An Xmas Card For You!
Here is a card just for you. Any similarity to the First Minister's official 'tomorrow belongs to me' card is purely coincidental.
Labels: politics, scotland, snp, xmas
:: | 8:18 pm |Save This Page | |
| (2) comments
:: Monday, December 08, 2008 ::
The Right to Die?
BBC Panorama
Margo MacDonald is one of Scotland's most popular public figures - a firebrand, independent politician and forthright media commentator.
She also has the degenerative brain condition Parkinson's disease and has spoken openly of her desire to choose the moment of her death.
Now, in a deeply personal Panorama film, she uncovers the truth about assisted dying, meeting people with illnesses like hers who are desperate to choose the time and place of their death, and exploring whether British law should be changed to allow them to do just that.
Margo MacDonald is a politician I have a lot of time for. She is fair and personable and just a decent individual. It's no mistake that she is so popular and has been re-elected twice as an independent MSP in the Lothians. I also remember how terribly she was treated by the Scottish National Party who leaked details of her illness to the media when she fell out with the party.
I have my doubts about her bill however. There is evidence from the Netherlands that vulnerable elderly people have found their lives ended prematurely when the decision has been more with their relatives rather than themselves. However it is a crucial debate and I'm interested in how it progresses.Labels: euthanasia, snp
:: | 11:09 pm |
:: Monday, September 10, 2007 ::
Wendy in the House
Wendy Alexander is getting ready for her coronation as Scottish Labour leader with a little tour of the country. In other words she is addressing closed meetings of the Labour councillors and their families who make up the activist base of the party these days. At one of those in Edinburgh she predicted a 2010 referendum on independence according to a report in yesterday's Sunday Herald which does not appear to be online.
This implies Labour backing a referendum, which they think the SNP would lose. Interesting times and I bet Alex Salmond has a wry smile on his face.
τLabels: independence, labour, politics, snp
:: | 9:28 am |
:: Sunday, June 03, 2007 ::
Free Again
The provision of free and healthy school meals for all children is something the SSP campaigned on for years, presenting bills to the parliament twice. The measure has been proven to make a significant difference to health and to children's behaviour in the classroom. It has been a success where it has been introduced in Scandinavia and closer to home by Hull City Council (though the new lib-dem administration has scrapped it on financial grounds.)
So it is welcome that the SNP administration are introducing a pilot scheme in Scotland. Ironic too, given that they opposed the SSP measures and could have got the scheme through years ago if they had cared about more than short term political advantage. They obviously feel that the coast is clear now with no danger of the reds getting the credit.
τLabels: politics, scotland, snp
:: | 1:25 pm |
:: Friday, May 11, 2007 ::
Who Voted SNP?
An interesting analysis of the Scottish elections, by Murray Smith over on the Canadian New Socialist website.
Despite the controversy over the union and the hysteria whipped up by the Labour Party in particular, the vote was much less than the first Scottish Parliament election and only slightly more than the second. So where did the extra SNP votes come from. Labour? No, their vote was down only by about 10, 000. The combined vote of the smaller parties was down 150,000.
"These elections were a triumph for the Scottish National Party (SNP), which won 47 seats out of 129 (20 up on last time) to Labour’s 46 (4 down). Any idea that they were essentially a defeat for Labour rather than a victory for the SNP does not resist an examination of the facts and figures. In a rather confused article in this week’s Socialist Worker, Neil Davidson writes of “a serious desire on the part of voters to punish Labour for its many crimes”. But later in the same article he notes that “the great majority of new SNP seats came from the smaller parties, not from Labour”, which is much more relevant. In fact the Labour vote fell, in the constituency section, from 659,879 (34.6 percent0 in 2003 to 648,374 (32,2 per cent) in 2007. Hardly a severe punishment. And in the regional lists it actually went up from 561,379 (29.3 per cent) in 2003 to 595,415 (29.2 per cent) in 2007. In fact the big drop in the Labour vote was between 1999 and 2003, when it lost 250,000 votes in the constituencies and nearly as many in the regions. The SNP on the other hand went up from 449,476 (23.8 per cent) in 2003 to 664,227 (32.9 per cent) in 2007 in the constituencies and from 399.659 (20.9 per cent) in the regional lists in 2003 to 633,401 (31 per cent) in 2007. That brings the SNP in votes to its level of 1999, though its percentage is higher because of an 8 per cent less turnout in 2007 compared to 1999.
So the main reason for the SNP’s victory is that a lot more people voted for them in 2007 than in 2003, and those votes did not come from Labour to any significant extent. In fact there was a real polarisation between the nationalist vote and the unionist vote, and specifically between the SNP and the main unionist party, the Labour Party. Where did the SNP’s extra votes come from ? Well, Labour’s coalition partner the LibDems lost 40,000 votes in the constituency section. Maybe some of those went to the SNP, probably not many. But the combined SSP, Green and Solidarity vote in the regional lists was 150,000 down on the SSP-Green vote in 2003 and since the SSP didn’t stand this time in the constituencies, there were 117,000 votes looking for a home. Add in a 2.4 per cent increase in turnout, which perhaps favoured the SNP, and you start to make up the difference in the SNP vote between 2003 and 2007."
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:: | 4:10 pm |
:: Monday, April 09, 2007 ::
Politician tells truth shock
With the SNP surging in the polls surprise surprise the rabidly pro-Labour Sunday Mail has come out with a story of a 'sex scandal' involving an SNP MP. So how did he and his party react? Denials? Allegations of MI5 plots? Libel actions? No. He owned up and apologised. The story is already dead in the water. If only certain other politicians had the brains to do the same thing.
τLabels: elections, independence, snp
:: | 8:26 pm |