In the last post, we somewhat tastelessly used a picture of the front page of the Daily Mail to tell the story of the threat by Conservative MPs to scupper the granting of a few powers to the Scottish parliament. There were two stories on that page, the other was the attack on school children in Pakistan, by the Taliban.
Niko pointed this out and we changed the page.
Officials
say more than 140 people, mostly children, have been killed in the Taliban
attack on an army-run school in north-west Pakistan.
Pakistan's
security forces say their operation has now ended, with all seven
attackers killed.
Pupils who escaped have said the gunmen went from classroom to
classroom, shooting children indiscriminately.
The
Taliban say the assault is in response to army operations in North
Waziristan and the Khyber area.
It is hard to imagine what kind of mind could come up with this. It is even harder to get your head around the fact that someone thought that killing children was a reasonable way of dealing with unwelcome army operations.
The Scots have clearly been moved by the tragedy and the Pakistani Consul General in Edinburgh has thanked Scotland.
I am sorry, as I said on the last post, if my careless juxtaposition of a frivolous story about the Tories and this horrific tragedy carried out by monsters, caused any offence.
Of course none was intended.
Apology has been very much on the mind of the political parties and press in Scotland over the last few days.
The unionist media has made much of Alex Salmond coming to parliament to apologise for an error he had made in further education figures. Headlines like "Salmond apologises for misleading MSPs at Holyrood", and "Salmond says sorry for misleading MSPs again" have had unionists rubbing their hands together and prophesying the end of independence hopes.
It appears that Salmond had said that the budget for further education had risen by 0.18%, whereas the truth is that it had been reduced by 1.7%.
Right let's get it out of the way. It was a bad mistake for the first minister to make. And someone who provided that figure will now be wishing most heartily that he'd checked again, just to be sure.
It's particularly bad for the FM, because of the number of times he has had to correct the mistakes on figures provided by Lamont, Gray and Alexander, who all seemed to have come to the chamber armed with incorrect statistics. Now it appears he has fallen victim to the same error.
There will be those who think that he deliberately lied to make the situation look better than it is, but that seems unlikely to me. Who would invent an increase of 0.18%? It seems far too small to be impressive, and if you are going to lie, and risk being caught out, you might as well do it for something a little more impressive than 0.18%. More likely that a civil servant provided the FM with false figures.
To my mind, the important thing was that the FM came to parliament and apologised.
However, someone else has also been giving false figures this week. Yes that's right, it's you... Stand up Maggie Curren.
I quote from Newsnet: "This week Margaret Curran used a speech to the STUC women’s conference to launch an attack on the way in which receipts from the 4G radio spectrum auction will be spent in Scotland and demanded that the Scottish Government to make clear how it will spend its ‘windfall’."
The trouble is that Scotland has absolutely no receipts whatsoever from the G4 Auction. That is to say no windfall, which means that they can't spend it on anything at all.
All monies from that go directly to George Osborne's Treasury and stay there. I'm not saying that some of the money will not be spent in Scotland, but if it is, it will be spent by Michael Moore, not Alex Salmond.
Several questions have been asked in the London parliament about this question and it has been made clear by Danny Alexander that there will be no Barnet Consequential for this money.
So, did Mrs Curren know this?
If she didn't, then why didn't she? She is supposed to be the Shadow Secretary of State. She should know how the Barnet system works in general terms, and in this particular one she should be aware of questions being asked on the subject... and of the answers given.
If she did know then why did she mislead the STUC conference? Is she so blinded by hatred of the SNP and the Scottish government that she doesn't care what the Tories do with the money as long as she can take a pop at the SNP.
Mrs Curren should be aware (although maybe she is not) that the Scottish government has done much to help people worst hit by the inhumane policies emanating from London. Maybe she should make it her business to check exactly how John Swinney is finding money to help the poor.
When she has done that, she might like to emulate the First Minister and apologise for her error.
Or not.
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I thought it might be helpful to you to share with you one of the Pippatips that may be seen in Her Royal Highness's best seller "Celebrate". (Now less than half price on Amazon.com.)
: Save time by doing things more quickly
I was surprised to read that actually, I would have though HRH's answer to the time problem would be simply to employ more servants. Well, you live and learn.
What an excellent gift this book wouldn't make for Christmas.
I received this information by email this morning. I am reproducing it in full from the Newsnet mail. It is yet another example of how the BBC makes misleading statements about the SNP. Even when forced to apologise they seem to manage to do so in a quiet and backhanded way. Hopefully Newsnet will get an answer as to why the apology was not broadcast, although the misleading, well actually lying, statement was.
BBC Apologises To SNP Minister
Newsnet Scotland can reveal that the BBC have been forced to issue a personal apology to senior SNP MSP Alex Neil after an item broadcast on Sunday 18th October attributed views to the SNP Minister that he had not expressed.
The BBC’s Catriona Renton (above), filming at the SNP conference in Inverness, had claimed on BBC Scotland’s Politics Show that Mr Neil had confirmed the SNP’s desire to see David Cameron become the Prime Minister at the next general election. The recorded interview with Mr Neil that followed Ms Renton’s claim contained no such confirmation.
A source close to Mr Neil explained that the MSP had subsequently complained to the BBC and had received an apology. However, there was a feeling of frustration that, unlike the inaccurate broadcast which came in the midst of the Glasgow North East by-election campaign, the BBC had refused to broadcast the apology.
Catriona Renton is a former Glasgow Labour Councillor, who represented Kelvindale before being ousted by the LibDems in 2003. Ms Renton went on to represent Labour in both the 2003 Holyrood elections and the 2004 European elections.
Ms Renton’s background is steeped in politics having worked for an MEP in Brussels as part of her Oxford University course. Her first job after graduating was working for ex Labour MP Dennis Canavan.
Catriona Renton was recruited by BBC Scotland's parliamentary unit in 2006, where John Boothman, husband of Labour MSP and ex-Health Minister Susan Deacon, was a senior producer.
Questions will surely be asked as to why someone with such recent and very close links to the Labour party in Scotland has been allowed such a high profile platform within BBC Scotland’s political department and whether her professional judgement may have been compromised.
Newsnet Scotland has contacted the BBC for an explanation of why the apology was not broadcast and what editorial control was exercised over Ms Renton’s inaccurate statement....the BBC have yet to respond.Update: I have been advised that my original picture was not of Ms Renton. I have been unable to verify whether it was or not. It certainly masqueraded as such on Google Images. If it was not then I apologise. I have withdrawn it and replaced it with another image, again purporting to be of her. As I have no idea what she looks like, I can only hope that I have got it right this time. There, that's how you do it BBC!
