The UK Supreme Court–FMQs 16th June 2011 - Holyrood

Given the highly biased press and media reports of these exchanges at FMQs yesterday (16th June 2011) these complete clips offer an opportunity for a more balanced appraisal of the full exchanges. Holyrood FMQs offers a curious spectacle these days, that of two caretaker opposition leaders and one brand new opposition leader representing two failed parties and one dying party (Labour) attempting to hold a First Minister with a new and powerfully enhanced mandate to account.

POSTSCRIPT
I'm glad the Scotsman has recently followed my practice of actually timing question and answers at FMQs, instead of simply making unsupported and usually inaccurate statements that the First Minister was hogging the floor.
The paper selectively offers a couple of times today: let me help them out with the total Supreme Court exchanges -


Annabel Goldie 2m 19s
Iain Gray: 3m 57s
Willie Rennie: 1m 38s
Alex Salmond 10m 30s

Total question times: 7m 54s, total answer times: 10m 30s

Percentages of total of UK Supreme Court exchanges:

Questions 42.93%, Answers 57.07%

O schadenfreude–can I resist you?

Alex Salmond has been magnanimous and generous in victory to the three other party leaders following their resignations.

I am cut from lesser cloth, I’m afraid …

 

From Alex Salmond and The Three UK Stooges - plus Patrick Harvie

LEST WE FORGET WHY THE THREE UK STOOGES LOST

Annabel Goldie – evasive and confused on Newsnight. Gordon Brewer wields the scalpel

Annabel Goldie - self-proclaimed straight talker, and claims to tell it like it is. But not much evidence of that in this evasive and confused performance. Another fine dissection by Gordon Brewer on Newsnight Scotland. There is some very muddy thinking at the heart of Tory policy, rivalling Labour for incoherence – and that’s saying something …

Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond –and the Three UK Stooges

Isabel Fraser quizzes the Holyrood opposition leaders on why they blocked the SNP's attempt to introduce minimum pricing for alcohol, a measure supported by medical experts, nurses, the police, alcohol harm reduction agencies, etc.

Iain Gray trots out his ridiculous argument that the measure would have been illegal, only to have it gently pointed out to him by Alex Salmond that the government is prohibited by law from introducing a bill for legislation that would be illegal, and that the law authorities in Scotland has certified that the bill was legal.

 

Iain Gray clearly does not understand the contradictions inherent in his policy on knife crime - after all, he is advised by Andy Kerr, who gave a train-wreck interview to Gordon Brewer on this recently.

But Annabel Goldie is a lawyer - she must know the implications of what she is proposing, yet she peddles this backwoods Tory nonsense for expedient electoral gain.

Tavish Scott at least emerges from this with some credit.

Only Alex Salmond offers calm, reasoned criticism of the Labour and Tory policy. He, of course, listens to the police and those who understand law and order and justice issues, unlike Gray and Goldie, who seem driven by the tabloids and misguided populist instincts

 

If you are a public sector worker in Scotland - listen carefully, and decide where your vote should be cast on May 5th. Only the SNP unequivocally supports the public sector and respect its vital role in Scottish society and the commitment of its workers.

If you are a public sector union member in Scotland, ask yourself why your union leaders slavishly support the party that is committed to attacking your jobs - or "reducing bureaucracy", as Iain Gray prefers to call it.

If you are a public sector full-time officer, try to forget your career aspirations and the high road to England for long enough to serve the interests of your members, instead of supporting the Scottish Labour Party.

If you are a public sector Tory, God help you - the Tories are the sworn enemies of the public sector, except when it provides cosy sinecures for their favoured few. Remember which coalition parties are trying to destroy the NHS.

Vote for a vibrant, well-resourced, well-respected public sector -

Vote SNP on May 5th!

The staggering hypocrisy of the Holyrood opposition parties

While demonstrations and riots take place in London, Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow against Labour's destruction of the UK economy, Nick Clegg's broken LibDem promises to the electorate and students specifically - and the damaging and ill-conceived Tory cuts, aided and abetted by their tame LibDem partners, the tame Scottish representative of the three London-based parties nonetheless have the effrontery to attack the Scottish SNP government on a non-issue - the totally irrelevant SVR tax, a tax that has never been used, never will be used, and has been ignored by all Scottish parties.

Astonishingly - and contemptibly - they are supported by the two Scottish Green MSPs in their attack on an honest man of high integrity, John Swinney, the Scottish Government Finance Minister.

While young people demonstrate and riot in cities across the UK against their Westminster parties, Scottish Labour, Tories and Liberal Democrats whip up wholly synthetic anger and indignation, posturing and shouting in Holyrood.

Fortunately, the Scottish people have more sense than to pay any attention to this self-serving nonsense. They know who sent their sons to die in foreign wars, are still sending them to die, and who wrecked the economy and blighted their futures - Labour.

And they know who broke their promises and got elected on a false prospectus - the Liberal Democrats.

They know who is directing a programme of draconian cuts against the poor and vulnerable and who is attacking their public services - the party that was comprehensively rejected by the Scottish electorate in May 2010, a dying party in Scotland - the Tories.

And they know who are the compliant allies and agents of the Tories in coalition - the feeble LibDems.

But above all they know which party has the interest of Scots and Scotland at heart - their ain folk - the Scottish National Party.

The Arc of Prosperity – IMF figures, actual and projections

The Holyrood opposition parties and Unionists everywhere have more or less abandoned rational argument about Scotland’s capacity to function as an independent country. Instead, they fall back on what they think of as their best line – “What happened to Alex Salmond’s Arc of Prosperity?”

Bankrupt of real arguments and bereft of new ideas, they are nonetheless determined to maintain Scots in a dependent, mendicant mindset by trying to convince them that Scotland could not survive on its own.

The IMF (The International Monetary Fund) does understand global economics and has some respect for figures, unlike The Three UK Stooges – Gray, Goldie and Scott.

I have taken some figures from their April 2010 database for Iceland, Ireland, Norway – the arc of prosperity – and the United Kingdom (IMF link) and their report for the years 2009 and projections for 2010 to 2015. It shows the GDP (gross domestic product) based on PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) and per capita GDP. The tables themselves can be viewed at (link) but I have presented them showing the top country – Norway in every year - as 100 and the others as a percentage of that, to give an instant feel for the relative positions.

                 2009   2010   2011   2012   2013   2014   2015

Norway   100      100     100     100     100     100     100

Ireland      75.1     73.7     74.1     74.5    74.9     75.4     75.8

Iceland      72.3     69.4     69.6    69.8    70.1     72.1     73.7

UK              65.9    66.2     66.8    67.5    68.2     68.8     69.3

Anyone can check these, and other figures for themselves. What this clearly demonstrates is that, in spite of  a global collapse, the three countries in the arc of prosperity are all still doing better than the pathetic performance of the UK, and are projected to do better for the next five years by the IMF.

There is another arc at work here – the Arc of Economic Nonsense talked by The Three UK Stooges, Gray, Goldie and Scott.

Norway, of course – most comparable to Scotland - is comfortably top of the heap because nobody stole their oil, and they run their own country and their own affairs.

Scotland’s Three Stooges–Scott, Gray and Goldie

The Hollywood Three Stooges were funny - these three are not ...

What are they stooges of? Why, Westminster and the London-based parties, of course - a term they hate, because it's true. Nuk,nuk,nuk!

Send them all doon the Forth of Firth (sic: Tavish Scott) on a raft wi' nae paddle.