Whether or not Andy Murray’s being knocked out of Wimbledon will have an effect on the Neverendum remains to be seen. In the meantime, Clacknessie Chamber of Commerce Business for Scotland (not to be confused with Business Against Scotland) has published an open letter to the incoming President of the European Commission.
Straight away, there is a note of desperation from the author that Jean-Claude Juncker might associate him with David Cameron. Or even care.
I wish to dissociate myself from the behaviour of the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who leads a party that has but one member from Scotland in the Parliament at Westminister, and another solitary member in the European Parliament.
Not that I carry a candle for the Tories, it should be noted that there are more Tory MSPs than there are pandas in all Europe and North America (although they do not reproduce as quickly). In the 2010 General Election, 420,000 Scottish voters chose Tory: at 16.7% of the cast vote, this was just two points behind the SNP vote. That the former returned just one MP and the latter six arises largely from the FPtP system in Westminster elections.
It remains to be seen what BfS thinks of Juncker’s new batman, Martin Schultz. According to Tychy:
The most exciting moments in the career of Martin Schulz, the current President of the European Parliament, include being compared to a Nazi on separate occasions by both the former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi and the British MEP Godfrey Bloom (and, in both instances, he had no comeback). Schulz is also a former alcoholic and as the mayor of Würselen (pop. 37000) he was once embroiled in a controversy about the building of an “aquatic leisure centre”.
As most of the real proper polling agencies report a widening gap for NO, one wonders how the doyen of online promotion of Scottish independence and long-term resident of Bath, Stuart Campbell would react given a twot from last year:
Perhaps return to his campaign for justice for the 96 dead Hillsborough fans whose deaths he attributes to surviving fans because “EVERYONE pushing their way into the tunnel KNEW perfectly well that it opened into an enclosed area with no exits, hemmed in by overhanging steel fences, which minutes before kick-off was likely to already be crammed with people, and which took the inherently-hazardous form of a stairway”.
Given that Fish-heid McMoonface has remembered a prior engagement when it comes to debating with Alistair Darling, Westminster member, Pete Wishart has called on the Scottish Secretary, Alistair Carmichael to do so. I doubt this will have much traction, and wish Wishart would join a rock band or something.
In my neck of the woods, McMoonface has responded to a democratically elected local councilor’s criticism of rural spending in less than respectful terms:
First Minister Alex Salmond said a Sutherland councillor should “go and do her homework” after she criticised his plan to pour millions of pounds of Crown Estate seabed lease revenues into the coffers of the islands.
The SNP leader accused Deirdre Mackay of sour grapes after she called for the same enviable package to be handed to Sutherland and Caithness.
He said: “Deirdre should know it’s not just island communities but all coastal communities around Scotland, including Sutherland and Caithness, that will get the benefit from the Crown Estate revenue. So basically my message is Deirdre should do her homework – not that Labour people usually do their homework.”
A rankled Mrs Mackay quickly responded, accusing Mr Salmond of “making up policy on the hoof”. She insisted that she scrutinised the policy document and his claim was nowhere to be found.
“What kind of reaction is that from a First Minister?” she said. “Where’s the dignity? Where’s the courtesy? I studied the document in great detail and nowhere does it say that this pledge applies to rural communities like Sutherland and Caithness.”
Note the lack of deference from one ‘OorWullie’. I have a very good idea who that is, and he formerly was a weighty member of the local SNP group.
Elsewhere, I found an earlier piece from YEScotland claiming 20% child poverty in Scotland is linked to Westminster’s malfeasance.
Setting aside the lack of data on child poverty in EWNI or even if this is absolute rather than relative poverty not to mention why a Party which has been in power for seven years has not changed this, there is an unwritten rule that emotive images of crying children – especially those with no statement that they are library images – turn-out to be library images from the other side of the world.
And this does not fail to impress, with the earliest record of that image I can find being an article about autism on a Polish website dating from 2010.
UPDATE: in the comments, Sensai Nambu gets his gun and provides a link to the price list for the original of the picture used by YEScotland.
