Yesterday the BBC held a debate between four of the five parties who represent Glasgow at Holyrood and in the Council. One was omitted for no good reason - us.The result was hardly edifying, though the Tory candidate came across best in my book. The SNP and Liberal blokes in particular made me want to throw the telly out of the window, with the SNP's John Mason the most unappealing of all.
First, his tone is pure cybernat ranting made flesh. I expected him to talk about the "butcher's apron" (see comment 22 here). It was like listening to Scotsman or Herald comments; i.e. much worse than just reading them.
Second, he explicitly came out in favour of reducing the abortion timelimit, and when discussing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill he said "I am extremely unhappy about any experiments on babies or research, or anything like that."
Yeah, imagine if we did research. Then we'd be back in the Dark Ages. No, wait..
Davena Rankin for the Tories gave the best answers on this, combining women's rights and respect for science in one go.
Next, he was asked what the SNP would do to move people out of their cars and onto public transport. He started by saying that transport (no details) is a key SNP policy. It's summarised in the picture above.
Then he gave two examples which were bizarre to say the least. First, he mentioned the Glasgow Airport Rail Link, which helps people get on planes, as far as I understand it.
Second, he actually then cited the M74 extension as a way to get people out of their cars! Does he not know that 60% of his would-be constituents don't have access to a car? That this road will lead to extra car journeys, equivalent to 135,000 tonnes of extra CO2 a year? That the independent reporter said that, "looking at all the policy, transport, environmental, business and community disadvantages of the proposal as a whole, it is concluded that the proposal would be very likely to have very serious undesirable results"?
You probably won't believe this if you didn't see it, so here it is.
I should note in the interests of fairness that the next example he gives is concessionary bus fares. Which the SNP almost cut earlier in the year.
It's got a very American feel this election: abhortion and contrasting views as a major issue.
The SNP bloke is ghastly. A classic mealy mouthed "Well, I think there's two separate ishoos there" backbench type