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"Scottish" Labour Conference...No peerage yet for Brian Wilson?

It is Scottish Labour's conference in Perth. Oh what a grand excuse to stuff the Nats.  That is the only thing they do.

Q.  How many Scottish Labour Lords does it take to change a light bulb?

A. It's all the fault of Alex Salmond..!!

The party of Labour?  My arse.  Labour gave up on socialism many years ago.  The impressive thing for me was how they managed to convince otherwise sensible people to keep voting for them and to join them for decades.

For years I knew many people who were Labour Party members.  Without exception, every one of them was in Labour in order to change its direction. This leads me to the conclusion that the Labour Party must be the most undemocratic institution in Scottish public life.

The Labour Party changed for sure. For the worse. Under the "New Labour" branding they won thirteen years of government where inequality got worse. That means wealth was re-distributed to the rich.  Not the poor.  The rich benefited more from Labour's THIRTEEN years in government.  

A few illegal wars were thrown into the mix as well as brown-nosing the United States in the "special relationship" which seems to consist of extraditing people from this side of the pond to that.

So when the Morning Star tells me yesterday morning that  "the people of Scotland face a clear choice - realistic progress under Labour or the fantasy economics of the SNP", it fairly maks me cowk as we quaintly say up here.

That of course is NOT the choice we are faced with on September 18th.  It is not an election, it is a referendum.  As ever the NO side are keen to boil it down to supporting the SNP in general and Alex Salmond in particular. What the Morning Star and all the Labour cheerleaders say is "Vote No for jam tomorrow."

Well there were thirteen years of the last Labour Government and no improvements in social justice.  How many more years of Labour will it take for our society to even start to become a little less unequal?  How many chances must we give them?

The Morning Star should think shame to publish such trash.  It was Neil Findlay's byline on it.  Might as well name him.

Johann Lamont and Anas Sarwar jointly "lead" Labour in Scotland.  This seems principally to consist of waiting for instructions from London. Yesterday, uber-leader Ed Milliband contrasted Labour's "Red" Paper with the SNP's "White" Paper.  He called on the SNP government to "guarantee a living wage".  Something that Labour never managed.

A few references to "narrow nationalism" and that was about the sum total of Ed's contribution. That'll keep the Jocks happy, now away back to London to the real work.

Labour's focus is of course on London.  For all their talk of "internationalism" they love their British flag.  They love their retirement packages of peerages when they have done enough toadying.  When they have imposed austerity worse than the Tories, when they blame the Tories for the "bedroom tax" that they thought up.  When they don't support a motion to keep the 50p rate of Income Tax, then accuse the Nats (whose motion it was) of trying to give the rich a free ride.  When they compete with the Tories to be the most stringent on immigration controls.

It can only be a matter of time before Labour MP Brian Wilson gets his peerage I would have thought.  A reward for all the oppobrium he spreads about his opponents while peenjin when anyone is rude to him.

His latest in today's Scotsman is to spray accusations of "sinister" intent when the First Minister pulled up the BBC interviewer Andrew Marr on a point.  His piece is a vile little squib imputing the usual "Salmond is a dictator" line.  There is little in the way of truth that will trouble Brian Wilson's editorial standards of course.

Love them or loathe them, the SNP won the elections for the Scottish Parliament.  That is what rattles Brian Wilson's chains.   The thought that his career path is in danger.  The thought that he might be surplus to requirements when we stop sending MPs to Westminster.

The thought that Labour's entitlement to rule Scotland is a thing of the past.

Speed the day say I.

Brian Wilson must surely hope he gets his peerage before we get Indy.  That way he will still (like all the Irish Lords since 1922) get to pick up his appearance money of £300 a day in the House of Lords.

It'll save him having to work for a living I guess.

How the noble Lord Foulkes must be sniggering.

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