Election results are good - Blair!

[threaded]

Talking more about the detail rather than the headline grabbers
Scottish government
* A referendum on independence for Scotland.
* Deliver annual efficiency savings of 1.5% per year and free up £1.1bn for reallocation to new national infrastructure projects.
* Ensure 70% of released resources go to improving frontline services and 30% to lower local tax.
* Cut Scottish Executive departments from nine to six.
Economy
* Remove business rates from 120,000 Scottish small businesses and cuts for a further 30,000.
* Replace council tax with a local income tax, with a rate set at 3p.
* Cut red tape and widen access to public sector contracts for small businesses.
* A £2m fund to promote Scottish work at the Edinburgh festivals.
* £10m scheme for new entrants to farming.
* Move to secure quota allocation from decommissioned fishing vessels for active ones.
Transport
* "Substantial" investment in rail infrastructure and additional steps to tackle congestion.
* "Early delivery" of a new Forth crossing.
* Commission a study into Road Equivalent Tariff, with a pilot in the Western Isles.
Environment
* New targets for carbon reduction.
* Higher building standards and efforts to increase energy efficiency.
* Support community and household energy generation and develop local heat and power grids.
* Proposed legislation to reduce Scotland's "carbon footprint".
Health
* Give patients legally binding waiting times.
* "Presumption against" centralising core hospital services and protect access to local healthcare.
* Direct elections to health boards.
* Phase out prescription charges.
* Annual health checks and individual health plans for school pupils with a doubling in the number of school nurses.
* School-based dental service.
* Free school meals, starting with youngest children.
* Two hours of physical education per week for every pupil and free access to council swimming pools.
* Individual health plans for men and women from the age of 40.
* Additional funding for young carers.
* Increased payments for free personal and nursing care in line with inflation.
Communities
* First time buyers' grant of £2,000 and a fund to provide shared equity loans to first time buyers.
* Devolve power to local levels wherever possible and consider increased powers for community councils.
* Extend the role of the voluntary sector.
* Expect that a minimum of 25% of new housing developments will be reserved for affordable housing.
Education
* Delivery of a 50% increase in free nursery education for three and four-year-olds, with a nursery teacher for every centre.
* Smaller class sizes, starting with a cut in P1 to P3 class sizes to 18 or less.
* Expanding school-college partnerships for S3 and S4, boosting access to vocational learning.
* Introducing Baccalaureates for science and language.
* Scrap the student graduate endowment and replace the student loans system.
* Additional £10m for "cutting edge research".
Justice
* More police on local streets.
* More information for communities on dangerous paedophiles in their area.
* Tougher controls on the sale of alcohol to those under the legal age to drink.
* Taskforce to tackle organised crime.
* Emphasis on tough community punishments to end short-term prison sentences.

It's just not fair! Why is it only the Scots are allowed to vote for the SNP?

[AlfredJPruffock]

Aye Threaded

Thanks for expanding my Readers Digest guide to the SNP manifesto.

I am so happy at the defeat of Tony Blair that I feel a wee song coming on -

'Things - can only get better'

Yes - things CAN only get better - perhaps on Thursday when Blair resigns and skunks off to the US with his nose in the trough ?


Here's a blog I saw that perfectly captured the election here in Scotland - if anyone saw the gutter medias onslaught against SNP - it truely was disgusting and despite their crude and blatant lies and propaganda- all credit to the SNP for winning.

I do live in Scotland and I did vote SNP and believe me if you lived in Scotland you would have been in no doubt that in voting for the SNP you were voting for independence, not simply against Labour.


I cannot ever remember such an intensive and sustained attack on the SNP especially in the tabloid press. Yesterday the Daily Record printed a whole edition basically warning people against voting SNP and claiming that it would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and make us bankrupt.

These allegations were printed as fact, not allegations.

The Sun, the wee charmer that it is, printed a front cover graphic with what looked like the SNP symbol - it was a noose.

The Daily Mail printed a picture of Alex Salmond with the headline this man wants to destroy Great Britain. And so on.

This was just the culmination of months of anti-SNP propaganda. The Scottish press, for the most part, has been acting like Labour's mouthpiece and printing whatever Gordon Brown wanted to see.


It has been quite unbelievable and I must admit I thought it would do the SNP a lot of damage.

The fact that people still went out and voted SNP in spite of all of this doom mongering and negativity is testament to the change that is happening in Scotland.

This is not just a mid term protest vote.

Labour may try to spin it like that.


But it's not.

Hope has beaten fear. Scotland is a different country today.

[threaded]

Well, that's all part of the New Lie machine at work.

I know in a previous election an independent who campaigned against them knocking several hundred houses down to make some party doner / property developer rich. The outright lies about them that were printed in the paper and the denial that the houses were going to be knocked down, all with such vitriol. After the election, the paper printed a very small apology to avoid being sued, and an even smaller report about a plan to knock down several hundred houses.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Well, that's all part of the New Lie machine at work.

I know in a previous election an independent who campaigned against them knocking several hundred houses down to make some party doner / property developer rich. The outright lies about them that were printed in the paper and the denial that the houses were going to be knocked down, all with such vitriol. After the election, the paper printed a very small apology to avoid being sued, and an even smaller report about a plan to knock down several hundred houses.

Fascinating Threaded - but I would be wary of any criticism of Tony Blair himself of course - especially if you count hill walking as one of your hobbies.


TONY BLAIR privately conceded two weeks before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein did not have any usable weapons of mass destruction, Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, reveals today.

John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), also "assented" that Saddam had no such weapons, says Cook.

His revelations, taken from a diary that he kept as a senior minister during the months leading up to war, are published today in The Sunday Times. They shatter the case for war put forward by the government that Iraq presented "a real and present danger" to Britain.

Cook, who resigned shortly before the invasion of Iraq, also reveals there was a near mutiny in the cabinet, triggered by David Blunkett, the home secretary, when it first discussed military action against Iraq.

The prime minister ignored the "large number of ministers who spoke up against the war", according to Cook. He also "deliberately crafted a suggestive phrasing" to mislead the public into thinking there was a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and he did not want United Nations weapons inspections to be successful, writes the former cabinet minister.