Viking Festival

30th June 2010

As Chair of the Viking Festival I had put in our requests for grants from the Common Good Fund and the Community Grants Scheme.

Last year we got £6000 from the Common Good and £2500 from the Community Grants Scheme. As as it’s our 30th anniversary this year, we had put forward a request for grants of £7000 from the Common Good Fund and £3000 from the Community Grants Scheme. We need the money to fund our ambitious programme of events.

Unfortunately, instead of supporting the need to make the Festival bigger and better this year, Liz Marshall and Alan Hill actually cut the Common Good allocation from £6000 last year to only £3000, and the Community Grant Award to £2oo0.

Last year we got £8500 from these sources, this year only £5000. £3500 is a large amount to cut from our operating budget. The result is that, instead of expanding our ambitions in our 30th year, our cash is going to be much more constrained than before. I have to say that I find this very disappointing.

An all elected House of Lords

13th March 2010

Braveheart is reporting that Labour is about to introduce a bill to have the House of Lords elected 100%.

Seems like  a good idea to me….

Daves all made up….

The Conservatives have started their election campaign early with a poster showing David Cameron and saying how much he cares about the NHS.

Unfortunately for them, it has attracted more comment for the perfect sheen and tone of the Dave’s skin. Pimples? Dave? No way! Moles? Blemishes?

He has literally no pores! Not one! No chin follicles! Nothing! Our Dave, he’s flawless he is. 

The man with no skin blemishes, and no policies either....

And isn’t air-brushing the perfect metaphor for the Conservatives strategy.

 We’re nice Tories, not those naughty Tories of recent experience. We love the NHS and everything nice.  

That Maggie Thatcher, she was a one, but nothing to do with us….we’re smooth, dead smooth…

SNP Drops its “Local” Income Tax

John Swinney has finally abandoned all pretence that he can produce a Local Income Tax as promised in the SNP manifesto. This is a surprise to no-one: there never was a detailed, thought-through, workable Local Income Tax Policy in the first place. The LIT was a line in the SNP manifesto designed, not as real policy in itself, but as slogan to replace the Council Tax. The reasoning being that “the Council Tax is unpopular, let’s get a few votes by opposing it”.  Which is all very well, but if you oppose the current tax, and you are in power, you need a working alternative. And LIT has so many faults and contradictions that it just exploded in the face of John Swinney and Alex Salmond.

To date the SNP dropped the abolition of student debt, starter packs for first-time-buyers, 1000 extra police, matching Labour’s school building programme “brick-for-brick” and the Local Income Tax. Next in line is the Scottish Futures Trust, another empty slogan masquerading as a policy. That will make almost the full house of abandoned SNP policies. 

What price the referendum as the next candidate for the “oot the windae” treatment?