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 using their conferences as […]

There can be no doubt by now that the Labour party is in the business of peddling exactly the same right wing Anglo-British exceptionalist nationalism as the Conservatives. It’s the politics of fantasy and goal post shifting. Keir Starmer’s Brexit plans have been dismissed as “delusional” by leading European commentators. Wolfgang Münchau, director of the […]

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 would lose. According to […]

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 not entirely a waste, […]

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 British Labour party as […]

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 have been told that […]

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 wanting praise for demonstrating […]

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, it is an active […]

On Monday Keir Starmer was on one of his trips to Scotland to pretend that he cares about us. He certainly doesn’t care enough to take any Scottish opinions on board, or indeed to show any awareness that such a thing as a Scottish opinion exists. The Labour leader is one of those British nationalists […]

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 out by Find Out […]

Whatever happens after the next Westminster General Election we will still have a Conservative government, although if the polls are reliable indicators it will be calling itself Labour. In his desire to attract the votes of former Labour voters in Leave supporting constituencies in England who defected to the Tories in order to “get Brexit […]

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 had a dog to […]

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 minimise the inevitable losses […]

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 engage with and negotiate […]

There’s something deeply wrong with the right wing British nationalist media – AKA the media – and it represents a serious threat to the future of democracy in the UK. Last week we had a wall to wall obsession with a highly paid BBC presenter who had allegedly paid a young person under 18 but […]

Everyone knows that Scotland has a serious problem with drugs. It’s sadly not at all uncommon to find discarded needles in the alleyways of Scotland’s cities and large towns, evidence of intravenous drug use by addicts who have no safe and clean place in which to get their fix. Sadly, Scotland has the highest rate […]

The British media is currently engrossed in one of its periodic bouts of moralistic pearl clutching over the story of an unnamed but “well-known” presenter who is alleged to have paid thousands of pounds over a period of some years to a teenager in return for sexually explicit photos. Phillip Schofield must be breathing a […]

I’m going to take a week off the blog. Holyrood and Westminster have both gone into summer recess so there should not be a huge amount of political news to report on for a while. I am still very fatigued from attending the SNP Convention in Dundee, it’s taking me longer to recover than I […]

I had originally planned to write a proper blog piece on Sunday about my experience being on a panel with Lesley Riddoch and Gordon Macintyre Kemp at the SNP independence convention in Dundee on Saturday 24 June but the day wiped me out and I needed time to rest and recuperate hence this piece is […]

It’s being reported that if Labour gets into power following the next Westminster General Election, Keir Starmer not after all going to abolish the House of Lords. I know, I’m as shocked as you are, which is to say not remotely shocked at all. Ever since he became leader of what used to be the […]