May 24 2007
Archive for May, 2007
May 14 2007
How Labour Won The Battle, But Lost The War, By A Man Who Should Keep Taking The Tablets
May 12 2007
DHYB quote of the day
Don't worry. We're not going to stitch you up. We're not like the London police.What's Andy talking about? He'll have to tell you some other time.
May 06 2007
As if you lived in the latter days of a smaller nation
It's been said that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Things are very different in the Best Small Country in the World (TM). In Scotland history is a farce the first time around.
The Scottish Parliament has a system of proportional representation where the voters select one candidate from two lists. The constituency list is first-past-the post. The regional lists, covering wider areas, top up the representation according to some formula which needn't detain us. The system was used in two elections and worked fine. It wasn't broke. Someone decided to fix it.
Apart from replacing two lists on separate ballot papers with two lists on one paper, and presenting the voters with another ballot paper, using a new and different voting system, for a different election on the same day, and implementing a completely unnecessary and expensive electronic counting machinery which broke down repeatedly and spectacularly on the night, the geniuses who signed off the arrangements which resulted in a hundred thousand rejected votes ... never thought to user-test the new voting forms.
But enough squabbling amongst ourselves! Let's turn and face the real enemy, the Judean People's Front! Thanks to its divisions the far left has been wiped off the electoral map, going from six MSPs to nil. The Scottish Socialist Party was not only beaten handily by Solidarity - in five of the seven regions it won fewer votes than the Socialist Labour Party.
The what? Precisely. The Socialist Labour Party has next to no presence on the ground in Scotland (*). Socialist Labour got one election broadcast, fronted by the popular English actor Ricky Tomlinson, who emphasised that the party stood firmly against Scottish nationalism. Around a third of Scotland's far-left voters must have agreed.
* The Socialist Labour Party was founded by Arthur Scargill back in the 90s and was immediately joined by a plethora of far-left groups. Scargill cannily courted a succession of these groups, using each one that rose to the top of the stack to displace its precursor. After thus getting rid of the Trotskyist sects one by one he repeated the process with at least two sects of Stalinists, and then delivered the coup de grace to the last one standing. This single-minded application of salami tactics left him holding that twisty bit of cellophane at the end and not enough salami to cover a biscuit.
The Scottish Parliament has a system of proportional representation where the voters select one candidate from two lists. The constituency list is first-past-the post. The regional lists, covering wider areas, top up the representation according to some formula which needn't detain us. The system was used in two elections and worked fine. It wasn't broke. Someone decided to fix it.
Apart from replacing two lists on separate ballot papers with two lists on one paper, and presenting the voters with another ballot paper, using a new and different voting system, for a different election on the same day, and implementing a completely unnecessary and expensive electronic counting machinery which broke down repeatedly and spectacularly on the night, the geniuses who signed off the arrangements which resulted in a hundred thousand rejected votes ... never thought to user-test the new voting forms.
But enough squabbling amongst ourselves! Let's turn and face the real enemy, the Judean People's Front! Thanks to its divisions the far left has been wiped off the electoral map, going from six MSPs to nil. The Scottish Socialist Party was not only beaten handily by Solidarity - in five of the seven regions it won fewer votes than the Socialist Labour Party.
The what? Precisely. The Socialist Labour Party has next to no presence on the ground in Scotland (*). Socialist Labour got one election broadcast, fronted by the popular English actor Ricky Tomlinson, who emphasised that the party stood firmly against Scottish nationalism. Around a third of Scotland's far-left voters must have agreed.
* The Socialist Labour Party was founded by Arthur Scargill back in the 90s and was immediately joined by a plethora of far-left groups. Scargill cannily courted a succession of these groups, using each one that rose to the top of the stack to displace its precursor. After thus getting rid of the Trotskyist sects one by one he repeated the process with at least two sects of Stalinists, and then delivered the coup de grace to the last one standing. This single-minded application of salami tactics left him holding that twisty bit of cellophane at the end and not enough salami to cover a biscuit.
May 06 2007
Jings, Crivvens And Help Ma Boab - Scotland’s Parliament Is A Guddle, A Bourach, A Midden
May 01 2007
300 Years of the Union is quite enough and this blog has so done its time
Right that’s it the end of the 1st of May, I’ve blown out the candles, nobody sent any presents, the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union is over and so is this Blog - farewell.
Well, the subtitle was the countdown to the 1st of May, and I’ve counted down. This will be post number 60 since January 13th. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot. I hope you’ve enjoyed it too. In my wildest dreams I’d hoped that we might be further down the road to independence than we are in this tercentenary year, but hey I suppose I shouldn’t be churlish…
So, until next time…and there will be one - somewhere on a blog out there.
Happy Birthday to the Union - I raise a glass to its longevity, I raise two more to its demise.
Love McGellie x
