[Tubby Isaacs]

Paywalled, so I can't tell how much substance there is to this story. I don't have a high opinion of Alba- a row might not be unwelcome to them, perhaps this has come from them.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is about as impressive as 60% of Socialist Worker readers backing a general strike.

[Abernathy]

She’s Alba Party Leader now ? She only flounced out the SNP about a month ago.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Salmond is leader, she's Holyrood leader (where there are only 3, and she's highest profile).

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where do you start with this stuff?

Commenting ALBA Party Westminster leader Neale Hanvey MP said:

“Pensions are a favourite scare story of the unionists. Some of them even claim that the UK would not honour the contributions made by Scottish pensioners if we became independent. But the reality is that pensions are not funded by historic contributions but from current revenue and thus it is the Scottish Government which can and would guarantee the payment benefits.

It's been the loonier Nationalist fringe who've talked about rUK paying pensions post independence!

The only real question about pensions in an independent Scotland is how quickly a Scottish Government would be able to correct course and increase them to bring them into line with the rest of Europe and the developed world from the current miserable UK levels.

By made up numbers apparently,.

Of course in an independent Scotland we wouldn’t be paying towards the £200 Billion-and-rising price tag of renewing Trident Nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Note they don't tell you how much Scotland pays towards this. Plus the stuff about European pensions is debunked rubbish,

[Youngian]

If you want Euro level pensions you may need an ECB backed currency and some austere budgets for a few years. Good luck to whoever floats that one but it is at least coherent and doable.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The comparisons with some European countries are misleading, and Alba know it. The countries with the high sounding pensions are generally those where the state, rather than employers, do the second pensions (where you pay in extra). When you add employer pensions to the UK figures, we come lower-middle on pensioner incomes. And, despite what you might expect from this, poorer pensions do relatively well in the UK, through pensioner benefits (when they're known about and claimed).

The UK could do better but hard to see how iScotland (minus the Barnett Formula) can.

[Abernathy]

How is the name of Salmond's party pronounced?

In the past couple of days, I have heard a couple of presenters talk about the "Aliba" party. I thought surely that's wrong?

But then I heard Eck himself on Kuenssberg this morning also pronouncing it "Aliba".

Is it "Alba" or feckin'"Ali Baba" ?????

[Killer Whale]

Isn't it just a deliberately-sounded consonant (similar to pronouncing what sounds like fillum for film)?

[Abernathy]

Well, it's a vowel, not a consonant, either an inserted "i" or an "a" . I don't get why suddenly it doesn't seem to be getting pronounced just as it's written.

[Crabcakes]

Just substitute the name we all used to describe the woefully poor and mercifully now defunct Alba brand of consumer electronics, as peddled by that bastion of 90s quality D-D-D-D-Dixons, instead: fucking shite.

[Killer Whale]

Well, it's a vowel, not a consonant, either an inserted "i" or an "a" . I don't get why suddenly it doesn't seem to be getting pronounced just as it's written.

Not really. It's a consonant that is pronounced fully, to the extent that it creates what sounds like a vowel following it. English tends to get really lazy with some consonants (l often sounds like 'hw', r goes missing at the end of words, t turns into a glottal stop), but Alba is not an English word, so some people have maybe pretentiously, maybe out of respect, decided to try and replicate its pronunciation in its original language.

[Abernathy]

I’m confused now. Which consonant is it that’s being pronounced fully? “B” ? Because “B” is, it seems to me, being pronounced fully in the ordinary pronunciation of the word “Alba”.

[Killer Whale]

L.
Sorry, I thought my comparison with 'fillum' made that clear.

[Abernathy]

Well no. “fillum” has an inserted letter “U”, as well as an inserted extra “L”. The “Alba” pronunciation confusing me sounds as if it has an inserted “I” or “A”. Especially since I’ve only just heard it being pronounced that way, having heard it previously being pronounced as you’d expect. Not getting the full consonant pronunciation thing, I’m afraid.

[Youngian]

Rhymes with calibre (I think).

[Abernathy]

Nah.

[kreuzberger]

Come on, Salimond, stop being such a twat. I'm still voting Labiour.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I'm vototing Lalibaorre.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ash Regan voted no confidence on the Scottish Government.

Lots of "Labour's stunt failed" BTL on the Guardian, but it may have caused a problem for Alba here. Are they trying to outdo the Greens (who voted confidence but pissed all over Humza)?