The Price Of Success

Edinburgh is now officially the most expensive city in the UK to book a hotel room in.
 

Edinburgh - Worth A Little Extra?

 

I can't say that I am surprised, as like many 'socialist' countries, the political elite really like to pamper themselves with all expenses paid trips.

School Kid Voters

Ed Milliband wants 16-year old's to be able to vote in elections by 2016 ..... this cunning ploy, which was also adopted by the Scottish National Party as part of the Independence referendum, is the sort of sleazy politics which we have become all to accustomed to in the current atmosphere.

The Labour Party face a very tough time in Scotland, from a powerful, nay triumphalist SNP, and may well lose most of its chances of Westminster power there, without entering into a Westminster 'arrangement' with them (or the offer of another referendum). So this little electoral stunt is designed to ensure that in any future election after 2016 (and there is a good chance that a hung Westminster Parliament could result in some sort of weak Liberal / Labour coalition, and therefore another election within 18 months), the Labour Party can harvest the semi-politically literate teen voters in urban areas.

Of course the Liberal party have also often debated this kind of idea themselves, and for much the same reasons, so they would probably favour it ..... but its the Labour Party who could actually deliver it. To be fair, Milliband has also launched a campaign to get students to register for votes, but possibly for the wrong reasons, as he is desperate to try and garner the 'youth' vote ... probably as he feels only they are daft enough to cast a vote for him ...

Ed Milliband Wooing Teen Voters .... Not

What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Bethlehem

We are about to enter what can only be described as a 'Scots Week' of a different kind than that which happens every year in Blackpool .... Yes is the moment when 'destiny calls' (as Alex Salmond would say), or the British Isles is politically dead, which is what the Labour Party must fear. For make no mistake, the 'Devolution', which has led to this potentially epoch making moment was Labours bastard child .... one that was never meant to be born, or if it was, would be stillborn.

Labour's Scottish Grandees Got It Very Wrong ......

Labour's Scottish grandees were so overtaken with the hubris of an almost unbroken series of decades of absolute power in Scotland, that they dismissed any fears of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), ever being in the position to take that power off them, as nonsense. When Tony Blair questioned them over this, they described the nationalists as wild eyed dreamers, or hairy wild-men from the highlands who would never be more than a fringe group.

There were warnings of course, the Scottish Labour MP Tam Dalyell for one. He had held the view in 1997 - that a devolved Scottish parliament would be the first step on the road to independence ... he was of course ignored by the grandees of the Scottish Labour party. Now he is entitled to say ‘I told you so’, certainly there will be no apologies from those now very quiet grandees. But of course the majority Labour party view was that a strong Scottish parliament within the UK, would see off the SNP as an electoral threat. The late Labour Party leader John Smith, said that devolution would represent the “settled will” of the Scottish people, and George Robertson, later defence secretary and secretary general of Nato, said it would “kill nationalism stone dead”.

Yet here we are less than 20 years after the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, and not only have the SNP solely ruled Scotland since 2007 (The Labour Party couldn't ever muster single party rule, from the beginning, they had to be in coalition with the Liberals) ... but on the18th of September 2014, the Referendum on Scottish Independence will take place, with pollsters saying that it could be too tight to call. This could well be the latest and most devastating legacy of Tony Blair's 'New Labour Party' .... the destruction of the political union that forms Great Britain.

The Arguments Are Pulling Voters Both Ways

Fittingly, if this happens, the Labour Party will probably never rule what's left of the rump UK on their own again after Scotland has gone, as they have never won the majority of English seats since the landslide 1945 elections, and will surely be blamed by very many for embarking on the unwanted political course that has led to this moment, without ever really understanding that it was political Russian roulette  ..... the gun fires just once and its all over.

So the SNP only ever have to win once, and its all over, broken never to be mended again .... they can and will come back to the Scottish people with referendums time, and time again, and sooner or later they will win. So now to quote the poet 'what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'

Scotland Cries "Freedom"

The cat is well and  truly out of the bag, and fevered debate (marked by a fair bit of cross border vitriol) is now underway about Scotland's proposed referendum on 'Independence'.  I have no way of knowing what the decision will be, and in truth no particular preference. My personal belief is that in the long term, both Scotland and the UK will both ultimately become smaller places if a split occurs, but that in the short term, Scotland may prosper.

I do however have a view about the proposed referendum, which is that while I am English and also British, and I do believe we are better and stronger together, I also respect the right of the Scottish people to have a vote on independence. However, being independent should mean being independent, and not simply picking and choosing which parts of the union you want to keep if you lose the main vote (aka 'Devo Max') .

You just can't have it both ways .... it must be all or nothing. Not 'oh, lets just have a fall back of even more devolution', and then ask about full a full split again in five years or so. Just make a decision and live with it.

Alex Salmond plays hardball like Drake.

However, there are some other consequences that will make me laugh. The main one is that the real architects of 'Scottish devolution' and the fact that its ended in a referendum, the Labour Party (See Brown and the Scottish Claim of Right), is likely to be a two time loser.

1. In Scotland, they will be the biggest losers in future polls, despised by unionists, and swamped by the 'victorious' SNP who will likely hold power for a generation.
2. In England  they will be the biggest losers in future polls, despised by unionists, and swamped by the Tories who will likely hold power for a generation (Labour has only once won a majority in England).  

It would be ironic if Tony Blair's gut feeling that this would end in tears if he allowed devolution was proved right, and all those 'Scots Labour strategists' who said it was never going to be anything but a Labour Party stronghold forever, were wrong. Generations in the wilderness would be the least punishment they would deserve for the destruction of the United Kingdom and the Labour Party.

Clock The Hypocrisy

British Government Ministers are writing to their counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to seek a UK-wide consensus on a trial of moving the UK clocks permanently forward. In a very European mode, the UK would adopt Central European Time, with BST plus one hour in summer and GMT plus one in winter. However there is a catch, our increasingly weak Lib/Con alliance government has said that each of these small component parts of the disunited Kingdom, will have the right to block any English desire to move to more acceptable times for the fifty five million living there.

Now you might think that a Scottish Government that wants to be at the 'Heart of Europe', and that is proposing a referendum on breaking away from Britain inside three years, would be keen on such a move. Especially as their leader Alex Salmon has gone on record saying that Scotland would be at the centre of Europe, and that England should be able to manage its own internal affairs, without interference from the Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh regional governments .... hmm.

Scottish Farmers and friends,  "nervous" about the potential impact.

But no, with all the hypocrisy that only a bunch of nationalist rascals can muster, the Scottish government has said that its "established position" was that there was "no case for a change to existing arrangements". SNP MP Angus MacNeil said any change would have "massive implications for the safety and well being of everyone living north of Manchester" ... utter tosh.

I live in the North of England, and its dark when I get up even now, and inside a few days it will be dark when I get home as well ... I also lived in Edinburgh for over five years, and I would be getting up and coming home in the dark right now! So what gain me by the clocks going back, nothing. It should be noted that Russia has just decided not to put its clocks back, and although they accept that it means darker in the mornings, they think the compensation for this is the lighter afternoons and evenings.

So just for once will the hypocrites in the SNP, let England have its way, after all they can just keep the old times, and accentuate the differences between Scotland and England, which is surely want they really want?

Brown continues to plumb the depths

As part of my reporting on the decline and fall of the Brownie Empire, I have to report that this week the good folk of Glasgow East (A labour strong hold of over 60 yrs .... the sort of constituency where they would vote for a Brick as the labour candidate) decided to vote for the Scottish National Party.

This has precipitated a round of calls from with in the Labour Party ranks, for Brown to reconsider his position, but typically, Brown has said he will listen to the voters, and that he is determined to take the "right decisions" for the country..... obviously resigning isn't one of them?

"That's my first and major interest, in getting on with the job." .... he sounds more and more like the rain man every day .... no matter what people say or do, he just carries on as though it never happened. I think that if he is sacked, he would still go to the office, unable to actually comprehend that he just isn't wanted anymore, and the new PM will have to steer him away with sad shakes of the head.

In Zoolander, Derek of that name, collects another persons prize because he's convinced that he can't have lost .... that he is still loved and wanted ... ring any bells?

The Further Breakup of Britain

Further to his earlier declarations of loyalty to Scotland above all things, Gordon Brown is now proposing to give Scotland further tax raising powers and thus end the political Union in any practical sense.

He barely hides his intentions, and yet the British peoples just sit dumbly by and say nothing, while New Labour attempt to break up the United Kingdom for short term political fixes and advantage.

The labour Party only bought in devolution because they thought they might lose votes to the Scottish National Party (SNP), but a decade later its now an SNP regime in Edinburgh, and the conditions are set up, so that the SNP only has to win a referendum once to break away from The Union, while the non split parties have to win every time.

The break-up is therefore probably only a matter of time ..... and all just so Labour could win the 1997 elections. Oddly if they had any brains at all, they would have realised that if the SNP ever get their way, then the Labour party is finished in England, because

a) They will take the blame for the break-up in England, and also
b) Because they have only once won the popular vote in England (1945), and would therefore be the permanent opposition.

Duh!

After a comment below, I suddenly realised that Frankie Brown was PM of the UK

Gordon Brown and Frankie Howard 

 

Can you spot the difference??

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