Hello and welcome to The Midge, your first bite of the day’s politics in Scotland and elsewhere.
Today
- Cost of NHS helpline soars by £50m
- Revealed: how pollsters got it wrong
- Mundell backs June for EU vote
- Chinese growth at 25-year low
- Sturgeon to meet Women’s Equality Party
- Labour: SNP pact talk cost us votes
06.00 BBC Today headlines
Chinese economic growth weak … Inquiry into GE2015 reports … MI5 top employer for gay people … Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey dies … Inflation figures published.
07.00 BBC Good Morning Scotland headlines
China … Pollsters … Lords resumes scrutiny of Scotland Bill … Nurses and midwives given English requirement… Glenn Frey.
The front pages
Exclusive: Daniel Sanderson in The Herald reports on the troubled fortunes of an NHS IT project. In another exclusive, David Leask reveals Glasgow Central Mosque has been criticised by charity watchdogs over its running.
The National blends images of David Cameron and Donald Trump to complain of the “Trumpification of British politics”.
Scottish Secretary David Mundell has backed a snap EU poll just a month after the Holyrood elections, say the Scottish Daily Mail, The Herald, the Scotsman, and the Daily Record. This is despite the FM saying June was too early.
The Sun says a British sniper is being investigated for shooting an Iraqi about to detonate a grenade because no warning was shouted.
The Daily Express announces the “death of the decent pension”. Nearly every final salary scheme left in the private sector will go by next year, the paper reckons.
The FT reports that some bosses at Deutsche Bank are trimming their bonuses to pay junior staff more.
The Times says women are being charged up to twice as much as men for essentially the same goods. In one case, razors were double the price because they were pink.
The “cannon fodder” row rumbles on in the Telegraph, with Defence Secretary Michael Fallon calling on Nicola Sturgeon to “get to the bottom” of where the comments, reported in the Sunday Herald, came from.
Camley's cartoon
Camley finds falling fuel prices a gas.
Need to know
It is judgment day today on how the pollsters got it so spectacularly wrong in predicting the result of the 2015 General Election. After months of number crunchers saying the result would be a hung parliament, the Tories emerged as the largest party. What happened? Why was so much spent by so many on results that were so hopeless? The British Polling Council will today blame too many Labour voters being surveyed. It will also criticise the wording of questions and consider the effect of a late swing in voter intentions. Also today, Labour’s inquest into its defeat is expected to say that talk of a pact with the SNP was a factor in voters switching to the Tories.
Diary
- London: IMF to launch World Economic Outlook.
- Lords: Scotland Bill.
- Commons: Scottish Secretary David Mundell gives evidence to Scottish Affairs Committee on post-work study schemes; Treasury questions; Westminster Hall Debate on 30 years rule; Foreign Affairs Committee on Libya, with Liam Fox and William Hague; Defence Committee on operations in Syria and Iraq; Lord Strathclyde before Public Accounts Committee on his review of the House of Lords.
- London: George Osborne talks with Indian counterpart.
- London: Bank of England governor Mark Carney speech at Queen Mary University.
Talk of the steamie: the comment sections
Colette Douglas Home in The Herald worries we have become inured to inequality, while Iain Macwhirter says let Trident rust in peace.
Alex Massie in the Times ponders what he calls the Age of Hurt Feelings, in which universities are clamping down on free speech for fear some might be offended.
Azadeh Moaveni in the Guardian says the lifting of sanctions on Iran will not change lives immediately.
Gideon Rachman in the FT says the lesson of Bowie is that art endures, politics does not.
"Hugh Hefner's famous playboy mansion is for sale," writes Siobhan Synnot in the Daily Mail of the publishing tycoon (above). "Fortunately, so are Domestos, Dettol and wire brushes."
Afore ye go
“How is it possible for the second consecutive year all 20 contenders under the acting category are white?”
Director Spike Lee explaining why he won’t be attending this year’s Oscars. The Academy has said it is reviewing its membership. Instagram
“He's often not taken seriously in Britain.”
America's CNN puts the Commons debate on Donald Trump into context
“To threaten women and say to them that 'Unless you are of X standard we will send you back, even if you have children in the UK who are British and your spouse is British’ is, for me, a very unusual way of empowering and emboldening women.”
Former Cabinet minister Baroness Warsi (above) on David Cameron’s “learn English” policy for some Muslim women
“Simply, if you're talented and you have potential, we want to hear from you.”
Neil Morrison, Penguin Random House UK group HR director, on the firm’s scrapping of a degree requirement
"The Britain I come from is the most successful, diverse, multicultural country on the earth. But you wouldn't know it if you turned on the TV.”
Idris Elba (above)who yesterday addressed MPs on the need to increase diversity on TV.
“Dominic Lawson, the 1950s called - they want their article back.”
One of the female medics who took to Twitter to criticise a Sunday Times article by Lawson on the “feminisation of medicine”. BuzzFeed
“Vegetarians, resistance is futile.”
How the Gourmet Burger Kitchen chose to advertise its wares, complete with a photo of a meat-filled bap. The ads were withdrawn after vegetarians protested.
MI5
The sister organisation of James Bond’s employer MI6 is the top employer of gay and transgender people in the UK, says campaigning group Stonewall.
“We like a dystopian future, don’t we mam?”
Gail to Audrey, pretending that they are off to the movies to see Mad Max: Fury Road. Coronation Street
Thank you for reading The Midge, your first bite of the day’s politics in Scotland and elsewhere. See you tomorrow.
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