NIGEL, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS GIVING

RISING support for UKIP and English opposition to membership of the EU could tip Scotland towards independence, according to a new poll.

The yes and no camps would be neck and neck in next year’s Scottish referendum if voters think Britain is likely to withdraw from the EU, it suggests.

That is, more or less, as much of the article as I can read unless I'd like to pay Rupert Murdoch as little as £2 a week for a subscription to the Sunday Times. Not only would I not like to do this, I'd actually prefer gnawing my foot off than giving him 5p, so, as to the rest of the findings, I remain in the dark as they don't yet seem to be available from Panelbase.

However, it is interesting that the lurch to the right, and anti-European policy which is proving to be so very popular with the English, may not be going down so well with Scots. The last poll I saw put support for the Yes campaign at around 33%, so the "neck and neck" quoted above in today's poll is a huge movement in our favour.

I'm dubious about every opinion poll, and independence polls seem to be more volatile than most, so I take it all with  a hefty pinch of salt, but if it is anywhere near true, I'd like to thank Mr Farage from the bottom of my heart.

DAVE TAKES A CHANCE WITH THE WORD "MORAL" IN HIS RE-LAUNCH

What a week just past, and a week to come for the UK government.

David Cameron is going to re-launch his Big ‘Moral’ Society (the moral bit is new, but the rest is the same), and explain that there is a morality which runs through the policies of all the coalition government. (Did he not hear about Labour’s embarrassing interlude when they announced a moral (ethical) foreign policy but within a week were found to be exporting weapons to some autocracy, after which we heard no more about morality?)

Cameron’s actually pinning his Savile Row shirt to this one, because he is saying that he is 100% behind the policy, which so far has been somewhere between a damp squib and a bit of an embarrassment with some saying that they don’t know what it’s about but most suspecting that it’s about government attempting to get people to do voluntarily what used to be done by the government.

Additionally there have been the embarrassments of one of his flagship Big Society councils withdrawing from the project because of government’s cuts eating into the money for funding it, and his Big Society Tsar having to reduce the amount of voluntary time he can give to the project because of the need to earn a living. (Not to mention that someone pointed out that the initials BS are used by those in polite society to refer to bullshit.)

Many on the right wing of his party (who clearly haven’t grasped the fact that if they can get people to volunteer to work for nothing they can close more public services and release more money for tax cuts) have been giving him a rough time over the vagueness of the scheme.

An aide has said that he needs to stress that the Big Society is about personal morals in terms of charities and volunteering and that it is a concept that right-wingers should applaud.

But the coalition is also running into trouble with its AV referendum legislation, as the government will hope to overturn the Lords’ amendments, whereupon it will be returned to the Upper House in its original state. If their lordy ones decide to be awkward they can refuse to accept the Commons’ changes. This will risk the legislation missing its deadline and will render it unusable for date of our General Election and the council elections in England. It is difficult to know if this particular piece of legislation would really count as being in a party manifesto, and whether thus, the Commons can demand supremacy. (Although the Liberals’ manifesto included a referendum on proportional representation, it most certainly didn’t refer to a referendum on AV, which in any case is not proportional, and the Liberals described as “nasty”.) Actually, don't you think it's rather strange to give this unelected lot a vote on elections at all?

We may yet have no referendum, at which point how much longer can the coalition hold on to their Liberal left wingers and the Tory right wingers.

There has also been a reversal of the cutting of funding to help poor people in debt. Ministers though, have said that the cut £25million being replaced with £25million from another source after redundancy notices had been issued, was not a U-turn. Of course it wasn’t. And Michael Gove has been told that his changes to Labour’s school refurbishments scheme were illegal. (He insisted on bringing it out about a week after his appointment, without proper scrutiny by either the staff [it was all wrong] or the lawyers.)

It does seem to me that this government is “coming apart at the shewing” (as my gran would say). I wonder what the bets are now on it lasting till this time next year.

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Pics: The truth is that most people, who have time and inclination to do voluntary work, do it anyway. Cameron banging on about it won’t encourage many more, and may put as many people off. A specimen AV voting card, blamed in Scotland for so many spoilt papers. It’s an amazing feat that there are actually seats that haven’t changed hands since the days of Vicky. Elections are fought and won on a small number of marginals. For the rest (of whatever party) it’s a career for life.