Scottish Roundup

Hello and welcome to this week’s roundup (slightly late due to the fact that the I’m a stranger to organisation at the weekends. OK, even more of a stranger than usual). My thanks to Doctorvee for taking over last week at short notice.

Right then, what have we got this week?

Reactionary Snob reacts to the aquittal of BNP leader Nick Griffin and the government’s kneejerk desire to legislate in response. This reminds me of an interview David Dimbleby conducted with Griffin on election night last year in which Dimbleby calmly and methodically took the racist’s arguments to pieces. Free speech is not Griffin’s friend.

Mike Power also has some thoughts on the matter and is satisfyingly rude about the “glorious leaders ” of our country.

While we’re on the subject of racism, Osama Saeed considers the circumstances and consequences of the horrific murder of Kriss Donald in Glasgow.

Over at Rhetorically Speaking, a rare show of unity between hardline Jews and Muslims comes under the spotlight. Unfortunately, this isn’t the cause for celebration it might have been under other circumstances. Some Christians join in too for good measure.

And Bill highlights the less than tolerant amendments passed during the mid term elections on the other side of the world.

Closer to home, Neil Craig gets another letter published in the printed press. It’s a response to Transport Minister Tavish Scott’s defence of the proposed £609m rail link to Edinburgh airport. Considering that the Aberdeen line runs right past the end of the runway, it’s hard to understand why £609m needs to be spent getting trains a few hundred metres closer to the terminal.

Hollyrood Chronicles has the word on Jack McConnel’s response to the soon to be published extensive and detailed inquiry into local taxation in Scotland. Little Jack has more in common with Blair than he would have us believe.

Shuggy takes issue with Polly’s defence of the Surveillance State as does Mr Eugenides. Both are in fine form. On a similar topic, Jarndyce, writing at the Sharpener, has an idea for an incentive scheme for all those MPs who voted for the National Identity Register and ID Crud scheme.
Over at Freedom and Whisky, David spots an SNP politician proposing a whole new level of state surveillance. She doesn’t appear to be joking. Oh my. On a related issue, Angry Steve is angry about a Dundee academic.

And talking of kitchens, the Devil’s Kitchen (heh, smooth or what?) is concerned about Chip and Pin. What happened to DK’s correspondent’s father is all sorts of wrong and very worrying for anyone with a credit card. I worked in retail as a supervisor for a good while and we were always told that you needed the cardholders consent to correct errors made by cashiers. In fact, I can clearly remember being advised by our bank that completing a correction without consent would leave us open to fraud charges. That was a while ago now and it seems that things may have changed and not for the better (unless you’re a retailer or a fraudster).

Changing tack, Mark has written a political obituary for Donald Rumsfeld. The Flying Rodent also bemoans the departure of the Don in fine style.

And finally, over at the Naked Blog (at it since 1997), attention is turned to Remembrance Sunday.

And that’s it for this week. Please do feel free to send your nominations for next week to scottishroundup [at] gmail [dot] com. See you then.