ZoomClouds: Scots-and-Independent

... ms to be manifesting itself amongst the Scottish Labour Party as it gathers for its conference in Aviemore. They™ve been cheated out of power and the SNP government is just a horrible nightmare, from which Labour will wake at the next election. The SNP doesn™t understand the modern world, apparently...

... ging a breath of stale air to the proceedings is Labour backbencher George Foulkes, who according to the Daily Record is demanding apologies from the SNP for tabling a motion congratulating Kosova and for our previous scepticism about the 1999 NATO bombing campaign. Ah, George, and there was me thin...

I received some very sad news last night. After a long illness, Cllr Mitchell Burnett, a weel-kent face in Aberdeenshire and in SNP circles, passed away yesterday afternoon. Mitchell was a distant relative of mine, but he was also a good friend to the whole family. He had the croft next to my grand...

... og I stumbled across earlier today that I am able to offer you this little gem from her speech:œAnd when you strip away the spin its clear where the SNP stand. It is not on the side of those who believe in progressive taxation and public spending - but with those who favour tax cuts for the ric...

I'm sat backstage in the press room at the SNP conference at Heriot-Watt university. The auditorium is packed right now, in anticipation of Nicola Sturgeon's big speech.My only gripe is that we don't have a closed circuit feed from the hall, which leaves us somewhat reliant on BBC Scotland's webcast...

Been out and about in Aberdeenshire the last few days, sorting a few things for my campaign in Gordon, preparing for the upcoming SNP Conference, and knocking some doors for a local by-election in the Troup ward in Banff and Buchan. Not much to report, other than that much as I wish this particular ...

... Utd take on Barcelona in the Nou Camp.Now, the main business. My good friend and former colleague, Julie Hepburn, she of the 'Bid for Freeedom' blog; SNP Westminster Candidate for Cumbernauld & Kilsyth; wife of Jamie Hepburn MSP and all round good egg, has embarked on a new project. As if she didn't...

... aph which makes grim reading for Gordon Brown. However, I've just got hold of the Scottish breakdown (It's a Westminster poll), which runs as follows:SNP - 35%Labour - 28%Con - 22%Lib Dem - 12%Usual health warnings about small sample sizes apply... but the high polling for the Tories aside, they're ...

... she decided to continue in what must have seemed like a relatively successful vein. However, accusing the government of offering ˜special access™ to SNP donors was, frankly, beyond pathetic. The leader of the opposition should be holding the government to account but every week, we seem to end ...

... st 'first line of defence', Wendy Alexander stood up at her party's Aviemore shindig to claim that œwhen you strip away the spin it's clear where the SNP stand. It is not on the side of those who believe in progressive taxation and public spending - but with those who favour tax cuts for the rich an...

... ulduggery, the likes of which you might use to terrify young children who won't eat their Brussels Sprouts. You see, the Conservatives voted with the SNP in Holyrood to pass the Scottish Government's budget! And by so doing, they "have done what they said they would never do and have played fast an...

... , and as Alex Salmond says, it's most likely to be Wendy.Secondly, Brown, by claiming at PMQs that Wendy had said that which she hadn't, and that the SNP were at fault (t'was ever thus...) for 'breaking' a manifesto pledge (we haven't), he's 'inadvertently' misled Parliament.Thirdly, how can you cal...

At the last election, Wendy and Douglas Alexander claimed that an SNP Government would cause chaos and confusion over an independence referendum; would force the ˜average family™ to forfeit nearly £1,000 more of their hard-earned income to the government; and would split families apart north and sou...

... at any rules over campaign expenditure would not be enforceable. This I know, because I once asked Prof. McIntosh that very question when I worked at SNP HQ.No, the big story is surely that in interviewing Prof. McIntosh's successor in Scotland, former BBC Scotland Controller John McCormick, there a...

Just back from a very productive weekend out on the stump. Let's see... on Friday, there was the SNP golf day in Ellon, which as well as letting 11 teams have a great day out, looked like it raised a tidy sum for the Gordon campaign; I took a trip to Rhynie during the day to visit a post office whic...

... is now live here. Take a look and see what you're missing out on :-)og.html...

... called for Alex Salmond to quit as an MP. It would be a bit of a turnaround, after all, for a representative of party which had been criticising the SNP venomously for months for having a dual-Westminster/Holyrood mandate member, to then go out and seek exactly the same role for themself.My resear...

... done so, she may have started to show a human side which hitherto has often seemed to rather drift in and out of focus.Labour is trying to blame the SNP for this - everyone, in fact, but themselves. This is cant, pure and simple. Wendy and her team were the architects of their own misfortune, and t...

... an energetic couple who are trying to set up a community cafe. The afternoon was at the music festival and continental market in Ellon, mostly on the SNP branch bottle stall. I was intrigued to see that the headline act at the evening dance was an outfit called Big Vern and the Shootahs - I remember...

Maybe unusually for an SNP economics anorak, I don't write all that often about the North Sea. However, with oil prices and the UK public finances as they are, and in the aftermath of this BBC Scotland documentary, it's an issue once more creeping up the agenda.This was written for the Scots Indepen...

... e by Labour in Glasgow East.Consider the evidence. First, their MP resigns unexpectedly, which prompts the party to cut and run to limit the time the SNP would have to campaign. Unfortunately, their preferred candidate elects not to turn up to his selection, so a 5th choice candidate is hoiked out o...

... we learned what 'more powers' might actually mean; and that while the Calman Commission may indeed turn out to be a crock, it's still a gift for the SNP.Do you remember the Calman Commission? Oh, come on¦ pay attention at the back, there. The Calman Commiss...

... nors are pretty clear, and although the suspicion remains that they were only introduced to try and stop one individual in particular donating to the SNP, they apply equally to all parties and should be enforced as such.Michael Brown is on trial this coming September, where he will face a string of ...

... ood, and in no particular order, here then are ten blogs which in my view, are examples of the genre which rise above the ordinary: Calum Cashley (SNP) I™ve know Calum for years, and his idiosyncratic sense of humour often as not chimes well with mine. Not only that, he™s a smart cookie, frequ...

... re that if we have to endure this sort of shrill, partisan nonsense in the early hours of Friday morning, that Ms. Curran has to wait until after the SNP candidate has finished his speech before she gets her turn..., with further misfortunes too gruesome to describe following in short order. Thi...

... ye no' open the f****** door yersel'?[Door flies open. Whoever he's expecting to see, it's clearly not me]RT: Sorry to bother you. I'm round from the SNP on behalf of our candidate John Mason. It's about the by-election this Thursday...IV1: Naw. We're no' interested. We're at our tea anyway. [Shuts ...

... at top 5 place in the Scottish Political Blogs, especially since the 'competition' has got a lot tougher over the past 12 months, particularly in the SNP-aligned section of the blogosphere. Good - there's nothing like a bit of stiff competition to provide a bit of inspiration and force people to kee...

I am roused from the box-strewn midden I am proud to call my new living room and my dial-up internet purgatory, by this piece of idiocy: SNP 'brainwashes' Scotland by painting trains in blue and white Saltire livery "The Scottish National Party was accused of attempting to "brainwash people int...

... eason, I can only assume that it was a completely different Iain Gray who stood up in Parliament last February to deride Conservative support for the SNP budget as "a tartan Tory tango".Still, there's more rejoicing in heaven etc etc. On the bright side, perhaps we've now heard the last of Labour's ...

From the Daily Record:LABOUR must tackle the SNP head on or "whimper out of existence," MSP Andy Kerr warned yesterday.He said: "Labour people who are in hand-to-hand combat with the SNP want to see me as leader of the party."This is a battle to the death with the SNP. That's how I see it and many p...

... silly season, but I'm still surprised at the fuss all this has caused. I'd have thought that for anyone of at least meagre to moderate awareness, an SNP preference for a Scottish Olympic team would be about as surprising a revelation as that of the likely incidence of ursine defecation within fores...

So... 9th best Scottish blog (despite spending the whole year outside Scotland!); by extension the 3rd best SNP blog; 48th best left-of-centre blog and 137th best overall in the yookay. Thanks to all who voted - room for improvement clearly, but it's certainly better than being ranked as #4 prostitu...

... est for tonight to Andy Murray, as he takes on Roger Federer in the US Open Tennis Final.Thanks to little things like my taking umbrage at seeing the SNP symbol depicted as a noose on the front page of the Sun, I have a Freesat box at home rather than one from Sky (nothing personal, Rupe - but your ...

... en to serve as a Labour minister. For me it is an article of faith that the worst day of a Labour government is better than the best day of a Tory or SNP one. This has been borne out by the tremendous progress that we have seen over the past 11 years in communities like my own in Inverclyde where re...

The SNP has won the election to fill the vacancy in the Baillieston ward of Glasgow City Council. The vacancy arose following John Mason's election as SNP MP for Glasgow East.Well done to all involved. See you in Glenrothes!ds to be formulaic, platitudinous and dripping with pathos/bathos, this one ...

The SNP has won the election to fill the vacancy in the Baillieston ward of Glasgow City Council. The vacancy arose following John Mason's election as SNP MP for Glasgow East.Well done to all involved. See you in Glenrothes!ament."His justification? Simply, that the Labour Party should be prepared t...

My researcher, Mr Google, has drawn my attention to an article in the Scotsman, where Tavish Scott is having a go at the SNP.No change there. However, this time he's making the case for something called an 'Infrastructure Investment Board' to be set up, which would take the decisions about which maj...

... arises directly from their independent status?Opposition politicians and commentators have used the economic woes of Reykjavik to fire a salvo across SNP bows “ whaur's your arc of prosperity noo?Without Big Brother Britain to bail out Scottish banks, they argue, an independent Scotland would now be...

... been a cause of regret, but never managed to fire Scots into a pro-independence state of mind. Perhaps that was due to the lack of progress which the SNP had made in terms of securing a place in the mainstream for its central goal. However, with the soft left in the ascendant, institutions such as t...