Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

The Obsever newspaper ran a funny scoop at the weekend by publishing a series of leaked emails - which suggest that Ukip, the anti-Europe party, resembles a wildly out-of-control 'barmy army' as it limbers up for Thursday's local elections in England and Wales. Now the House of Commons has gone into recess (again) so that Westminster MPs can return to their constituencies to help fight these local elections - but as the elections are not being held in Scotland, the Scottish contingent of MPs have time on their hands. In one of the emails, a senior party figure and MEP - Godfrey Bloom - says that leading Ukip is like "herding cats" - which I'm sure is true. But the far more damaging insight is in the email where Godfrey suggests that the party should just buy some key policies 'off the shelf' - presumably from friends in right-leaning think tanks - as it does not have the resources to 'reinvent the wheel'. Disarmingly honest as this sta

The big question facing Glasgow this week is whether the leader of the City Council - Councillor Gordon Matheson - is toast. Politically speaking - of course. Because for months, Gordon Matheson has been embroiled in a row over the future of Glasgow's George Square - which I have commented on previously - but things have now taken a turn for the worse with the Council Leader being reported to the Public Standards Commissioner and the Police over his behaviour. I suspect the Public Standards Commissioner will put the porr chap out of his misery - because having watched the 'car-crash' of an interview with Bernard Ponsonby on STV last week - it seems to me that the Council Leader cannot answer convincingly the many criticisms levelled at his curious role in this affair. So, my money is on Councillor Matheson resigning in the days and weeks ahead - and I just wish that more council insiders had the courage to speak out on issues where public money and public probity i

The internet is a wonderful thing - because how else would you get to see something incredible like this YouTube video? I confess I have never seen the Chinese State Circus perform in the flesh - but here is their very own, inimitable interpretation of Swan Lake. http://youtu.be/4sMc-p19FIk

Here's a precautionary tale in case anyone in Scotland is foolish enought to believe that poor treatment of elderly hospital patients - is a phenomenon that is restricted to just one health facility south of the border. A senior nurse - Glen Davidson (39) - from Lynebank Hospital in Dunfermline has been suspended and branded a disgrace to his profession - after taping a sing saying 'Feed Me' on to the chest of an tube-fed elderly stroke victim. Now the incident happened during a night shift on 1 April 2010 - and the nurse involved seem to think his little joke was even 'funnier' as it happened to take place on April Fool's Day. Last week the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) - the professions' regulatory body - finally caught up with Glen Davidson and suspended him for 18 months after finding that the senior staff nurse represented - “a real risk of harm to patients and their dignity”. Seems terribly lenient if you ask me - and I wonder if the man

GG as a Pussycat in Big Brother Now here's a sight you don't see everyday - a putative Prime Minister of Great Britain getting well and truly 'mugged' by a populist political pussycat - in the shape of  George Galloway (GG), the Respect MP. The article from The Mail on Sunday is a perfectly executed 'hatchet job' on the Labour leader - Ed Miliband - but to be honest Ed should have seen this coming a mile away.  Quite what the Labour leader thought he was doing by having a secret, cosy meeting with the Respect MP is a mystery - one that always had the potential to blow up in Ed's face, as I predicted in a previous post - 'Come Into My Parlour' dated 25 April 2013. Well now it has and in quite spectacular fashion and the whole episode leaves Ed Miliband looking - well, frankly ridiculous - because he has a penchant for identifying himself with left-wing causes which offer little other than empty political slogans about the challenges facing t

The latest edition of Private Eye has a true story in its Funny Old World column about the lengths some people will go to in China - to bag a seat on the crowded subway. FUNNY OLD WORLD "These silicone stomachs are sold as acting props," a spokesman for the Liyuan Industrial and Commercial Bureau told reporters in Beijing, "and are intended for actresses who are pretending to be pregnant." "However, Ms Zhang paid 300 yuan (£30) for a prothetic preegnant belly so she could gain sympathy from passengers on the subway, and be given a seat on even the most crowded trains." "It is shameful that she milked sympathy from her fellow passengers in this way, but what is worse, when the fake stomach fell off during one subway journey, she lodged a complaint with us, complaining about the poor quality of the prosthetic belly." In her complaint against Taobao.com (who had sold her the prothesis), Ms Zhang pointed out that "the advertisement cl

I enjoyed this article written by David Aaronovitch in The Times recently - because it reflects my own views these days that the way to deal with people on the extremes of politics - is not to shout them down or deny them a hearing. So to hound someone like Paolo Di Canio out of football for his alleged support for fascism and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini would be a complete overreaction - a kind of mob rule - and in some ways akin to what happened to the author Salman Rushdie for publishing his book, The Satanic Verses. To my mind the difference is that while Salman Rushdie would always have acquitted himself well against his detractors - given the opportunity - the new Sunderland manager, as we have seen, suddenly lost his appetite for explaining his reported admiration for Mussolini. Little wonder, since the subject has no place in football and, of course, when put under the spotlight of public debate and scrutiny - fascism is a completely discredited political philo

Margaret Hodge is a Labour MP and Chairperson of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.  I don't know her personally, but I admire the work she does in the House of Commons - which appears to be serious and non-partisan, by and large - and the fact that she speaks her mind. Just the other day she told the Guardian newspaper: “We are living through the worst economic crisis in modern times, MPs have a lot to do and yet we are spending much of our time in recess.” Apparently, MPs sat for 296 days a year between May 2010 and May 2012 - according to Commons library papers - compared with 304 days from 2006 to 2008. The Public Accounts Committee is charged with scrutinising public spending - with the aim of ensuring that taxpayers get value for money and warming to her theme Margaret Hodge added that the public would be forgiven: “for thinking that it is MPs who are lazy and that it is Parliament that is failing to provide good value for money”. Yes indeed and th

What do North Korea and Venezuela have in common? Well for one thing their governments both seem quite happy to declare suspected criminals 'guilty' - before the people concerned are even brought to anything resembling a proper trial. For example, an American citizen - Pae Jun-Ho (aka Kenneth Bae) - is to be sentenced by North Korea's Supreme Court after allegedly admitting allegations that he was attempting to overthrow the North Korean government. Now this seems a tad overblown if you ask me, but the North Koreans are deadly serious and issued a statement saying:  "The preliminary inquiry into crimes committed by American citizen Pae Jun-Ho are closed." "In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) with hostility toward it." "His crimes were proved by evidence. He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgement." N

Politics is a fickle old business, right enough. No sooner has George Galloway - the Respect MP - started throwing his weight behind Labour's Ed Miliband efforts to become the country's next Prime Minister - than he changes his mind and describes Ed as a liar and a coward. Here's a report from the BBC's web site on what has turned out to be a rather guly spat between the two men. George Galloway: Ed Miliband lied about meeting Respect MP George Galloway has accused Labour leader Ed Miliband of lying about a meeting between the two men. Mr Miliband said he had met the MP to talk about a vote on boundary changes. But Mr Galloway said this was "a lie" and called the Labour leader "an unprincipled coward with the backbone of an amoeba". Reports of the meeting prompted rumours that Mr Galloway could rejoin Labour. Mr Miliband has denied this and says he does not want Mr Galloway to be an MP. After 16 years as a Labour MP, Mr Galloway was

The Scottish  Labour Party seems to have wandered into something of a political minefield as its leader - Johann Lamont - unveiled support for a new policy that more tax raising powers should be transferred from Westminster to the Holyrood Parliament in Edinburgh. Now many people - myself included - would say that this policy doesn't go far enough and that the Scottish Parliament should assume responsibility for not just income tax - but for all revenue raised within Scotland's borders. In other words - Devo Max - with Scotland then contributing its fair share of the cost of the country's defence budget which most people would prefer to continue at a UK level - through close cooperation between the Scottish and Westminster Parliaments. As far as I see things - that's the 'best of both worlds' choice which is being denied to voters in next year's referendum on Scottish independence. But even the rather timid proposals on income tax raising powers bei

I was given a speeding ticket in Spain a number of years ago which I found a bit harsh as  most drivers do - even when you know you're in the wrong. But after a day or two of feeling sorry for myself I stumped up and paid the Spanish authorities  their 90 Euro fine - although by that time  I was back in sunny Scotland. So I had to laugh at this recent article in The Times by Giles Coren - in which he demands tough action against the thousands of outstanding parking fines owed by  'Johnny Foreigner'. Now some in the Tory Party might worry that chasing up cross border parking fines might hasten the United States of Europe - but I agree wholeheartedly with Giles Coren. By the ashes of Margaret Thatcher - make the buggers pay up.  We’ll fight in the streets. And in the car parks Giles Coren Foreign drivers owe us half a million quid in unpaid fines. Frankly, it’s unpatriotic not to chase every penny I spent some of last week in the South of England, funeral dodgin