In the light of the Herald's article yesterday about the files on devolution, we asked, Mr Darling, in his live Scotsman appearance:

In the interests of complete openness and the fullest of information being available to the voters in Scotland's referendum, and, given that there is little likelihood of security implications, should not the UK government  make an exception to their rules about disclosure of information, and release the files on devolution, in line with the disclosure rules brought in by the Scottish government (ie,15 years after the fact)?

Would you not further agree that to fail to do that, without giving good reason, will encourage people to speculate on what it is that the UK government wishes to keep hidden?

Answer came there none.
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Today Captain Pugwash Cameron and First Mate Clegg relaunched the coalition coffin, no no no, I meant government. Probably this pretty much sums up what we think of it: (click on picture to enlarge) Actually it's more or less what Tom Strathclyde thinks about it too. But you'd think that he could have chosen another day to do it.

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We've all got round to thinking what a horrible man Cameron is and how his government is evil, hurting as it does, the poorest and the least able to defend themselves. He has managed so far to persuade large numbers of the public that sick and disabled people are wicked scroungers... when most of them are not. Like it or not, there are people who are ill, and a quick look at the government's own figures for fraud on sickness benefits will show that there is almost none at all.

He's also talked people into believing that the unemployed are lazy and shiftless because they don't have a job, even allowing his pea-brained finance secretary to run off at the mouth about 'darkened bedroom windows when a shift worker is going off to work in the morning'. 

The pea brain himself seemed not to twig that it was ever thus, that shift workers very often saw dark windows when they went to, and returned from work... on the basis that they were SHIFT WORKERS and worked SHIFTS. He seemed to be unaware that in a 24/7 world many people are at home when others are at work. Osborne, of course, never having worked shifts, would be oblivious to all that. When he was little maids appeared to light the fires and serve breakfast, and it never occurred to him that they were at work long before he opened his eyes.

The bone heads who believe this nonsense and who have recently taken to abusing sick, disabled and unemployed people, might also like to reflect that a large number of these unemployed are in that position because of the policies of Cameron and Osborne. Many more have to get by on part-time wages... And with sky-high power prices (in an oil rich nation) many part timers are forced to stay in bed a little longer to keep warm and conserve energy, which might explain darkened windows even at 8 am.

They might also like to reflect upon the fact that most welfare benefits go to those people who are in work. And that this is because vast numbers of people in the UK are paid so appallingly lowly, that they couldn't possibly live without government assistance. The figures in this link belie most of what they are saying.

We should, however, in all these reflections on the Tories, never forget that this most recent persecution of the poor was started by Brown's government. They double the bottom rate of income tax, and started the witch hunt against the so-called "welfare scroungers": they brought ATOS in and they set the original targets. (And don 't let them tell you that there are no targets. They have already told us how much money they will save, so there must be targets.)

Neither should we forget this man, whose lack of concern for human life was so low that he was prepared to do whatever it took to keep George Bush happy.

Even by the standards of this government 120,000 to 1,200,000 is a LOT of dead people.