"Alex Salmond Plots His Next Moves Against the British State" (Newsweek)

[danny la rouge]

New Statesman interview with Salmond.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...would-bring-down-any-tory-minority-government

The Tories are calling Salmond's call to vote against a Tory minority government and force a confidence vote undemocratic and "deeply sinister".

http://www.theguardian.com/politics...-slam-salmond-deeply-sinister-threat-miliband

This is constitutional bollocks. They are saying that if there's a confidence vote, MPs are only allowed to vote in favour of the government. That to do otherwise is sinister and undemocratic.

Utter pish. If a government can't command a majority in the House, then it ceases to be a government. End of story.

 

[ska invita]

I'm hoping it picks up.

keep us posted
i expect it wont though

 

[weepiper]

Some excellent frothing over the topness from Paddy Ashdown today

The SNP has got one aim. They're are not coming south to help Westminster work. They are coming south as a Scottish raiding party to burn Westminster down and to make the thing dysfunctional. I watched this happen in the Balkans by the way

 

[danny la rouge]

Never mind the Balkans, here's the Six Pissed-Offs.*

 

[J Ed]

Some excellent frothing over the topness from Paddy Ashdown today

LOL

 

[DotCommunist]

Some excellent frothing over the topness from Paddy Ashdown today

is he smoking crack now.

 

[gosub]

if, as is not entirely unfeasable, we are back with another fucking election where we have to decide between Chuka Umunna and Boris Johnson for PM, while the SNP are going "It nothing to with us, and by the way pal we're fucking off", Anglo-Scots relations ARE going to get quite frosty.

 

[danny la rouge]

the SNP are going "It nothing to with us, and by the way pal we're fucking off"

This is a variant of the "they don't accept the result" thing, isn't it?

And still, nobody will explain what is meant by "accept the result". What do the SNP have to do to be seen to "accept the result"?

They are a pro independence party. They believed in independence when it was getting 30% in polls. They're supposed give up and become Unionists when there are 45% of the population on record as having gone to a booth to vote for independence?

That is a different matter from what they'll do about it. They are currently on record as wanting to pursue devolution and push it towards devo max. (Not, incidentally, something I'm interested in). They also say they want to participate in Westminster more than before, because even ostensibly English-only matters can have a knock-on effect on Holyrood funding, for example.

None of this appears to me to amount to "fucking off". At least not in the short - medium term.

 

[danny la rouge]

And, lest anyone misunderstand me (again): I have no interest in devo max. I don't support the SNP. I don't intend to vote SNP. I don't think there's a parliamentary road to socialism. I'm not an electoralist. And while I think the SNP is to the left of Labour, there are many ways in which it is certainly not a radical party.

hth

 

[redsquirrel]

Just started Salmond's referendum memoir/campaign diary, "The Dream Shall Never Die: 100 Days that Changed Scotland Forever".

Was interested to see if it offered any insights into the referendum, its successes and failures, and what he was thinking about the SNP poll surge and where next.

Not far in, but after the introductory section, once you get onto the campaign diary proper, it's a lot more lightweight than I was expecting. So far I'm not really learning anything I didn't already know, and I'm getting the sense that it's a highly edited version of what his real thoughts at the time might have been.

He turns out, from the introductory section, to be far more of a romantic nationalist than I'd realised, and his understanding of class seems limited to cultural aspects.

I'm hoping it picks up.

Is there any mention of anything about those rumours of that poll by the Canadians which put Yes in front and led the SNP to think that they were going to win?

(Sorry, I know I'm bumping this from a bit ago but I missed it at the time)

 

[gosub]

if, as is not entirely unfeasable, we are back with another fucking election where we have to decide between Chuka Umunna and Boris Johnson for PM, while the SNP are going "It nothing to with us, and by the way pal we're fucking off", Anglo-Scots relations ARE going to get quite frosty.

Interesting opinion piece in the Times today, due to the super majority required to overturn fixed length parliaments and the lack of money in the parties, reckons will go the other way and we will have 5 years of wag the dog

 

[danny la rouge]

Is there any mention of anything about those rumours of that poll by the Canadians which put Yes in front and led the SNP to think that they were going to win?

(Sorry, I know I'm bumping this from a bit ago but I missed it at the time)

Not reading it full-time: it's pretty boring.

I'm about 50 pages from the end, and there's no sign of that kind of detail at all. There's a handful of funny insults, and a passage in which Eck describes a meeting with Brown when PM:

"Gordon spent the first ten minutes of the meeting complaining about the way I had bounced him into the meeting. The next ten were a lecture on why it was best not to intervene in industrial disputes. The final ten were a confessional on how he faced a 'poisonous legacy' (from Blair) and rumination on why I got such great publicity while his was so awful.

I left the meeting with a firm impression that this man was not in a fit state to be Prime Minister". (p164).

That's by far the most interesting passage in the book. So I've saved you the bother of reading it.

It's mostly far, far more bland and unrevealing.

 

[redsquirrel]

That's by far the most interesting passage in the book. So I've saved you the bother of reading it.

Pity, but thanks for checking it out.

 

[danny la rouge]

Pity, but thanks for checking it out.

I was expecting better. I was hoping for at least indiscreet and catty. There's a tiny bit of catty, but not enough to wade through the pages of bland and dull.

 

[youngian]

Being a US magazine Newsweek has featured a fair few backwoods political porkbarrellers over the years

 

[danny la rouge]

Is there any mention of anything about those rumours of that poll by the Canadians which put Yes in front and led the SNP to think that they were going to win?

(Sorry, I know I'm bumping this from a bit ago but I missed it at the time)

Just got to that bit. Page 219. Last paragraph. The Canadian analysts forecast 54% for Yes on polling day. This forecast was made on Sunday 14th Sept, it would appear. The SNP canvas returns had it tighter than that. He also gives the polls available that day as comparison. But only one paragraph, and no real insight. And nothing on how the Canadians did their analysis (he doesn't call it a poll).

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

I was expecting better. I was hoping for at least indiscreet and catty. There's a tiny bit of catty, but not enough to wade through the pages of bland and dull.

Maybe when Eck feels his career is over he'll do the indiscreet and catty (that'll be never)

 

[redsquirrel]

Just got to that bit. Page 219. Last paragraph. The Canadian analysts forecast 54% for Yes on polling day. This forecast was made on Sunday 14th Sept, it would appear. The SNP canvas returns had it tighter than that. He also gives the polls available that day as comparison. But only one paragraph, and no real insight. And nothing on how the Canadians did their analysis (he doesn't call it a poll).

Cheers, Danny. Interesting, strange forecast that.

 

[danny la rouge]

Cheers, Danny. Interesting, strange forecast that.

It's clearly a forecast, not a poll. (Polls are snapshots of when they are taken, not forecasts). And the terms Alex Salmond uses are "assessment" and "analysis".

He says his confidence at this point is based on their own polling and canvas returns, which a few pages later he says had Yes on 52% on the Monday.

 

[danny la rouge]

I should add that I think it's entirely likely that Yes actually was on 52% or more on the Sunday, but lost 7 points in the next 3 days. That was when the No campaign finally found its feet.

 

[Sasaferrato]

With the aid of his sidekick:

 

[butchersapron]

With the aid of his sidekick:

You idiot.

 

[redsquirrel]

Is that supposed to be Sturgeon?

 

[butchersapron]

Yep.

 

[redsquirrel]

It's fucking rubbish

 

[gosub]

http://regularshow.wikia.com/wiki/Muscle_Man

 

[weepiper]

Ah, an articulate vocal political woman, I shall show her who's boss by suggesting she looks like a man.

 

[Idris2002]

Is Nicola Sturgeon any relation to Science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon?

 

[JimW]

Is Nicola Sturgeon any relation to Science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon?

She's his grandmother, he got the idea for his genre fiction from her time-travelling.

 

[danny la rouge]

Salmond takes an interest in Tiny Kox.



Salmond speaks at Council of Europe on combating terrorism