Here, however, is the quote, taken from her speech:
"Alex Salmond is quick to point to the high levels of welfare in Scandinavia but those universal benefits are paid for by high levels of taxation. Scotland cannot be the only something for nothing country in the world". Johann Lamont, 25th September 2012.
(The speech itself has now been removed from the Labour Party's Scottish website in order to spare her blushes, but an archived version can be found at the link above.)
We know that the press will not pounce upon her for what is an out and out lie.
They may not even mention it at all. But the removal of such a major speech laying outEd Ball's sorry Ms Lamont's thoughts on social security and welfare, from the Labour party website is an admission that she was being economical with the truth.
So if you don't read it anywhere else, at least you can read it online.
Of course it is possible that Ms Lamont did not intent to lie. Maybe she simply forgot that she had said it. There were a few press articles at the time but Ms Lamont's a busy woman and she may not have had time to read them. I remember it particularly well because I was stung by the insult which came on or around the same day that MsDavid's Daughter sorry Davidson said that far too many of us were dependent upon the state.
Alternatively Ms Lamont may just think that we're such a set of half wit Jocks who wouldn't remember what she said in a speech made over a year ago, what with all that running between the brew, the bookies and the pub.
I do know that the Labour Party in Scotland is not overly blessed with computer savvy people since they lost their new technology tsar Bomber Sneer Harris when he used his first excursion into online politics on behalf of the party to depict Alex Salmond as Adolf Hitler (bright as a button that bloke!). However, one would have hoped that they had at least one person who knew about archived pages.
Clearly not.
I wonder if Ms Lamont will own up that she "misspoke" and reveal to us whether this statement and the whole welfare cuts agenda that she was laying out to please her London masters was in fact just a sop to the Eds or whether it is Labour's Scottish/UK policy.
Just for once I'd really like to know what Ms Lamont actually believes in, if anything at all.
We know that the press will not pounce upon her for what is an out and out lie.
They may not even mention it at all. But the removal of such a major speech laying out
So if you don't read it anywhere else, at least you can read it online.
Of course it is possible that Ms Lamont did not intent to lie. Maybe she simply forgot that she had said it. There were a few press articles at the time but Ms Lamont's a busy woman and she may not have had time to read them. I remember it particularly well because I was stung by the insult which came on or around the same day that Ms
Alternatively Ms Lamont may just think that we're such a set of half wit Jocks who wouldn't remember what she said in a speech made over a year ago, what with all that running between the brew, the bookies and the pub.
Clearly not.
I wonder if Ms Lamont will own up that she "misspoke" and reveal to us whether this statement and the whole welfare cuts agenda that she was laying out to please her London masters was in fact just a sop to the Eds or whether it is Labour's Scottish/UK policy.
Just for once I'd really like to know what Ms Lamont actually believes in, if anything at all.
Tris
ReplyDeleteShe really is a shocking politician and I actually think a shocking human being. I saw a picture of her and Hilton in the press and thought add in Curran and there are my nightmares for the next year. I also thought roll on the proper 16 week referendum campaign because we are going to see the polls start to close big time once the BBC are forced to be imparcial, and the YES campaign really go for it big time knowing that now we are going to get some fairier treatment, the talent will do thew rest. The we will see how the likes of Lamont, Darling, MacDougall, Cameron do under pressure. Interesting times ahead and bring it on.
Bruce
Yep, I think you are right. Once the BBC is being scrutinised for fairness and even handedness... (LOL LOL LOL that's going to be a full time job) people will have to be called out for lying, cheating or breaking the law on gambling.
DeleteOf course that won't change the Express (wholly own subsidiary of Porn TV, or the Daily Heil, but they will look a bit sillier if the BBC is obliged to tell the truth.
If I were them I start to phase this in gently... otherwise they are going to look pretty stupid.
And i agree, she is a shockingly bad politician. Even my mates who are Labour members, or voters shudder when they hear of her latest faux pas.
"We need a debate, we need a debate, we need a debate" Now does that answer your questions as we need a debate? A disgrace of a human being bring on the Daleks to exterminate as Scotland and Labour members need someone who is honest not a debate about a debate.
ReplyDelete.She cannot answer a questions as she has no answers like most robots.she needs an upgrade in her programing software from GCHQ speaking of which. Where is our media?
Suffering heavens. WE ARE HAVING A DEBATE... or is nothing getting through the the Lamontbunker?
DeleteShe should debate live on telly with Alex... What a joke that would be.
Thanks for that link. GCHQ has been doing the American's dirty work, so we won't hear too much form Cameron. Malcolm (hoping to be Lord) Rifkind doesn't think that anything is wrong, but then it's probably a fact that he is yet to hear about the internet.
And the British press alone in Europe are kinda keeping quiet about all the fuss... because the proprietors all want to go to the Lords or become companions of honour.
I wonder why Murdoch hasn't blown Cameron out of the water...
They lie with impunity, as they know their mates in the media will never report it.
ReplyDeleteWe don't live in a democracy.
Well clearly not Jutie. Not even a tiny little bit.
DeleteBut I still say that they are underestimating the internet.
It's not the world these people grew up in. It's very different.
Bring on the foxes.
ReplyDeleteWell I'm seriously sorry to hear that birds who have had their wings clipped to stop them flying away have been so poorly protected by the fourth largest military power in the world.
DeleteThese birds didn't deserve that fate and I'd have sooner sacrificed two members of the royal family.... the ugly sisters for example... than these two fine birds.
I'm also a bit unsure as to why it will take to next spring to build a few cages for them. For heavens sake that's 5 months away. I know the brits are a bit crap at getting anything done, (over time and over budget is their middle name) but a few bird cages... 5 months... come on.
I'm sure they could get them done over the weekend if they get some Polish carpenters in.
They need an army of committees to hash out the formalities which then goes up to get altered and then comes back down ad infinitum to keep the work in progress to build up their xmas bonus.credits.
DeleteOh well, if the fox kills another one and the royal family falls, who gives a damn? Not I!
Deletetris
ReplyDelete"something for nothing"
Is that is that all you got????/?
ch
says we need a debate makes me laugh you lot are
like the moonies, you cant debate you cant even see the
other side of the argument even if you disagree.
Your more a cult than a political party.
You can't handle the truth! Son
Nope Niko. It's the fact that she lied through her teeth and thought no one would notice and then Labour took down her original speech, it not occurring to them that there were copies of it everywhere.
DeleteWe keep asking you guys what the other side of the argument is... and you say we wouldn't have nuclear weapons, we wouldn't; be important, we wouldn't have a house of lords, we wouldn't be able to boss the EU around, or Nato ...and people wouldn't respect us coz we wouldn't have CLOUT.
And we say... so what's your argument for staying with the uk...?
Give us something to argue against apart from this post imperial garbage that is appropriate for the old Tories to fall asleep to in the house of rich old drunks.
says we need a debate makes me laugh you lot are
Deletelike the moonies, you cant debate you cant even see the
other side of the argument even if you disagree.
Your more a cult than a political party.
Hahaha. What do you want to debate Niko? A guess would be that we are better together so let us hear your debate over why. You can't accuse others if you are not willing to participate in a meaningful way. As they say put up or shut up.
As Hercule Poirot would say...precisement mon ami...
DeleteI await some good hard arguments, backed by fact, which would indicate that we are better together...
In all the time I've been doing this I have never heard a single one.
Frankly I find the repetitive anti-Labourism of this blog a trifle below its author(s) intellect.
ReplyDeleteWe have two prospective (realistic) candidates for FM of Scotland: Alex Salmond and Johann Lamont.
Now, I am a boy from Glasgow, lucky enough to be second generation uni, with a secure (if realistically) lower bourgeois unbringing. But heavily working class parents, and poor, impoverished highland grandparents (first language Gaelic for them).
Why on EARTH would they or I find Salmond more inspirational than Lamont if where we come from and what we DO is anything to go by?
Salmond, a middle class historiconics expert with a career as a f*&king RBS economist, or a working class girl like Johann, a school teacher by former (i.e. REAL) pre-politics job. Oh, and a lifetime pro-devolution, cooperative party member.
I know who I find more inspirational, and it sure as hell isn't some greedy git who has rushed through his curriculum for excellence without proper time and financial support... and expense of our education. And it sure he s+@t isn't the one who led the SNP into opposing devolution!
SNP? Tartan bloody tories! Salmond proves the damn point relentlessly! The man who is on record saying Scots are all Thatcherite in policy but not in personality. What an insult.
SNP? Tartan bloody tories!
DeleteEm, hold on a minute Dean. Aren't the Labour party in a formal alliance with the Conservative party in the Better Together campaign with shared directorships on the Better Together 2012 company board and frequent photo-calls shoulder to shoulder on the same platform behind the same banners and under the same slogans?
I thought the Labour party was allied with the the Lib-Dems and the Tory party against the SNP?
If the SNP are the real "Tartan Tories" I must apologise as I thought the Labour party was the front for the Tories in Scotland where they provided the manpower for the Better Together campaign and the Tories and their donors provided the money.
If it now turns out that it's the SNP and the Tories who are natural allies against the Labour party then it just goes to show I should read the newspapers more often.
As you obviously prefer a habitual liar to be FM beggars belief.
DeleteFor you to swoon over.
The Latest poll in Scotland political trustworthiness.
Alex Salmond +15
Nicola Sturgeon +12
Alistair Darling -11
Willie Rennie -13
Patrick Harvie -14
Anas Sarwar -18
Ruth Davidson -18
Johann Lamont -19
Michael Moore -20
David Cameron -42
I believe Iain MacWhirter answered the Salmond/Lamont confusion you have on GMS at c8.15 this morning.
Ewwww Cameron's pants must be red hot!
DeleteDean: The blog isn't per se anti labour. It's anti unionist, because it is pro independence. And a lot of Labour appears to be vehemently pro union.
ReplyDeleteIn this case it has a go at two Labour people. One of them, Lamont, has lied through her teeth because she made a tactical error which she would like to forget. The second, who, by the way, appears to me to be more right wing than Attila the Hun, and certainly nearer a Tory than Alex Salmond has ever been or will ever be, made a film likening Salmond to Adolf Hitler. For a politician, on behalf of his party, this was a remarkably stupid thing to do.
Before you point it out I know that I have likened some of the policies of this Conservative government to those of the Nazi party of the 1930s... referring particularly to their treatment of the poor, the sick, the disabled and now the old. But I'm not anyone's official spokesman. I'm not a member of any political party, and the views I express are mine, and mine alone.
The SNP were once considered to be the Tartan Tories, mainly, I imagine because their earliest successes were in the rural areas of the country where the Tories had been strong. Traditional Tory voters would have, in these days, rather chewed their foot off than voted Labour, and when the Tories started to fail them they looked elsewhere for someone to vote for. There is far less difference now between the policies of Labour and the Conservative, and many would change sides. You did yourself.
Under Salmond the SNP has moved to the left and is now accepted in general to be a left of centre, social democrat party. This is a party that has found the maximum amount of money allowed by law to counteract the worst excesses of the Tory's vicious social security reforms. This is the party that started to build council housing; the party of universal social security benefits (an original Labour policy). I think the label Tartan Tory went out in the 1960s.
Just as a matter of interest, as a person with roots in the Gaelic speaking community, how did you feel about the noble lord Robertson’s view that the country has no language and no culture?
Incidentally, despite it being statistically a pointless thing to do, Ms Lamont, and Maggie Curren, both take every possible opportunity to criticise Alex Salmond, frequently with false statements. Given that the man is far more popular than independence; given that he is trusted more than any other politician in the country, this seems to be a rather futile exercise, preaching only to the desperately converted to try to buoy up their spirits.
Doug: I'd add to that that the Labour Party of the UK have only a few areas of policy difference with the Tories, and there are areas, amazingly economic ones, where they are completely as one.
ReplyDeleteMmm.
ReplyDeleteInverted snobbery as a defence of Johann Lamont. Fair play, its a new one. The question is, do you want a common-as-muck moron or a reasonably honest, intelligent person in place as FM?
I don't particularly care if a Tory PM, CoE or SNP FM are millionaire Eton boys or poor ground down paupers in burlap sacks, I just want them to be moderately proficient at the job.
And so it is with Lamont, she's clearly out of her depth. I don't for a minute believe she 'forgot' about the speech she made or the subsequent hair splitting about its meaning. That she now thinks she can completely disown it and not have us all notice marks her out as a bit of a moron.
From memory Salmond was an Oil Economist with RBS, I'm sure your rubbishing of that entire sector will go down well... What with oil generally being such an impediment for Scotland...
;-)
Exactly Pa. I'm not that bothered who our leaders are. They can be black, white, muslim, christian, speak Gaelic or Greek as their first language and come from the working, middle or upper classes, be gay straight, bi, or a sexual. None of that makes any difference.
ReplyDeleteI would ask three things.
That they have the interests of Scotland and Scots at the heart of their thinking; that they be reasonably honest, and that they be reasonably intelligent.
I doubt Ms Lamont can claim to have Scotland at the heart of her thinking. She is brit national and as such is bound to put Britain first. Her statement that she never used the words "something for nothing" kinda shows that she hardly meets the second criterion and frankly she doesn't come over as anything other than pretty dim to me. She might well be a reasonable councillor or MSP. A leader or great political thinker she is not.
I think Salmond was, indeed, an oil economist, which suggests to me that he might know a wee bit more that the average man about the economy of oil. Just a thought, given that Alistair Darling claims that it will all have dried up by 2017.
Smoke! It will be steam as Mr Deans has resigned from Ineos over the Falkirk election proposal this could get very interesting.
ReplyDeleteEd is thinking of reopening his inquiry. It seems that perhaps it wasn't as thorough as it might have been....
Deleteemails are dangerous things.
tris
ReplyDeleteBefore you point it out I know that I have likened some of the policies of this Conservative government to those of the Nazi party of the 1930
Yeah well that is true they have taken the NAZI playbook updated it to
the 21st century and relentlessly pursue it.
IDS Could of very easily said this and the Tory party would cheer him
to the rafters
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/hjhandbuch.htm
Serious genetic disease, particularly mental illnesses, make their victims incapable of living a normal life. They rob their victims of their reasoning powers and sense of responsibility, reducing their value to the people’s community. The unfit proliferate wildly and spread their genetic diseases. This is clear from the average number of children per family in the German Reich:
Healthy families have 2.2 children
Families with inherited mental deficiencies have 3.5 children
Families with criminal tendencies have 4.9 children.
Thus the number of unfit inhabitants rose from 10 per 1,000 in 1880 to 40 in 1930. The population as a whole rose by about 50%, but the number of the unfit rose by about 300%, six times greater than the average. It is no wonder that in Germany today we have:
1,000,000 feeble-minded
250,000 cases of genetic mental deficiency
90,000 epileptics
40,000 inherited cases of physical handicaps
Most of those with genetic diseases and deficiencies are entirely unable to survive on their own. They cannot care for themselves, but have to be cared for in institutions. This costs the state huge sums each year. The costs of caring for a genetically ill person are eight times as high as those for a normal person. A child who is an idiot costs as much as four or five healthy children. The cost of eight years of normal schooling is about 1000 marks. The schooling for a deaf child costs about 20,000 marks. In all, the German Reich spends around 1.2 billion marks
each year for the care and treatment of citizens with genetic diseases
Max Keiser: STFU David Cameron!
DeleteYes, absolutely Niko. That's why I don't excuse myself for saying it.
DeleteIf i worked for a [political party though, I wouldn't have chosen it as my first outing in my new job.
But yes. We hear how much it costs to keep this section adn that section of the poor or the sick or the old.
We don't hear them whine about the hundreds of millions it costs to keep the Windsors, or the second largest political assembly in the world...The House of Toffs.
Got it on the next one CH!
tris
ReplyDeleteThat they have the interests of Scotland and Scots at the heart of their thinking;
For years and years on end the majority of Scots have voted and supported the Union , yet you and the other extremists ignore and trample over the settled will of the Scottish people without a second thought.
And still have the bare faced cheek to suggest only the Nats have the
interests of the Scots at heart. mayhap the majority have decided to leave the idea of Independent Scotland back in the mists of long ago time.
all the evidence points to that and when you lot lose the referendum perhaps you will then give up childish thoughts and enter into the realm of men.
And accept the time of nation state has gone the time of the 'global citizen' is here
settled will
DeleteEvidence please and when are you going to debate the union side.
If you are a Brit nationalist you have the interests of the whole UK at heart. It stands to reason.
DeleteYou think of the good of the whole union.
You don't see it as a waste of Scottish taxpayers' money to subsidise the building of a sewer system in London, or a train that goes from London to Leeds. You believe that the current system is best where the majority of decisions about the country and its people are made by 650 people in the House of Commons, of which only 59 are Scottish.
It figures you have the best interests of Britain at heart.
I'm not saying that is wrong. I'm just saying I want someone who thinks of US first and the rest of the world second.
I'm interested that you think the time of the global citizen is here. Britain certainly doesn't. Mrs Curren is shitting herself about the idea that her son (on a visit to England for study) will become a "FOREIGNER" OMG! How horrific.
Alistair is all about putting up border posts with barbed wire and towers with search lights... So much for the global citizen.
Miliband says they let too many foreigners in.
Cameron says we shouldn't let so many in
One of the London ministers said that British firms should offer jobs first to British people... echoing Gordon Brown's clarion call.
So Britain isn't much for all this global citizen thing, is it?
I don;t think we will lose the referendum Niko. But I reckon that if we do, it won;t be very long before you will be on our side, as the forces of southern England right wing politics start to bear down on a Scotland that no longer is any threat at all to them.
Fits she daein in that photie? is that a call me gesture? I sincerely hope it isnae wan o they durty phone lines that chaarge ye 3 quid a minute tae listen tae heavy breathin an gruntin (like somean trying tae pull the cork oot o a boattle o lanliq?
ReplyDeleteno that ahve ivvir done that sort o thing ye unnerstan, durrrrty besoms
noo a ken whit Ian brotherhood wis talkin aboot this mornin when he said a nivvir sleep, he's richt, since a thought o this a hivvne blinked wance!
What can I say?
DeleteYou'd think that on her money and all the dosh Archie makes she wouldn't have to moonlight of the 0900 numbers, but, that would explain where she disappears to when anything is happening that other party leaders might want to get involved in... you know, Falkirk, Unite, Grangemouth, Unite, MPs knocking seven bells out of Canadian Ambassadors... that sort of thing...
I've not been tempted to phone one of these lines, and now I never will be....
oo)
ReplyDeleteIndeed!
Delete