manufacturing industries, as happened in so many other countries, the communities .... were devastated by government inaction.

Presumably her motive was badness - we should throw that in too. There were no problems before she arrived. These were good profitable industries, or else they just needed a teeny bit of investment. Right? Or is there another story here? 

Something which is actually that investment was going elsewhere - to places where labour was flexible and costs low. So you can invest all you want, but you're not going to make t-shirts cheaper than Bangladeshis can, with their 12 hour days, slums and stinking factories. Nor steel. It's a problem. Actually, it's a bit of a tough one.

Maggie Maggie Maggie!!! Out Out Out!!!!