Margaret Curran, the feisty Shadow Scottish Secretary, could not contain her enthusiasm as she skipped down spin alley, singing Ed's praises and how he had delivered a fantastic speech. He had, she insisted, displayed a "Thatcheresque" inner confidence; an adjective she meant as a big compliment but which others might raise an eyebrow at.
For those who enjoy Labour's discomfiture over the Lamont and Miliband lurch to the right, Ian Bell's column will be to your taste.
I used to be a Labour voter, then I decided that it was pointless; after eighteen years of Tory rule when Scotland voted Labour and got Tory.
ReplyDeleteJohn Smith came along and there was a wee lift in my heart...
Vote SNP.
Does she realise that she is harming hole diggers piece work rates as she is the fastest on this planet. JCB shares are plummeting as I type.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside Niko missed a trick in not grabbing Dean's ex New Right blog his advert revenue would of doubled.
ReplyDeleteAye Conan. It might have been very different under John Smith...
ReplyDelete...still, as you say, VOTE SNP
You know it makes sense.
(It's about all that does!)
CH: The seem to be a whole team of hole diggers. Labour: Shovels are US.
ReplyDeleteNiko is very quiet tonight. I think Taz must have given him a good barking to!
Miliband's speech was simply another milestone on the Labour party's long march from a once upon a time radical party into a party of British patriotism and defender of the British Establishment. Conservatives in other words.
ReplyDeleteIf you'd put David Cameron up on that stage, kept the flag, the logo, the blue background and the text of the speech and just replaced the word "Labour" with "Conservative" in the speech and on the backdrop then nobody would have noticed anything odd at all. In anything.
In fact they'd have called the speech a return to the Conservatives' roots and a triumph for Cameron.
tris/Conan
ReplyDeleteI am a labour voter I aint got a heart
Iain Bellend is that the best you can do????
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/herald-view/a-mature-debate-on-universalism.19076440
'There is nothing progressive about feather-bedding millionaire pensioners and the owners of large homes, while services to the poorest are shredded and the fabric of our roads and public buildings left to rot.'
Youse lot dont stand a chance hard pounding from the unionist media will reduce the snp to rubble..
True Doug. Miliband, like B£air before him, has clearly decided that the only way to get his hands on the keys of number 10 are to move to the right. And they keys to number 10 are obviously important to him.
ReplyDeleteI always thought that it was good for the Yes campaign if we had a Tory government in England; now I'm beginning to wonder if it matters at all.
Still, it looks like Cameron could do with some good news. His natives are restless over the UK's last industry, the means of killing people, which they so happily sells to dictators and murderers around the world.
And with the train crash of a train franchise, and a Birmingham Tory councillor unable to go to the conference in Birmingham because of his rant at the plebs, sorry police... och, it's all shaping up to be an interesting week for Botox Dave.
At least he knows he can count on Blue Ed (doesn't quite have the same ring...maybe he should change his name to Bertie) and Mrs Lamont for support.
Niko:
ReplyDeleteThe real debate is: If we can't properly look after our pensioners and our roads and infrastructure, our kids and our sick, why on earth do we have Olympic Games, Foreign Aid Budgets, WMDs, 6 royal palaces, 4th largest spend in the world on armed force, embassies and consulates in most countries in the world... where we have no interests, do no business and no tourists ever go.
Mens testing is demeaning and disgraceful. The people most in need won't demean themselves to beg for a bus pass.
It is also incredibly expensive, and in any case, if you want to cheat you can easily do so.
I've never said Mrs Lamont shouldn't have a discussion about it. That's fine, but the discussion should look at ways of maintaining what after all is a founding principle of Labour.
And that has to look at trimming other things that are less important.
The question is. Is it more important for David Cameron or Ed Miliband to have a seat in New York at the big boys' table, or is it more important the 3000 DON'T continue to die in the winter of cold related illness.
So why not renationalise transport, gas, electricity, water (in England/Wales/NI), etc, and run them so that they render a service instead of making profits.
Why not stop this nonsense of high rents for doss house flats which can only ever be let to people on benefits, because no one would dream of actually paying that price for them.
The housing benefits bill has been pushed up, not because there are so many more people getting it (although it is true that because of the mess that the bankers and the government made of the economy more and more people are out of work, or in part time work and need benefits)
But mainly the bill is up because of the daft policy of allowing a maximum local rent price, to which immediately nearly every landlord raised their rent.
Example: flat in block next to me. Dump; in poor condition; pensioner, too old to move away now; rogue landlord who won't give him a long term tenancy and doesn't do repairs, had his rent almost doubled to the exact maximum that can be extracted from the government.
Idiotic idea. Costs billions.
Scrap it, and reintroduce fair rents. Landlords would soon bring the prices down. It's a huge scam.
But no, all Mrs Lamont wants to talk about is the fact that some people who could afford the bus fare are getting free bus passes (which by the way probably guarantees that buses run at all outwith peak hours).
Private companies would not run empty buses.