You have probably already see this video over at Wings, aptly entitled "How it's done". But incase you haven't I include it here.
Stewart Hosie is our local MP, the London Finance Shadow for the SNP, and a formidable debater and speaker, and frankly I'm a bit proud of this.
He started this debate in a position of weakness: 59% against and 21% for independence, and by strength of argument turned it to a 51% yes vote, 38% no.
I'd be interested in your opinions of the debate, and the points raised by students. These are points that could be raised by anyone we're talking to, on the bus, in the gym, at Morrisons...
Watched this earlier today and thought Stewart was very impressive, the result astonishing and I think a similar format should be adopted for further debates rather than have opposing politicians shouting each other down. As he is an MP and so is Darling why not a debate between the two?
ReplyDeleteYes. If that is the kind of result, then probably Stewart should give a masterclass in it.
DeleteDarling and Hosie is a good idea...
I watched this yesterday.
ReplyDeleteMy feeling was that we are witnessing a change in Scottish politics. The old way is dead, long live the new way. It's just a gut feeling, but I think the Scottish people are ready for change, and just need a nudge to get them going.
I'm counting on your guts being right!
DeleteWhile the SNP are busy arguing about the politics of separation, Scottish Labour is bringing out an energy price freeze.
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing as Scottish Labour, Dean. The only party registered is 'The Labour Party'.
DeleteMost energy companies offer a 2 year price freeze anyway, My parents have just signed up for one.
DeleteThe thing about the price freeze is that private companies won't lose out. They will put the prices up before and after. They will also stop investing, and in the end the government will have to invest fro them, unless we want to have no fuel.
DeletePrivatising them was madness. Most of them are now owned by companies with no base in Britain,
Thanks Dean I am firmly a no voter now that super Ed has an unworkable policy.
DeleteBruce
Yes, a price freeze that one way or another is not going to happen like so many Labour promises of the past. Do you imagine that the energy companies would not raise prices immediately before any freeze? How long would the freeze be for? Would a potential freeze deter investment?
ReplyDeleteWhy are you talking about the "politics of separation"? The Better together side have already accepted the question and it is on Scottish independence not on separation. Separating this country from England would need a massive structural operation, would it not?
Sorry, John, I wrote my answer to Dean before I read your post. It seems we have the same ideas about the freeze.
DeleteAdded to that, it will take some time to get the legislation through, and then there is likely to be legal battles.
It is possible that they government might lose.
tris and brownlie = snp apologists
ReplyDeleteDo you support a energy price freeze and if not why not
or is it a case of if Labour are for it i am agin it.
Yes it is aint it just want to rubbish a Labour idea even if it was the right thing to do.
Still at least we all now know you and brownlie
are on the side of big business and against the ordinary
Scot.
Absolutely support a price freeze.
DeleteJust dubious if it can be done.
The only way to keep prices down is to nationalise the power companies, which would be hard to do, since they mostly owned in China or France, or Spain as far as I can see.
You really can't say...it's a free market, There is competition... and then put controls on private companies.
If you are, for example, the French government and you have majority holdings in the companies you can do this, but even at that, you have to accept that the rest of the shareholders may sell up.
I'm not putting it down because it's a Labour idea. I'm putting it down because I don't think it will happen, and if it doe, I don't think it will work....even if I want it to.
The energy companies should NEVER have been privatised.
Like water they are staples of life and not for profit.
Niko
DeleteI, like the SNP, do not support a price freeze as it not the answer to the long term problem of energy. We live in one of the most energy rich countries in the world and yet pay some of the highest prices. This was caused by the privitsation of a public utility because the Tories saw that there were billions to be made from it. They are now all owned from abroad, an acceptable foriengner of course, unlike us Scots but anyway they bought the companies because duh there was billions to be made. There needs to be a wide debate and either nationalisation has to take place in Scotland or some form of national competition to the energy companies. I am not against it because the red tories suggested it, I am just surprised that it has taken nearly 3 years to find a policy , even an unworkable one, no anything short of nationalisation or state owned competition will result in more of the same for the consumer. Niko read up the subject before blindly following your masters in London.
Bruce having a day off but ranting on blogs phere, might even hit Nikos blog.
He he Bruce. You can't take a day off from ranting....
DeleteI do approve of the idea of stopping the prices of these utter essentials rising. But I know that it is going to be impossible to arrange.
One question I would ask though, is that if Labour is keen to put a freeze on ALL electricity and gas bills, even for the rich who use far far more heating their massive houses... why is it that they think it is so wrong to put a freeze on Council Tax?
No, they want to rubbish it because it's a vacant populist promise that is beyond Milibungler's ability to deliver and would be completely ineffective even if it could be delivered. First he has to get elected, and with a sufficient majority that the Tories can't hinder the ludicrously quick legislation he'd need to pass into law to actually give him the authority to impose the freeze, assuming such a thing is even legal under EU law, regardless of which the energy companies will already have put their prices up beforehand, and as soon as the freeze ends they'll go right back to what they do now.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast the Greens and the Jimmy Reid Foundation, both part of Yes Scotland, have just published a fantastic proposition for how an independent Scotland could reclaim our energy provision into the hands of public ownership, run using an interesting decentralised and democratised system, in the common good.
No matter how much the Daily Fail bleats their "Red Ed" nonsense, he's too much of a political coward to go up against the hard neo-liberal Blairite core that has infested the Labur party and actually renationalise the power companies. Mark my words, he'll be equivocating and whinging about "better competition in the market" before the month is up.
Wow... I wish I'd said that.
Delete:)
Thank you. I agree with every word.
I would hope that an independent Scotland could actually offer more than a pay freeze. It's scandalous that an oil producing country has pensioners dying because they can't afford to heat their homes in winter.
ReplyDeleteAmazing isn't it that we produce oil and gas and have some of the most expensive petrol in the world and some of the most expensive home heating in the world.
DeleteAnd as you say, people die every winter because if the cold. But in Norway where it is far colcer, no one dies of hypothermia.
Odd that.
I see the two prize hypocrites are up to standard over capping energy prices for all yet they want to means test free prescriptions what a waste of space these something for nothing unionists are.
ReplyDeleteRobertson in that video should be re-enobled Lord Vacuous of Something for Nothingland as he said nothing but blatant lies from start to finish and the students could see that. Is Dean his batman?
To be honest I've never liked Robertson. I have no time for people who give up the "huge privilege" of being an MP, as soon as some other job comes along. And of course when Bush wanted a patsy in Nato, old Robertson was right up for it. Specially getting the idiotic title to go with it.
DeleteI've always thought him repulsive since then. Oh thank you for the privilege of representing you...what's that you say, pots of money...Brussels... Aristocracy... Put me down for that".
what a carry on to fix a misspelling, anyway
ReplyDeletewhat I said was
Robertsons always had a desire to go down in the history books so lets make his dream come true,
I would like to see a granite plinth in the entrance to Holyrood quoting word for word what that man said about his own country that it has no culture of its own so that future generations can see with their own eyes what a craven bunch the no campaign really were
Unbelieveable that a man could say that.
DeleteI think he lived too long elsewhere.
Robertson's confusion between Vidkun Quisling and William Joyce (lord haw haw) was bizarre, I cant even see how he could have connected them by the colloquial use of the word Quisling to describe a traitor, because I can imagine that it wouldnt been in common parlance when Joyce was captured shortly after the war ended but I will stand corrected on that,
ReplyDeleteas an aside point it is questionable that Joyce should have been hanged for treason as he was not a British citizen but had (illegally) gained a British passport which in the judiciaries view made him a defacto British citizen who by that token owed allegiance to the king, he in fact was of Irish American extraction, which if you choose to make the connection was illegally executed in the same manner as William Wallace as you cant face a charge of treason for opposing a king you never swore allegiance to,
having said that it could also be argued that he got what was coming to him.
That's an interesting point. I wonder if it was felt that the people wanted him executed?
DeleteIt would be interesting to know more about that (because I didn't know that he wasn't British). After all if he was Irish and American, I suppose the Irish side of him would have been completely free to take whatever side it wanted, whilst the American side of him would have been obliged to take the side of the American President.
As far as I know, I've never sworn allegiance to Windsor and Co. Nor would I.
I've been puzzling over the accusations against Ralph Miliband, and find that I'm pretty well in agreement with most of them.
So I wonder if I should be The Daily Heil's next victim.
Tris
ReplyDeleteI have never liked Roberstson, ever, but if that is the standard of debate lets get him on the round of tours with Lamont, Darling, Rennie and the rest. If they are doing the rounds surely it becomes a kneck and kneck vote. My son was actually at the debate, it was his first lecture for his Sociology Masters (if he sticks in) and he said he found Robertson to be confused and a little mixed uo about Scottish history. he also thought in trying not to talk Scotland down Roberston in fact talked Scotland down and made it clear that to succeed you have to move to England. He thought Stewart Hosie spoke about a vision, aided by facts, and was calm and spoke to the group as adults. Although my son also noted that some of the questions and comments were shocking, esp the girl about the Dr.Who etc, I am too politie to say what he thought of that comment. But either way Hosie won that case hands down because when taken apart the NO campaign only have fear and lies and nothing else. The last few months when the BBC etc have to start to be more even in their panels and allocation of time to both debates will make for interesting times and the polls will start to shift, we will then really see the fear being rolled out and that might just be the thing that annoys people enough to vote yes when they are told how stupid they are.
bruce
Yes... I thought that the student contribution was appalling by and large (there were exceptions).
DeleteDr Who! No comment.
What will we do if Afghanistan attacks? showed an incredible lack of knowledge or indeed ability to think.
Robertson is a disagreeable man and yes, I think he did get mixed up about the history and culture. I think he got himself in a mess, adn didn't know how to get out of it. He must have been great at Nato!
Still as Munguin pointed out, that's an easy enough job. You sit in a luxurious cupboard in Brussels and wait from instructions from (in his case) Darth Vader.
Stewart is a good speaker and a clear and consise debater.
Lord Rober.... proclamation, hear ye hear ye.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant...I'll use that!
DeleteRobertson's debate contribution was a hotch potch of condecension and the full panoply of unionist lies and misrepresentations. It was thanks to the Great Union that we have no bridge tolls, no fees at Uni and free prescriptions. The self same union cabal is currently taking that all away south of the Border and Labour are just wringing their hands and saying that they will not reverse this.
ReplyDeleteI was very impressed with Hosie as he just batted all Roberston's false assertions away and managed to keep his cool.
The look on Robertson's face after the second vote was a peach; a burst balloon.
Scotland 2 Robertson 0
ReplyDeleteDevolution will shoot the nationalist fox
Scotland doesn't have a language and a culture
Come on George, keep it and you might get a hat trick or please, even more.
Yes. They should let him out more often. But only against a competent opponent like Stewart.
DeleteThe rubbish some of these people speak is utterly incredible, and most of the time they get away with it.