I say what I must say. You don't have to listen.
There will be a report on Newsnight Scotland tonight. This is the party that thinks it has a divine right to govern Scotland, and that Scots will vote for them no matter what ...
We'll see on May 5th at the Scottish Parliamentary elections.
Saor Alba!
moridura Peter Curran
Scotland's future will be determined on May 5th for four years, perhaps forever. It's time for bold statements, clear leadership and vision.
moridura Peter Curran
@AlexSalmond4FM Everybody claims Burns as their own. Say something about the state of Scotland. That's what I want to hear from you, FM.
moridura Peter Curran
Try responding to obscure witticisms and cosy in-jokes if you are worried sick about your home, your job, your future and your health.
moridura Peter Curran
Explain to the families of the dead, the dole queues, the sick and the elderly and the poor why Labour is funny, at UK or Holyrood level.
moridura Peter Curran
Iraq Labour - wrecked economy Labour - flag of death Labour. Am I negative about them? You better believe it. Humour's OK but not enough ...
moridura Peter Curran
I'm a Glasgow Scot - lived in Scotland for 65 of my 75 years: Labour has lied to me, a Labour voter for 50 years. Why believe them now?
moridura Peter Curran
The election debate heats up: Twitter - following and unfollowing … moridura.blogspot.com/2011/01/great-… via @moridura
moridura Peter Curran
Can any teacher, student, local authority worker - any victim of alcohol abuse, any sick or vulnerable person trust a word Labour says now?
moridura Peter Curran
@Paul0Evans1 Yes, there's a spill over from trivial Twitter practices into the big boys' game. You follow me and I'll follow you nonsense
moridura Peter Curran
Labour MPs and Lords in the dock for criminal fraud or drummed out for misrepresentation and racism. Do Scots want such a party in office?
moridura Peter Curran
The great election debate: Twitter - don't unfollow - monitor the opposition's tweets moridura.blogspot.com/2011/01/great-… via @moridura
moridura Peter Curran
#snpbrokenpromise Some of the tweets on this are so heavily ironic that it's not clear who they support. Try to be more direct, please ...
moridura Peter Curran
#scottishlabour Desperately spewing out promise after promise in a frantic attempt to convince voters that they believe in something. Sordid
moridura Peter Curran
LibDems: We're anybody's for a fag, a ministerial car and salary and - (What's that? Promises? Principles? Ideals? You must be having us on)
moridura Peter Curran
#scottishlabour We ruined the economy, and now the Coalition are completing the job. We congratulate them! (Sorry, Ed, did I get it wrong?)
moridura Peter Curran
#scottishlabour Scots - wouldn't you prefer a toom tabard, Iain Gray as FM, knee bent and forelock touched to Westminster than Alex Salmond?
moridura Peter Curran
#scottishlabour Promise to shine your shoes, wash your hankies - anything except give up WMDs and stop sending Scottish boys to their deaths
moridura Peter Curran
#scottishlabour A rash of promises to do anything and everything except help a vulnerable constituent, Margaret Jaconelli, victimised by GCC
moridura Peter Curran
@markc1984 I respect your right, but not your judgment. Burns stood for the common man against wealth and privilege. Labour doesn't anymore.
moridura Peter Curran
@stevencalder Neither would Eddie Izzard, if it were up to me, Steven. moridura.blogspot.com/2011/01/appeal… via @moridura
moridura Peter Curran
An appeal from a unionist comedian - Eddie Izzard - and my reply … moridura.blogspot.com/2011/01/appeal… via @moridura
moridura Peter Curran
@Scotsvote2011 @scottishlabour Unionist hypocrisy and doublethink has destroyed such integrity as Labour had left. Don't let them in, Scots!
moridura Peter Curran
Scottish coalition puppets - and Labour - brought down a good Transport minister over weather. Will ConLibs resign? Will ConLib pigs fly?
moridura Peter Curran
Economy down - Coalition in a panic - "It was the bad weather ..." says millionaire Old Etonian Osborne. Will he resign? Will he hell!
moridura Peter Curran
@markc1984 Don't pervert the poetry of a great Scot to serve a Unionist puppet of Westminster, please. Respect Scotland, not the corrupt UK.
moridura Peter Curran
@stevencalder Iain Gray statesman-like? Are you pitching for the Golden Globe comedy awards, Steven? Or was it heavy irony? - or satire?
moridura Peter Curran
@dhothersall The failings of a few! The few are the tiny minority that opposed the Iraq War, and the collective failings of the party.
moridura Peter Curran
The great election debate: Twitter - following and unfollowing opponents moridura.blogspot.com/2011/01/great-… via @moridura
moridura Peter Curran
"My father always voted Labour, so will I ..." Your father voted for a party that doesn't exist any more, and hasn't for decades - wake up!
moridura Peter Curran
Don't unfollow those you disgree with, so long as they are relevant to the great debate - know your opposition. Only unfollow triviality -
moridura Peter Curran
The history of Labour in Glasgow and Scotland is one great, shameful, heartbreaking broken promise to the people, a monumental betrayal.
moridura Peter Curran
The SNP - the last best hope of the people of Glasgow and Scotland. In less than 4 years, they have done more than Labour did in 50 years.
moridura Peter Curran
The Glasgow Labour Party - the main barrier to the people of Glasgow escaping from the curse of alcohol abuse, violence, poverty and crime.
moridura Peter Curran
I was brought up in extreme poverty in Glasgow, and I have lived in Scotland for 65 years. Labour failed the people completely since 1945.
moridura Peter Curran
@Irpicus The treatment of a Glaswegian family, the Jaconelli's, by Glasgow City Council epitomises Labour failure and corruption of ideals.
moridura Peter Curran
@Irpicus If you have to defend Labour record by harking back to the 19th century, God help Glasgow - Labour certainly hasn't -
moridura Peter Curran
@Irpicus In the last 13 years of Labour Government just about everything got worse in Glasgow - alcohol abuse, poverty, health - you name it
100 days of campaigning left, and the great debate on Scotland’s future heats up considerably, especially on Twitter, home of the epigrammatic 140 character tweet. This has produced some predictable, but also many surprising manifestations of the new intensity.
I am relatively new to Twitter and the new media, and it has been a steep learning curve for me, as a I struggled to come to grips with the nature of a medium so different from my normal mode of expression, but so close to real life political debate as it exists in the 21st century world.
But I must confess to surprise that the learning curve, steep as it is, is still being climbed by some of our younger political professionals, and a few of them appear to be stuck on ledges.
The critical early decision when first exposed to the potential torrent of tweets is who to ‘follow’. Unless the neophyte sticks to going in search of specific twitterers, a decision has to be made to let all tweets originating from a specific Twitter address to come through. This is roughly equivalent to voluntarily going on someone’s mailing list - i.e. send me everything you have to say. By doing so, the door is opened to all relevant communications, but also much that is irrelevant or even unwelcome. Is the dross acceptable as the price to pay for the occasional gold dust?
In probing the fascinating depths of Twitter, it must be recognised that users engage in the medium from various motivations. I loosely categorise these as
1. A simple wish to share the minutiae of day-to-day life with others. (Some users argue that this was the real original purpose of Twitter, implicit in its very name, and resent criticism of it, ignoring the ornithological fact that bird twittering always has a purpose, usually a serious one.)
2. A wish to communicate and share an enthusiasm, or set of enthusiasms with a wider audience of like-minded twitterers.
3. A commercial purpose - the wish to publicise a product or service.
4. A celebrity PR strategy - an attempt to remain in the public consciousness by sharing often trivial thoughts. It is a variant of the commercial strategy above. (Stephen Fry is a prime exponent of this, although I suspect he is driven by deeper psychological imperative than publicity.)
5. A news agenda - partly by a commercial purpose - to publicise the media channel - but also by a simple imperative to report and comment on events.
6. A political agenda, either to promote a specific party or a set of political ideas, often both.
7. A legion of other twitterers with an incredible range of agenda, often of the nutter-to-nutter category, sometime criminal nutter-to-nutter, sometimes exploiter to exploitee, and I suspect sometime a simple criminal agenda.
My purpose is a party political one, but also a communication of ideas, and very recently, a single issue campaign.
Initially alerted to a new idea by today’s tweets, I shortly thereafter received a private message inviting me to un-follow the Scottish Labour Party’s tweets from @scottishlabour. The rationale accompanying this request was that I should show my distaste for their ‘negative campaigning’ by refusing to follow them.
My view, expressed rather more briefly in my reply, is as follows -
Following doesn't imply support on Twitter - it is a wish to know, a selective filter. Not to know what @scottishlabour are tweeting is closing down a channel of information and an opportunity for response. Not to listen to what your political opposition is saying is like intelligence services in wartime refusing to monitor the enemy's communications.
My campaigning on Twitter is vigorous, robust, and I hope negative in the sense that it points up the failure of Labour over generations - and I span three, close to four generations - to serve the people of Scotland and the people of Glasgow. I have no objection to negativity, providing it is balanced by a positive message and clear policies and objectives.
moridura Peter Curran
The Kraken wakes - the giant brain and magnetic personality of Iain Gray are in overdrive. He is half-awake instead of half-asleep. Beware!
moridura Peter Curran
Just over 100 days to an election that is crucial to Scotland's future. In spite of the polls, paranoid Labour will "go negative". Watch out
moridura Peter Curran
The Opposition in Holyrood are not part of a Parliament - they are a unionist pressure group.Democracy comes a poor second to the UK Empire.
moridura Peter Curran
Presiding Officer deals with complaint about Wendy by referring it to Wendy to deal with. Infringing most basic tenet of procedural justice.
moridura Peter Curran
"Infringing the most basic tenet of procedural justice, Mr Fergusson forwarded the complaint to Ms Alexander to deal with" James Mitchell.
moridura Peter Curran
" .presiding officer’s response to a complaint made by the academics ... Mr Fergusson forwarded the complaint to Ms Alexander to deal with">
moridura Peter Curran
"The behaviour of Holyrood Committee .. marks the final death of 'new politics" Prof James Mitchell - 'Herald'. Verdict on Wendy Alexander.
moridura Peter Curran
Wendy and the Profs http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/guest-commentary/holyrood-on-display-as-new-politics-is-laid-to-rest-1.1081453
moridura Peter Curran
Wendy Alexander: Study the brief notoriety and downfall of Senator McCarthy- he was averse to facts when they didn't suit him. Don't emulate
moridura Peter Curran
@bellacaledonia What's wrong with Revelations? Turn 666 upside down and get 999 ...
moridura Peter Curran
#Hallett_Scott "It is inconceivable that this debacle would have been allowed in the Commons." Prof. James Miitchell. Wendy Labour again!
moridura Peter Curran
#Hallett/Scott "the focus not so much of scrutiny as attack, while the actual evidence ... was ignored." Prof. James Mitchell - the 'Herald'
This is a lifelong Labour activist and supporter, Terry Christian, speaking in Manchester about Labour's record in power and about the likelihood of change under Ed Miliband. He puts Scottish Labour activists to shame with his courage and frankness.
Miliband the Younger a friend to Scotland ? - dream on, working-class Scots. Pull your forelocks, bend your knees to the UK and vote Labour in May 2011. May God help you all if you do ...
Scottish Labour voters - listen and learn to Terry Christian and hang your heads. Your English brothers don't share your enthusiasm for the thing the Labour Party has become. If you can bring yourselves to vote Labour at the Holyrood elections in 2011, at least be aware that you are not voting for protection from the ConLib cuts and the wicked Tories.
Labour are now the Tories Mark Two
And any trades unionists with the lingering delusion that Labour is on their side had better wake up - and fast. Your unions may have voted for this Metropolitan, Oxbridge-educated professional political career man, but only as the least worst alternative.
Trades unionists facing the apocalyptic ConLib cuts - if you thought you had elected a friend - you haven't. This man is Middle England with a vengeance, with a metropolitan bias to the South East to boot.
But Scottish trades unionists have a real alternative - the Scottish National Party. Vote for your ain folk and for Scotland. The Labour Party you once knew has been dead for over 13 years - and so are a lot of young Scots, thanks to Blair and Brown.
I am a former Labour voter and supporter, with fifty years of voting Labour now behind me. The watershed was Iraq, and after several years of doubt about New Labour and the Blair Gang, I shifted my allegiance and my vote and joined the SNP as a party member.
As a converted sinner, that may make some long-term faithful party members uneasy that I might shift my allegiance back to Labour. Some of my blogs where I have discussed the need to convince loyal Labour supporters who are nonetheless in favour of Scotland’s independence that a vote for independence is not necessarily a vote for an SNP government – a very real aspect of the need to persuade Scots of other political persuasion to vote for independence in a referendum – have perhaps added to that unease.
So let me make my position clear. My primary objectives are now to achieve an independent Scotland and a nuclear-free Scotland, and nothing will now ever change those objectives. I currently see the SNP as the best political party for achieving these objectives, indeed the only party.
What circumstances could make me return to Labour?
1. The abandonment by the SNP of a firm commitment to independence and a nuclear-free Scotland. I have no inherent objection to gradualism in the strategy for achieving independence, since I don’t want the Party to get it wrong in a premature referendum, and effectively remove independence from the table for a generation. (I don’t have a generation left to me!)
2. That the Labour Party in Scotland severed its link to the UK party and committed to independence and a nuclear-free Scotland. (I would hope that the trades unions would do likewise.)
Since both these criteria are as likely to be met as Alex Salmond being made Lord Salmond of Lithgae, there is little danger of apostasy.
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