Berlin’s Soviet war memorials are becoming the latest front in a political struggle to ‘de-Sovietise’ German history. NICO POPP reports
UNUSUALLY for me, unusually for almost anyone really, but when the party political broadcast came on I didn’t immediately change channels. Instead I watched the SNP’s pitch. It was, I have to say, highly informative, but not perhaps in the way its producers intended.
A man walks through a rural landscape intoning a long list of Tory failings and misdeeds, almost all of which are well known to everyone who hasn’t been in a coma. The bearded protagonist points to an elderly woman, Betty, further up the hill he is climbing.
She, a trifle incongruously, is sitting in an armchair knitting. A waxwork with a blue rosette is brought into frame. Betty attempts and fails to throw the waxwork. Cut to “Vote SNP.” Remaining viewers are then told that was a party election broadcast for the Scottish council elections on May 5.
The new Scottish Parliament looks set to continue a cycle of managerial tinkering while public services face the axe, writes STEPHEN LOW
Years of underfunding are eroding Scotland’s local services and deepening inequality in communities, says VINCE MILLS
The election offers a critical chance to shape the future of pay, care and community provision in Wales, says Unison’s JESS TURNER
It is time to stop tolerating the governing elites incompetence which makes our lives a daily misery, argues MATT KERR



