BOMBS NOT BAIRNS

By Panda Paws

There are a number of people in Scotland who think that Tony Blair should be on trial in The Hague. Weapons of mass destruction, crumbling infrastructure, rising poverty, stolen oil and life expectancy only in the fifties in some areas.  And don’t even get me started about Iraq!

 

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or an Empire Biscuit.
One or the other...

So what is it with Westminster and WMDs? Why are they so attached to Trident, those penis extensions on the Clyde? Easy – it’s about prestige and pretending to be important. The UK is a set of islands off the coast of Europe that is run by folk that still think they command an Empire. An empire biscuit maybe! The sun has set on the Empire and Britannia no longer rules the waves. Though as the referendum campaign demonstrated, they are more than capable of waiving the rules.

Trident’s essential to our defence, they shout. Miliband stated in the BBC debate that WMDs were needed to defend against ISIS then was forced by Leanne Wood to admit he’d never use nuclear weapons against them. (I really like Leanne Wood her comment about Farage– “my friend on the far right” was the quote of the evening.) As one wag on Twitter recently stated: baggage handlers at Glasgow airport have done more to protect Scotland against terrorism than Trident! And let’s face it baggage handlers cost a damn sight less.

The resident pub bore Farage, in between w(h)inning over the audience, said we needed them to protect Crown Dependencies like the Falklands!  Because it worked so well in deterring the Argentinians in the eighties! It’s even been revealed that the military warned Thatcher against cutting conventional forces prior to the invasion.

 

Las Malvinas. The Falkland Islands.
Crumbs, it costs a packet to be a big biscuit.

Only three Nato members have nuclear weapons. So membership of NATO is not dependent on being a nuclear power.  However, if the UK ditched them it would be much harder to justify their permanent seat of the UN Security Council. So what difference does that make to the average person in the street – somewhere between zero and none. But to a politician keen to strut around the world stage feeling important its worth a great deal.

So what if we have aircraft carriers with no aircraft and that the seas are left undefended because it takes a day to get a ship up from Portsmouth when the Russians are buzzing around close to national waters in the Moray Firth. So what if defence cuts mean sending p45s to serving soldiers on deployment on areas of conflict. So what if there are fewer full time members of the British Army than there are members of the SNP. Trident keeps us safe – apparently.

Given the choice between spending £100 million on WMDS that can never be used but allow you to pretend to be a world power OR social security “reforms” that freeze working age benefits despite rising prices of essentials and are happy to sanction pregnant woman, the disabled and someone 5 minutes late at the Jobcentre to weeks with no income, well there’s only one choice.

If you are a sociopath who cares more about status and power than people it’s got to be bombs not bairns.

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Update on Notes from the Shires (The East Renfrewshires) 

You need hands... to do...
Mammy, how I love ya, how I love ya...

By now most of you will have heard about the latest Ashcroft polls which show Labour and Jim Murphy trailing the SNP by 9 points. It’s hard to believe given 2010 results. So has that much changed in 5 years? Possibly. However East Ren has a very high number of Tory voters and if they decide to vote tactically to keep out the SNP then Labour could still win. One wrinkle in this would be if they think staying with the Tories would actually allow them to win the seat. In the referendum the No vote was higher than in Scotland as a whole – 63.3% against 55.3%. Indeed it was the 5^th highest No in Scotland behind the two areas bordering England and Orkney and Shetland. The SNP will need to work very hard to unseat Murphy and whilst I’m no John Curtice or James Kelly, I still think it’s a three way marginal.

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Panda Paws is a “stringer” for Munguin's Republic on a zero pay contract. In the absence of any financial reward, please feel free to lavish copious praise btl, and if it’s sincere so much the better.

Note from Munguin to Tris: Tell her to stop moaning. It's work experience, and will look good on her CV. 

Notes from the Shires (The East Renfrewshires)

By Panda Paws

In 2010 I woke up around 4am and decided to switch on the TV and see how the election results looked. I was soon confronted by a very smug looking Jim Murphy. Granted he had every reason to be so since he had increased his majority in what was then the Tories top target seat in Scotland. Next, there was a split screen interview with him and Douglas Alexander and the first thing a smirking Jim said was “Did you win?” To a man in standing in a seat where Labour votes are weighed not counted! 

Alexander had indeed won with around 60% of the vote. It was the overwhelming sense of entitlement and complacency that struck me. These were people who had decided that the narrow SNP win in 2007 at Holyrood was an aberration and the people were back where they belonged, voting Labour. Labour owned them. 

They would surely come back home in 2011.Except they didn’t. 

The referendum would easily be won 70-30 except it wasn’t. 

And now Labour find themselves in an unknown position, far behind the SNP in Westminster polling. I don’t think for a minute that the SNP will win over 50 seats or anything like it, though I do think they will exceed their previous best. To be fair that was 11 out of 72 so it’s not a big ask. But areas that have been Labour since before the Second World War are looking decidedly shaky.

You’d think Jim would be safe though given:

General Election Turnout: 2010 51,181 (77.3%) +5.1		Labour hold Majority: 10,420 (20.4%) +6.4 Swing: +3.2% from Con to Lab		Jim Murphy	Labour	25,987	50.8	+6.9
				Richard Cook	Conservative	15,567	30.4	+0.5
				Gordon MacDonald	Liberal Democrat	4,720	9.2	-9.0
				Gordon Archer	SNP	4,535	8.9	+2.0
				Donald McKay	UKIP	372	0.7	N/A

But the last Ashcroft polling (sample size 1000) showed only a 1% lead over the SNP who had been fourth in 2010, over 20,000 votes behind him.

I live in one of the affluent parts of the constituency. There have been 3 SNP leaflets, all hand delivered. The Tories have hand delivered one and chapped my door offering another, perhaps hoping for a chat, which was politely if frostily declined. 

Now I know what it was like last year for Labour – standing beside Tories and saying “no thanks”! 

It’s also the first time I’ve EVER had activists chap my door at a General Election and I’m older than Nigel Farage! (Which frightened the life out of me; still I consider it proof positive of the premature ageing effects of excessive booze and fags.)

Bottom line Jim is facing a pincer attack by the SNP on Labour’s left and the Tories on the rig… actually his left!

So how is Jim reacting to this pressure? 

Basically by being on the TV so often I’m sure he has his own room at Pacific Quay, by touring Scotland with a message of old Labour conveniently forgetting his own Blairite credentials (he was David Miliband’s leadership campaign manager), the credentials that enabled him to win in an old Tory area. 

Except old Labour members can’t stand him. 

I’ve had some tell me it’s the one seat they hope to lose. He’s a right winger, a member of the Henry Jackson Society, ardent supporter of the Iraq war and Nu Labour to the core. Facts all the MSM “fluffers” in the world aren’t going to change. 

He’s also someone who voted for tuition fees; which if we’d had them 20 odd years ago would have cost him a fortune, given his nine years at Strathclyde.

Even when he says the right things, he does it in a way that undermines his message. 

For example he’s correct: the amount of NHS money spent on mental health is not only paltry but a disgrace. However, standing in front of a Scottish Labour conference when the party is in turmoil and baldly stating “25% of you have a mental health problem”, well did anyone with an ounce of sarcasm not think “as few as that?” 

The only Labour leaflets I’ve had have been delivered by the postman and, though he’s been seen in Barrhead (according to his twitter feed), there is no sign of any Labour activists in my area. Indeed I hear the Barrhead sighting had as much to do with him by being interviewed by Sky News than him actually canvassing.

He and Ed Miliband are not friends nor allies. Ed’s too far to the left for him. Tommy Ball’s blog suggested Murphy wants Labour to lose the election.

That way, Ed will be purged and the Blairites will be back in the ascendant. Murphy can either bid for the leadership or be assured of a plumb post in the next Labour cabinet. 

It’s an interesting notion but if Murphy presides over the loss of the biggest number of Scottish Labour seats in living history this would not serve him well in his Westminster ambitions. 

However, he has his back-up plan - his bid to be FM in 2016. 

Stop laughing at the back!

If Ed becomes PM, the best he can hope for is Scottish Secretary, the biggest non-job in the cabinet. The Scottish Office where there is so little to do, they invent conversations that didn’t happen in meetings they didn’t attend.

This election promises to be the most interesting in years. I’ll be staying up all night to watch, hoping for many Portillo moments. And whilst just a few months ago I’d never have believed East Renfrewshire might provide one of them, now I’m not so sure. East Ren now looks a three way marginal. 

Can someone buy the popcorn please?

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Panda Paws is just some wummin, with an internet connection and some opinions, whom Munguin and Tris have foolishly allowed atl. She knew those photos would prove useful ;-)  A Yes voter last year, in an independent Scotland she’d vote Green. But we don’t have an independent Scotland and usually she doesn’t have any Green candidates to vote for. All sarcasm is her own, though heavily influenced by the Wee Ginger Dug whom she’d like to be if and when she grows up.  

[Editor's note. If you keep quiet about the photographs (I tell you there's nothing between me and Annabel Goldie) you can have a regular column at the usual rates... OK?]