International Women’s Day – did Scots women have anything to celebrate?

Saturday, 10 March 2012 21:31

21 Comments

By Hazel Lewry

International Women’s Day was on March 8th, so it is appropriate to look at the issue of UK gender equality in the run up to the independence referendum. Details in the polls show women rather more likely to support the status quo, the Union, than men. As a group women are perhaps more inclined to be conservative – with a small c – than men.

A new worrying tactic has emerged that threatens Scotland’s great debate

Friday, 09 March 2012 13:50

102 Comments

By G.A.Ponsonby

“I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it” … unless you are Scottish and support independence it seems.

It’s one of the defining aspects of our society, the freedom to express an opinion, to disagree, to criticise – in short, free speech is fundamental to who we are.

Joan McAlpine is coming to get me

Friday, 09 March 2012 07:47

66 Comments

By Kenneth Roy

Gerry Hassan, that tireless commentator on where we were, where we are and where we could be, came to the airport yesterday to interview me. It seems I am one of 50 people whose impressions of life in Scotland he is gathering. His subjects are to be given a transcript of what they said. Please, don’t bother on my account.

We are in the last weeks of the winter timetable down here, so I expected to have the bar to ourselves. Instead it was full of jolly certain-age Scotswomen preparing for a midweek jaunt to Tenerife.

YouGov’s January and February Scottish polls

Thursday, 08 March 2012 00:07

31 Comments

By Dave Taylor

One of YouGov’s weaknesses, when it comes to Scottish Polling, is that they weight their sample by Westminster based ‘party identity’.

They have no way of telling whether their sample of Labour Party IDs and Scottish National Party IDs have a larger or smaller number of voters who switch their votes between Labour and SNP. That there is a significant ‘churn’ of voting intention between Labour and SNP is clear.

BBC Scotland and the Maltese mistress

Wednesday, 07 March 2012 17:32

28 Comments

By Kenneth Roy

I woke up on Monday morning to the exciting headline on the BBC:

Lockerbie bomber Megrahi ‘visited Malta for sex’

It has taken 23 years for sex and Lockerbie to become strange bedfellows. We have had the deaths of 270 people, the life sentence imposed on the families of the victims (grief, without parole), the trial in the Netherlands …