The Lib Dem conference: the ego has landed

Party conference season is upon us, the time of year when politicians make speeches aimed at pleasing their party’s base and the rest of us switch off. These are likely to be the last party conferences before the Westminster general election which is due next year, and the parties will be…

Keeping the dream alive

An opinion poll carried out by Find Out Now was published this week showing that a majority in Scotland would vote Yes for independence if Westminster were to permit a vote, a vote which neither the Labour nor the Conservative parties will concede to because they fear that the No campaign…

Labour’s discomfort zone for Scotland

In this week’s episode of “You’ve got some cheek” brought to you by the Labour Party’s Scottish Optional Identity Mark, Douglas Alexander has claimed that the past decade in Scotland has been lost to “constitutional squabbling,” and nothing has been achieved. To be fair, the last decade in Scottish politics was…

The failure of British Democracy

Keir Starmer has high hopes of becoming the next Prime Minister. However his claim to deserve the office rests not upon any positive offer of real and meaningful change from a Labour party which he has taken so far to the right that a conservative American Republican senator has hailed the…

Health update

I thought I should keep you all posted about what’s going on and why I’ve not been blogging this week. As regular readers may recall, my mother has been battling ocular cancer which resulted in her losing her left eye. Unfortunately, the cancer has now spread to her liver and we…

Labour’s moonbeams and fairy dust

During an interview last week, Anas Sarwar, the branch manager of Labour’s Scottish Optional Identity Mark, told us that even though he personally opposes independence, that ““doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to support independence, or the right to wish a referendum at some point in the future.” Is Anas…

The BBC’s toxic presence in Scottish public life

There’s a definite pattern to BBC Scotland’s handling of Scottish Government stories. There is no point in the BBC continuing to deny it. The Corporation is not a public service broadcaster informing and educating the people of Scotland in an even handed and unbiased way about the issues of the day,…

The looming catastrophe for the Tories

A new UK-wide poll has been published this week which gives figures which are utterly catastrophic for the Tories, and which gives some hope to the SNP that the outlook for the largest party of Scottish independence is not as dire as some are gleefully predicting. The mega poll was carried…

Dog days

Our visitor is still here with his dog. It’s great to have a good friend to stay and the dog is lovely. She’s a wee Spanish rescue dog and is very affectionate, quiet, and well behaved. It’s really nice to have a dog in the house again, the first time we’ve…

Better a diamond with a flaw than a stone without

In a sign that the by election defeats in England last Thursday have spooked the Conservatives, there are reports that senior figures in the party are calling on Rishi Sunak to consider holding the election in late spring next year, as they believe that this would be the best way to…

The drearily predictable BBC Scotland

On Thursday NHS consultants in England went on strike, the first time that senior doctors in the NHS have taken industrial action since the 1970s. Strike action in Scotland has been avoided, thanks to an improved pay deal offered to doctors by the Scottish Government, which has shown a willingness to…