Education was dummed down disastrously.

Source: http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Alex-Salmond-Scotland-39didn39t-mind39.4411586.jp

To be fair I can actually respect the greens and tories campaigns in this election as their manifestoes are ideologically coherent but Salmond is somehow able to appeal to the ex Labour vote in the central belt and the anti Labour rural vote at the same time.

This is somehow made easier for the SNP by Labour losing the media campaign.

I remember hearing the infamous Lawson 1988 budget live on the radio (before there were cameras in parliament).

Salmond made such a noisy protest against Lawson’s tax cuts that he was expelled from the house.

He’s successfully trying to squeeze the Scottish Tory vote right down to the bare bones. I must admit I would be tempted to vote SNP if I lived in Scotland as the Tories have become such an irrelevance there in what is essentially a contest between two potential first ministers.

Alex Salmond ‘didn’t mind’ thatcher’s economic policies, it was just the social side Scotland didn’t like, according to him.

I do think it’s wrong though to completely blame Labour for the decline of manufacturing since 1997 though.

Their over-regulation and neglect made things worse, but the emergence of mass super-cheap Chinese competition across a swathe of industries has been the main reason. The Tories could no more have stopped this than Labour. The decline and sometimes disappearance of our iron/steel, textile, shoe and consumer goods industries are all basically down to cheap imports from China. It is the same story in the US and across much of Europe.

This country should have been more like Germany if it wanted large-scale manufavturing to survive – ie. a complete focus on innovation and quality meaning that expensive products can beat cheap competiton on quality in home and export markets. It is probably too late now.

The Poll Tax was not tested in Scotland. However flawed a tax it was, it was not introduced early for that reason, but too avoid a revaluation that was well overdue which would have been far worse for many people (bills X7) and George Younger was under fierce attack to come up with a new system quickly after a safe seat was lost in Ayr in the 1985 regional elections.

We should all leave Maggie alone in her final days. In some ways the Tories that keep wheeling her out to prove some point or another are as bad.

But now that we’ve heard the Labour candidates disgusting comments about wishing for Lady Thatcher to die, I hope that he loses empatically. He is clearly not capable of holding a high profile role such as this until he has grown up a little.

Interesting though that wishing for the death of an individual is acceptable (no one has as yet called for him to be expelled from Labour) but making comments about the local voters (as in the Thanet case) is not acceptable and that candidate was immediately removed by the Tory party.

And meanwhile, Labour MPs are far too worked up about Cameron’s ‘calm down’ comment yesterday. Have Labour lost the plot? Why are they so cross given that they are ‘supposed’ to be winning?

Sounds like private polling is not showing as huge a lead as they might have hoped and they’re a bit rattled?