General Chat

Alex Salmond announces that he is to resign as Scotland's First Minister

Good.

AAAAHHHHHHH!!!! Bless him....Who's going to dry his tears and change his nappies???? Did he take his ball home so nobody else could play....
This decision just goes to show he wanted to be a world leader but as it was he was just a minority MP....Scotland will be so better off without him....LES..

I'd rather that Nicola Sturgeon disappears......... forever!

Good one down - now we need his lieutenants to go as well - I would also like to see David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband go as well, clear the lot out, the sooner the better as far as I am concerned :-D

Yes but who would you want in their place ??

Anyone whose only experience of life was not gained as a political intern or political adviser in a government department :-(

and someone not public school educated and born with a silver spoon in their mouth

I am English to the core and my ancestors go back centuries.

I took a great interest in the Scottish referendum and I am glad that the result was a No for Scotland to become an independent country, because I felt that as the United Kingdom we need each other.

For Alex Salmond to resign after the result makes me think that it was just his personal ambition to set Scotland apart from the rest of Britain and not in the interest of the people he claimed to represent and support.........

As to whom should succeed him ? Surely not Nicola Sturgeon, as has already said...... I have my opinion, but not prepared to to say on here as it is not up to me...the choice is with the people of Scotland... I am sure they will choose wisely.

Toys out of the pram time, is it? :-(

No surprises there then

it seems to be par for the course that any separatist leader who tried to take his "country" out of the federation resign the day after the vote .......

........ whether that be Alex Salmond today or the two leaders who tried to take Quebec out of Canada in 1980 and 1995


If you are lucky, he will not now sit in the background quietly fomenting rebellion and separation again.

They do not seem to seek re-election to leader of the party again ............... but they train a new generation.

Sadly, Salmond has never managed instil any real passion into his arguments for independence and it is surprising that the yes vote was a high as it was.

At 59 he is unlikely to hold political office again.

It is surprising that the YES vote was as high as it was? I know of many here who swung to a NO vote when Cameron and co promised devo max in desperation towards the end of the campaign when the polls swung against them. It is the SNP and not the Scottish people as a whole who will determine who is the next First Minister when they vote for their new leader in 2016. It will quite clearly be Nicola Sturgeon who has quite different priorities to those of Salmond. Scotland as a whole can have their say at the next Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2016.

Why the dislike of public schools? It is far from true that most scholars at public school are born anywhere near a silver spoon. There are islands of excellence in the state system which can usually be identified by high property prices or a lottery for the catchment area. Overall though the state system is a failure from age 4-18. In trying to improve state education labour made the basic mistakes of confusing quality with quantity and preferring egality over anything. It is a crying shame that kab are stuck with outmoded ideas as the Tories don't care.

Free access to university education was brought in by Harold Wilson's govt of 1964. That is 50 years ago not "not so long ago". Universities expanded and several excellent new ones were founded eg Essex, Kent, Sussex and some polytechnics became high grade units notably Loughboro'. Blair's absurd idea of uni for everyone is a prime example of quantity over quality. Not only has the idea racked up a terrible cost to the state but it is lumbering thousands of young people with serious debt for qualifications of scant worth on the job market. It is amazing just how many people fail to understand that academic and vocational qualifications are very different and that a uni is a poor choice for the latter. A side effect of the bubble of uni education are the many institutions whose chief attraction to their students is a UK visa.

Frau Merkel is a pain in the butt not least because so often she is right. She drives her own civil servants and other EU leaders nuts. The UK used to have something called a thick sandwich which led to HND or degree with 6 month slices hands on NOT as cheap labour but real experience. I did the same for my engineering masters degree. Today' s political elite - any party - despise anybody with real know how. They have created a sort of Brahmin caste system from which outsiders are excluded. Hence the Clacton by election or look at Milliband's impeccable Labour pedigree. Nicole Sturgeon is a paid up member of the political elite closer to Cameron than Salmond. Good for big biz.
Scotland has suffered more from it's Scottish rulers than it ever has from the English.

Rollo said......Why the dislike of public schools? It is far from true that most scholars at public school are born anywhere near a silver spoon.


Exactly!