A former Labour minister yesterday branded devolution a disaster for the Labour Party and dismissed the three contenders vying for the Scottish leadership as “scarcely inspirational”.
Brian Wilson, a fervent anti-nationalist, claimed that Labour’s difficulties were a result of self-inficted wounds and “flow mainly from the obsession with constitutional reform”. for more click here
It might be midsummer, but already Grace McDonald is looking ahead with trepidation towards the long, cold winter days. The retired primary school teacher from Inverness just about gets by on her £9,000-a-year pension, but with last week’s massive rises in energy bills — anything between 22% and 35%, depending on your supplier — her electricity bill now accounts for more than a tenth of her income. With food and travel costs also on the rise, the 79-year-old widow fears she may soon slide below the poverty line. for more click here
SCOTTISH Labour was facing full-scale civil war last night as leading MSPs demanded the new leader wrest “complete control” of the party from its London headquarters.
Former Finance Minister Tom McCabe said the next Labour leader at Holyrood should have total power over Scottish affairs, claiming Jack McConnell had been hamstrung by Westminster MPs while in office. for more click here
One of the prime minister’s closest allies has said he is not afraid of a referendum on Scottish independence.
International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander gave public backing on the issue to his sister Wendy, leader of the Scottish Labour Party. for more click here
A year ago this weekend Scotland was in political meltdown. Voters had thrown out the Labour party, ending its 50-year grip on power, and put in the Nationalists but with nothing like a convincing majority. Alex Salmond had won but by just one seat and the election itself was a discredited debacle, not quite Zimbabwe but, with spoilt ballot papers and nearly 200,000 lost votes, hardly the model of a modern democracy. for more click here
A SENIOR Tory MP has said it is too soon to think about increasing the Scottish Parliament’s powers – even though his party has signed up to a review of devolution.
Scots-born shadow defence secretary Liam Fox, on a visit to Edinburgh, said he would prefer to wait and see how Holyrood settled down. for more click here
GORDON Brown rejected pleas for more UK cash for Scotland yesterday.
The Prime Minister said the SNP were wrong to claim that Scotland was “under-funded” by the Treasury.
He spoke as Finance Secretary John Swinney accused Westminster of refusing to give the Scottish government millions of pounds in extra cash to spend on prisons. for more click here
Almost an hour before Gordon Brown addressed his first Scottish Labour conference as prime minister, a vast queue began to form outside the main venue in the Highland resort of Aviemore, as its security system became jammed with human traffic. for more click here
THE Scottish National party is to take its campaign for independence into cyberspace by seeking to change the endings of all websites based in the country, from “.co.uk” to “.sco”.
Alex Salmond, the first minister, is to lodge a formal request with the American-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is responsible for allocating all internet domain names. for more click here
FIRST Minister Alex Salmond today challenged opponents of independence to put their alternative plan to the voters in a referendum.
And he held out the prospect of a three-way choice where the electorate would be asked to rank separation, further devolution or keeping the status quo in order of preference. for more click here