Aside from the great programs, I always liked him because one of my Aunts wrote him a letter to ask why her cat was behaving strangely and she got a handwritten letter back. I imagine many people have similar stories too.

Anyway, this is his standard response to people who criticise him for leaving out any religious element to creation and evolution in his documentaries…

Almost two-thirds of Scots would vote for independence if they were guaranteed to be just £500 better off a year, a survey has claimed.

Well, as written, that suggests having £500 MORE.

What if we reverse it and talk about staying in the Union guaranteeing a significant amount LESS for every Scottish family.

Two days ago Wings Over Scotland published a story showing how funds will be diverted FROM Scotland,  TO England which,  although it has often been the case, has never been the mainstream narrative. They covered it from another angle here as well.

Not only this diversion of funds, but another story popped up on the same day in which the Institute of Fiscal Studies predicted that the average family in Britain is likely to be £1,800 a year worse off by 2015.

I quote…

The average middle-income family in Britain is likely to be nearly £1,800 a year worse-off by 2015, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Families with two children will see a fall of £34 in their weekly incomes, after adjusting for inflation.

A childless couple is likely to lose £1,248 a year, or £24 a week.

The IFS also said that over the next three years, less well-off families will be hit harder than those with higher incomes.

The cuts in spending power are because incomes are failing to keep pace with inflation, and because of changes to the benefits system.

So this is to happen before Scotland, following a yes vote, becomes Independent. What guarantees do we have that things will get better after that if we don’t vote yes?

Well none actually, in fact, we have only suggestions the crisis is going to get worse and continue through the next parliament.

Are Labour going to win the next Westminster election and sort it out?

No, Labour aren’t going to win that election, and in fact it seems like they are trying harder and harder not to. Even if they do win it, they have promised they will continue the cuts and austerity.

How can Independent Scotland solve this? Well, too many ways to go into them all but for starters you could increase spending power with a higher minimum wage, you could do the same by not destroying the benefit system, you could save a good part of the money to do that by not wasting it Trident and useless, bloody and illegal foreign wars, finally having control of oil revenues would provide money for an oil fund and a huge hike in tax revenue, we could save money on Westminster itself (I’ve seen 50 million as the cost of that place to Scotland). These are just a few and there are many others that have been discussed at length.

As much as they try to make it look like it is, it isn’t actually rocket science or some mad unseen hand of the market that makes things as they are.

The point is that we don’t have to be forced down this path. Unless of course, we stay in the UK.

Fear not however, Boris Johson believes that spending a pound in Croydon is far more valuable for everyone than spending it in Strathclyde, let’s go back to see what that Institute of Fiscal studies report says about that…

The study shows that 28% of adults aged 45 to 64 living in south-east England live in households with wealth greater than £1m. The figure includes the value of property.

By contrast, in north-west England, the proportion of people with such wealth is only 14%.

The differing fortunes of pensioners are also highlighted in the ONS report.

In the North East, 24% of pensioners live in households with wealth of less than £50,000. In the South West it is 9% of pensioners.

These statistics were obtained from the Scottish Government by Siobhan McMahon MSP and were stated in an interview by  Jeanette Findlay from the Celtic Trust and Fans Against Criminilisation. You can find the original recording here, starting from about 66 minutes.

The first question put was…

“What projects have been funded to tackle sectarianism in each of the last two years?”

This was asked to get an idea of what educational projects were underway. The answer gave some rather surprising facts about where the money was going.

In short, according to Findlay and McMahon (via ScotGov)…

• A large amount of the funding for anti-sectarianism educational projects, in fact more than half of it, went to the FOCUS (Football Coordination Unit for Scotland) group of the police.
• In 2011-12 this group received 75% of the funding
• In 2012-13 they received 32% of the funding
• They received 1.82 million in total
• This unit consists of no more than 10 people

Furthermore, this group are there to police an act which at no point mentions sectarianism, but rather mentions “Offensive Behaviour”.

Findlay went on to say…

“One of the things that FAC (Fans Against Criminilisation) has always said is “in whose interest is this?”. The only people in whose interest this act now remains is the police service of Scotland because this is funding which is separate from their core budget. They have a core budget which is getting squeezed so  they need to find other nice tempting budgets that they can get into, and they seem to be swallowing up the bulk of this budget.

A second question was put…

“How many people have been convicted under the Offensive Behaviour Act?”

• 64 people were prosecuted and of those, 54 were convicted  under the part of the act which is about offensive behaviour at football between 1st March 2012 and 31st December 2012
• Before taking into account the costs of the lawyers, the court system etc, that works out as £33,703 per conviction.
• There were 4 people prosecuted under the part of the act which is about threatening communications and one person was convicted under that.
• Of Celtic supporters, who have been involved in the major protests against the bill and rightly or wrongly feel somewhat more persecuted by it, no one who has pleaded “not guilty” (and therefore gone to trial) has actually been convicted.

Findlay also said that another question will be asked about whether these people could have been convicted under existing section 74 offences (such as Breach of the peace, religious aggravation).

Moreover…

• If you look at 2011-12 the last full year of Section 74 stats, only 8% of all religious aggravated offences took place at football grounds.
• Therefore, only 8% of offences but then 75% and then 32% of the budgets for anti-sectarian projects are directed towards the policing of football. That makes 50% of the budget for 8% of the offences.
• More than 10,000 letters have been sent to MSPs raising concerns about the bill. That was in turn discussed in the Justice Committee meeting of the Parliament of the 23rd April.

It’s time to bring forward the review of this.

Finally, she suggested people should be putting in Freedom of Information Requests.

__________________________________________________________________________

UPDATE

My podcasting colleague has informed me that, contrary to the impression I got from a recent interview on the subject of bringing forward the review, the law cannot be reviewed formally at any given time, although an informal review can obviously be done at any time.

Further, the requirement to report is built into the act itself and the law would need to be amended to speed up any review.

That said, given the car crash nature of the law, they should just get on with it.

Up for discussion were the accusations of abuse being aimed at Chris Hoy. What constitutes verbal abuse and what constitutes mere disagreement? Does everyone need to calm down a bit or are there certain people that seem to be stoking these fires a little more than others?

Is corporation tax and its possible reduction one of your priorities in an Independent Scotland? Would you like to see it or do you think it’d be a bad idea? Actually, do the SNP even think it is a good idea? Robin had some interesting ideas on that.

Is English nationalism so bad? Why shouldn’t the English be allowed to rediscover themselves?

Finally, Nigel Fauxrage is going to be back in town. Will/should he get the same reaction as before?

Hope you enjoy…

As usual, this is the direct download link (right click and save as)

You can listen to the show online at its web page

Or you can subscribe with itunes

Enjoy

Michael Greenwell

P.S. In case you missed there was a Scottish Independence Podcast this week as well with the National Convenor of the Scottish Socialist Party, Colin Fox. You can get that one here.

We spoke about how the SSP has been a indy supporting party since its inception.

Why is the labour party in a seemingly  terminal decline in Scotland? Personally, as someone said on twitter, I’d drive Tony Benn up personally to be the leader in an Indy Scotland to give them some backbone. Colin and I gave our views on that.

Do we need voter registration drives or do we need to work on registered non-voters, or both?

What is Colin’s response to the idea that independence would be abandoning the English working class. And what did James Connolly have to say about that as well?

The SSP‘s fortunes have fluctuated over the years, where are they at now?

The SSP, the Greens and the SNP may not necessarily seem like happy bedfellows but in the yes campaign there is common purpose. Is it going down the right path?

Views on all that and more.

Hope you enjoy…

As usual, this is the direct download link (right click and save as)

You can listen to the show online at its web page

Or you can subscribe with itunes

Enjoy

Michael Greenwell

Up for discussion were the recent moves in the Church of Scotland over permitting gay clergy and the Scottish Parliament dragging its heels over the issue of equal marriage, what’s going on there?

Secondly, Andrew feels that it might be more useful to draw parallels with Ireland in the independence debate, rather than as is usually done with Scandinavia. What could be the reasons for a certain reluctance to do so?

Peter and Andrew held court as I waited to get into my stride after a hosting a Champions League final party the night before recording.

We also got on to discussing the extra 5 million pounds the BBC is going to pump into its Scottish politics/referendum coverage.

What kind of output can we expect? I was somewhat skeptical given the historical functions and output of the BBC, Andrew wondered if I wasn’t being unnecessarily gloomy about the possibilities.

Hope you enjoy…

As usual, this is the direct download link (right click and save as)

You can listen to the show online at its web page

Or you can subscribe with itunes

Enjoy

Michael Greenwell

Serious Divisions To Break Out In Yes Camp

News is coming out that suggests the most serious disruption in the Yes camp to date will break out tomorrow.

Prominent Independence supporters such as Kevin Williamson, Irvine Welsh, Andrew Smith and Sean McPartlin are said to be preparing to launch a campaign in a pitched battle against another faction in the Yes camp which includes musician Stuart Braithwaite from Mogwai, comedian Frankie Boyle and podcast hosts Krys Kujawa and Michael Greenwell.

The ‘No’ camp were quick to  seize the opportunity this division in the Yes camp gave them with Johann Lamont saying it was vital to have the debate, Ian Davidson saying “I’ll burst thae wee ratbags”. George Foulkes immediately claimed it was proof positive that the pixies in his garden really had been nibbling his flowers.

What is certain is that this disaster for the Yes camp, cunningly disguised as a Scottish Cup Final, means that it is entirely impossible for Scottish Independence to happen/be a success/not cause the apocalypse (delete as applicable).

Michael Moore claimed that this is the evidence that Scots cannot be left alone for too long without organising themselves along age old tribal hatreds. The fact that the supposed “cup final” is expected to be conducted in a jovial atmosphere was “of no consequence”, said Moore.

John Curtice was, as ever, available for comment.