Tag Archives: alex salmond

Scotland the brave? Salmond quits Question Time over NewsCorp

3:18pm Wed April 25th

Following two days of startling Leveson revelations, the usually indefatigable Scottish first minister Alex Salmond seems to be running scared. Scheduled to appear tomorrow night on BBC’s Question Time, Wee Eck has now pulled out and won’t be appearing after all.

Yesterday, testimony to the Leveson Inquiry by James Murdoch revealed that the First Minister had been acting as News Corporation’s cheerleader over the BSkyB bid, offering to call Jeremy Hunt over the issue on the Murdochs’ behalf.

In his testimony today, Murdoch Senior described Salmond as “an attractive person”, which won’t have helped alleviate the pressure on Scotland’s foremost separatist.

Big Eck is also rumoured to have turned down appearances on Newsnight Scotland and Scotland Tonight.

Even children are taught Salmond “Do you agree” question is biased

2:20pm Fri January 27th

11 comments

After Scrapbook parodied Alex Salmond’s leading referendum question on Wednesday, Left Foot Forward’s Alex Hern has put the academic smackdown on the SNP’s dodgy wording:

“Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”

Technical literature on survey design is clear that questions phrased in this way result in a “small but significant increase in the amount of people voting yes.”

And it has now emerged that even students as young as 14 are taught that these types of questions are wrong. Having explained why the sample is likely to be biased, this ExExcel GCSE statistics paper asks young students why a “Do you agree …” question will skew results:

2003 EdExcel Statistics GCSE Paper 1H

Back to school for Scotland’s most famous agricultural eonomist?

That “fair and transparent” Scottish referendum ballot paper in full

3:14pm Wed January 25th

25 comments

Following the announcement of Alex Salmond’s leading “Do you agree …” referendum question, please enjoy Scrapbook’s suggestion for the wording and design of the ballot paper.

The SNP’s unveiling of this cornerstone of the poll coincided with Burns Night … by pure coincidence, naturally.

MacIntosh and Baillie frontrunners to lead Scottish Labour

3:03pm Sun May 8th

5 comments

Despite promising results in the rest of the UK there’s no denying that Labour’s showing in Scotland was an unmitigated disaster. Now begins a lengthy post mortem as well as the process of electing a new leader.

With Iain Gray’s presumptive successor Andy Kerr, as well as fellow big-hitters Pauline McNeill and David Whitton all losing their seats to the SNP the leadership of the official opposition is wide open. Former Cabinet Minister and senior front-bencher Jackie Baillie has been the immediate focus of press speculation. Following a stint as Wendy Alexander’s lieutenant Baillie made a name for herself taking the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon to task over C-difficile outbreaks. Glasgow MP and shadow minister Willie Bain has mooted Baillie as a “possible contender“.

However it’s Eastwood MSP Ken MacIntosh who is the “talk of the steamie”. Having overturned a notional 3,000 Tory majority in his re-drawn Eastwood seat MacIntosh impressed many with his witty and urbane shift on BBC Scotland’s election coverage on Friday afternoon. A favourite amongst grass-roots activists, his cheery persona and “family-man” image has significant appeal in the modernising wing of the party.

A (now former) MSP described Ken MacIntosh to Scrapbook this weekend ”the dark horse of the leadership race” while another well-place Labour source said:

“He’s the antidote to Alex Salmond’s pomp and best communicator we’ve got. It has to be Ken.”

But with the party reduced to a rump in Holyrood the question isn’t so much who could win the leadership as who would actually want it.

Labour’s secret weapon? Gordon Brown to rescue Scottish campaign

11:00am Fri April 22nd

11 comments

A poll showing an 11-point polling deficit following news that the Sun giving its backing to the SNP has caused something of a Brown trousers moment for Labour strategists in Scotland — but not in the way you might think. While his dour demeanour may do him few favours south of the border, Gordon Brown remains one of the Scottish Labour Party’s strongest electoral assets.

Yesterday saw him hitting the campaign trail with Scottish leader Iain Gray. And this isn’t the last Scots voters will be hearing from the former prime minister before 5 May. A trusted campaign source told Scrapbook:

“Iain Gray is viewed as lacking gravitas in comparison with Alex Salmond. But there’s no heavier hitter than Gordon. He’s the 500-pound gorilla of Scottish politics.”

The Nats will be providing Gillian Duffy with free transport to Fife.

Calls for Tory MSP to be sacked after rape comments

12:32pm Wed February 16th

19 comments

Big hat-tip to the New Statesman who’ve obtained a leaked transcript of the phone interview in which the Convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee and veteran Tory MSP Bill Aitken suggests that a Glasgow rape victim may have been a hooker. The outrageous remarks have led hundreds of Scots to join a Facebook group calling for his head.

Aitken laughed after being told that the woman was dragged up a lane before being raped by three men. He then goes on to ask:

“I think, errr, somebody should be asking her what she was doing in Renfrew Lane… it is an area where quite a lot of the hookers take their clients.”

Aitken was roundly condemned by the Scottish Labour Party and so far the story has failed to gather much momentum but the publication of Aitken’s damning transcript has led First Minister Alex Salmond to criticise the Tory but failed to call for his resignation as convenor of the Justice Committee.

So much for compassionate conservatism.

Beam me up, Scotty: Salmond's sci-fi economics

5:40pm Wed September 8th

4 comments

After recently being accused of being even more fixated with Alex Salmond than George Foulkes The Animal swore he’d lay-off the First Minister for a bit. However following today’s legislative programme announcement, or moreover the reply, it became impossible to resist temptation. Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray isn’t a man famed for pithy humour (quite the opposite some would doubtless suggest) however his attack on Alex Salmond had political friends and foes chuckling as he accused the First Minister of:

“boldly going where no serious economist has ever gone before.”

If the polls are to believed then Alex Salmond is very much facing the Final Frontier, with his government looking extremely unlikely to live long and prosper (that’s enough Star Trek puns, Ed.)

Stomping Salmond's election night rant

4:28pm Mon August 2nd

6 comments

At the risk of being accused of having a fixation with Alex Salmond, Socialist Animal heard an amusing little story about election night in Bute House that we couldn’t let pass.

It would seem Il Duce was not in the best of moods after polls closed on May 6th, so much so that he was heard by journalists several rooms away stomping and fuming about the results. At one point Salmond was heard shouting:

“For fck’s sake! What does it take for the people of Scotland to stop fcking voting Labour?!”

On the basis of the most recent polling Big ‘Eck isn’t going to get his answer any time soon!

Tag Archives: alex salmond

“boldly going where no serious economist has ever gone before.”

“For f*ck’s sake! What does it take for the people of Scotland to stop f*cking voting Labour?!”

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“For fck’s sake! What does it take for the people of Scotland to stop fcking voting Labour?!”