SO WILLIE...

Did he lie to you too, or were you part of the plot?

It seemed so strange that although the Telegraph, which broke the lie, didn't manage to get hold of anyone from anyone in the SNP, they did manage to get a quote from Willie Rennie, who, with respect, is a rather junior entity in Scottish politics.

No one from the Labour Party, or the Tories, the second and third parties in the Scottish parliament, was asked to comment, but up pops Wee Willie, leader of the 4th party. 

Strange that he was just hanging about minding his own business... with a statement ready.

Incidentally, I read that the inquiry into this incident is reported to have cost (for some unknown reason) £1.25 million. This could have been avoided if the cabinet minister, in a government determined to cut costs, had just admitted his involvement for the get go. 

He seems to think that not taking his £10,000 redundancy (despite still having a £75,000 a year job) is sufficient recompense.  

Right Honourable? Not even legal!

May we expect an apology from Rennie any time soon?

And, while we are on apologies, maybe those who immediately believed the leak in the Tory Telegraph, despite there being no checking, instead of the First Minister or the French Consul to Scotland or the French Ambassador to Court of St James, might like to reflect that they bought into such a pile of lies. Kezia for example?

Finally. This was Scotland Office stuff... who was Carmichael's bag boy at the time?

None other than Fluffly Muddle. What did he know about it?
++++++++++

Letter from Shetland News:

So, our newly elected MP Alistair Carmichael has admitted he knew of the contents of, and sanctioned the publication of the leaked memo concerning the French ambassador's discussion with Nicola Sturgeon.

He also seems to consider that apologising to both parties and refusing to claim his severance pay from his term as Secretary of State for Scotland is sufficient to eradicate responsibility for the consequences of his actions.

I beg to differ.

His duplicity in not admitting liability before the election on 7 May demonstrates a lack of moral rectitude in achieving election, which is unbecoming, to say the least, in an elected member of parliament.

I, for one, am calling for his immediate resignation from his post as MP for Orkney and Shetland in order to allow someone with moral compass to be elected, at a by-election, in his stead.

George Pottinger
Hamnavoe
Burra

FOTOS FOR FRIDAY

So, until they change that, wild horses wouldn't drag me into their store.

They demand sick people work and then they go all out to make it difficult for them. What a cow.

I wonder what the land reforms will cost them in Immoral.
Sorry Balmoral.

All about class, connections, who's who, London
Society, and Old School Ties.

And this is all about common sense.

They say there's nothing to worry about...

...but it doesn't seem like that to me...

and there is the small detail of it costing money we don't have...

How embarrassing. No one cared Jack.
Yawn. The FM that will go down in history for
 wearing a skirt in New York.

No, I hadn't but, if you want to swing by for drinks on Saturday evening,
Munguin will be happy to get to know you.

Are you not a bit old for this job?
But wait, I hear B&M are looking for folk...

Well, you should have...

So Alistair is good, is he?
Not what I heard.

Never saw that one coming, did you Mr Smarty Pants.

Nor, I suspect this one.

Exactly

Was that when you were pulling your pants down...or up, Paddy?

I wish I'd thought of that, says Jim.

In bleach... no wait, H2SO4

Bang on, son.

Well, what do you know?

Including the unlovely Viscount Aston and his uppity daughter.

FOR OUR ENGLISH READERS...

...THIS IS YOUR NEW LORD CHANCELLOR 

A journalist, who, as far as I can see, has no legal training at all.

I've always though that Gove was one of these people who managed to look and sound like a prat, no matter what he was doing. Reading his Wikipedia page has shown that looks and actions apart, it's not that far from the truth. 

The Oxford English Graduate is now the English Justice Secretary, and thus, Lord Chancellor. And just to prove it he dresses up like even more of an idiot in robes to which his qualifications (2:1 in English) hardly entitle him.

I'm really glad Scots law is separate from English and that our Justice Secretary doesn't have to wear daft frocks to do his job.

THIS IS MY SEAT... NO IT'S MY SEAT...

When we were teenagers my brother and I used to fight about who got to sit in the front of the car with my father. We had very little else to fight about and we wanted to fight, so it served a purpose. Of course we all, front or back seat passengers, arrived at the destination at pretty much the same moment. But kids will be kids and something is better than nothing to fight about.

In the House of Commons, there are many other, more important things to fight about. There are food banks; there are sick people, within weeks of their death, being told to get a job; there are dangerous WMDs only 30 miles from the centre of Glasgow. It is, apparently dangerous to even be in the central belt of Scotland.  There is an endless list of important issues needing attention.

Seating arrangements are not amongst them.

If the Tories tell the SNP to go sit at the back, because that's where they belong, so what? It makes the Tories look stupid and petty, self important and stuck in the past. It confirms what we knew. 

If Labour wants to stop the SNP form sitting as a group we need to tell them to get lost and sit altogether, as we have always done. They only have themselves to blame if we sat behind Harriet Harman in full view after they insisted we couldnt sit in the place of the third party. 

But remember, our voices will be heard just as clearly form the back of the Commons as they will from the front, separately or together. Constituents will be served just as well from the back of the chamber as from the front.

The only thing that profits from a bottom sitting on the front row is the ego of the person who owns it. 

That's not why we are in Westminster.

We need to talk about Labour (Scottish branch)

(with apologies to Kevin!) 

By Panda Paws

So ten days after SLAB’s worst ever electoral performance since its inception, Jim Murphy has announced, well what exactly?  It appears that he will “offer” his resignation in one month’s time, using the intervening period to write a blueprint on how SLAB should reform itself. Presumably binding his successor to follow his plan for the future, because obviously the one in the recent past worked so well! 

Now, I don’t doubt that SLAB needs reforming. I do, however, doubt that St Jim of the Halo is the one to lead them to modernisation, reform or whatever the buzzword de jour is. He actually survived a motion of no confidence by 17 votes (including his own and an unelected peer) to 14 (or 55% to 45% as just about everybody has managed to calculate). The BBC described it as a narrow vote in favour which was interesting given there was a similar % vote in September that was described by them as “decisive”.

What seems clear (as mud perhaps) is that Jim is no longer planning to be First Minister next year, which will make Nicola Sturgeon sleep a lot easier I’m sure. Indeed one report states he’s no longer planning to stand for election as an MSP. 

Apparently he has other as yet unspecified plans. Mmmm, isn’t it the Queen’s Official birthday in June; the one that has an honours list including peers of the realm? Might Jim join Darling and Brown by parking their bums on red seats that come with £300 per day attendance allowance, a subsidised restaurant and the unelected chance to amend legislation? 

Or will his ties to the Henry Jackson Society result in some tidy little sinecures? Needless to say like the rest of the now redundant MPs he won’t get a taste of his own medicine by having to sign on at the Job Centre. 

Contacts dear boy, contacts!

One thing we did learn from the speech is that not only are the SNP bad, but Unite is bad too, and Len McCluskey is very bad, very bad indeed. Fundymundily bad! Because if there is one thing that you need to do after pissing off the majority of your party’s voting base, it’s pissing off the Unions that help fund your party and maintain your, albeit now tenuous, link to the working class.

In April 2014, McCluskey threatened to disaffiliate Unite from Labour and launch a new workers' party if Labour lost the general election. Frankly in my humble opinion all the unions need to review whether Labour is the party that best articulates the aspirations and needs of the working class and thus deserves their funding. Although the multi-millionaire Umunna has Chucka’ed his bid for the UK leadership, the other candidates appear to be on the Blairite wing of the party triangulating ever rightwards.

So what of the future? 

Can SLAB recover in time of the 2016 Holyrood elections? 

Who will want the poisoned chalice of leading the party into what will almost certainly be another defeat? 

And possibly even their worst ever Scottish Parliamentary election?

If Kezia Dugdale fancies a long term career in politics, she might want to decline any invitation to stand at this point. Going into an election as leader of a Jim Murphy refashioned SLAB could be considered as a career limiting decision. 

As I said last week (you read last week’s piece didn’t you?), we live in interesting times indeed.

SUNDAY IS NATURE DAY...

Sorry to bother you, but the bird feeder is empty!

BYE THEN

So, our little poll has been overtaken by events, just 20 hours before it was due to close.

Oh well...

It seems that Jim, with the help of Jim himself, the bloke with the union jack suit who is the sole Labour MP in Scotland (and I still can't remember his name), and some aristocrat (don't you just love the oxymoronic term " Labour aristo"?) boosted Jim's votes to stay on as Labour leader and he won the vote of confidence by these three votes.

Of course, he was bound to vote for himself, doubtless Whatsisname in the union jack suit, and the nobleman, were told by London to vote for him.

But then Jim, having won, decided, possibly after looking at the figures on Munguin's Republic's poll, to resign, nonetheless. He's nothing if not contrary.

I haven't heard his resignation speech, but from what I've read it was the most ill-natured and ungracious resignation announcement that anyone has ever made anywhere in the universe.

It is customary when resigning after abject failure, (and lets face it, losing 40 of your 41 ones seats can only be thus described) to take credit for what you have done well and  take responsibility for all failings, in order to ensure that the people carrying on after you can do so with some degree of confidence.

But, with his customary lack of charm, Jim appears to have blamed everyone from the SNP to Johann Lamont and her predecessors, and even the trades unions that fund the party, as if they had absolutely no right to comment. I read that he blamed people "who don't like me"... so that's probably just about everyone.

(Seriously, does anyone know anyone who likes, or who has admitted to liking, Jim? No? Me neither.)

I have no doubt that Scottish Labour was in a mess when he came along. It had for years been mismanaged, because it had been managed in Westminster, for a Scotland that is so out of line with Metropolitan London, that it could be...well, I would say it, wouldn't I...SHOULD be, another country.  

An analysis of the issues is a massive job, one that Labour itself has been fudging for years. No one will get it right because as we have seen London Labour needs to move to the right to take Tory seats, and Scottish Labour needs to move to the left to win SNP seats. 

Reconcile that when you have MPs who have to take the Labour whip from areas as distant economically and politically as the SE of England, and West of Scotland. 

Solomon would have a job with that one. And yet Jim arrived at the top desk in December swearing that he would not lose a single seat to the SNP. 

Notwithstanding the immensity of the challenge, Jim managed to get every policy wrong. Mainly his policies could be summarised as "SNP bad; Labour good", and the public didn't seem to agree with that, but when he actually ventured into the world of ideas, his ideas were woefully wrong too. 

Stuart Campbell did a poll which, among other things, looked at Labour's main policies. The results showed that there wasn't one that had anything like support in Scotland.

He patronised "Glasgow man", by assuming that all he cared about was getting some drink down his neck at the match, and being allowed to sing Irish rebel songs. He was off the scale wrong about that as Stuart's poll shows.

He used misleading figures about tax, assuming that all business would continue to pay tax in London after Full Fiscal Economy, which Labour had ruled out in any case. People saw through the mistakes. He warned of another referendum, which Labour had ruled out. People didn't care, or didn't believe him. He warned only Labour could save Britain from a Tory government, which proved to be rubbish as we saw the Tories soar ahead of Labour by far more than the 59 seats maximum they might have won in Scotland.

He even took the wrong hectoring attitude in the debates he was invited to participate in. People don't like loud mouthed bullies that won't shut up.

And now, instead of leaving with some dignity, like some of his colleagues, notably Ed Miliband and Dougie Alexander did, he has left looking like the petulant loser that he is. And now he has announced that he won't, as previously planned, stand for Holyrood. He only wanted to be there if he was in charge, it seems. Serving the public? Nah!

Good riddance.

I'd like to say a huge thank you to the 280 people who took part in the poll. It's gratifying when people participate, as so many of you do, so much here, and I don't think I say thanks often enough! 

The results are as follows.

61% (or 173 people) thought he should go.
36% (or 103 people) thought he should stay. (I was one of them.)
1% (4 people) weren't sure.

(Yep, I know, that makes 98%, but you know how rounding works out in these matters and in any case Munguin can't count.)