welcome to the programme. we start this hour with the latest on the uk general election. the leader of the scottish national party, john swinney, has launched his party s campaign ahead of the vote onjuly the 4th. at an election rally in glasgow, mr swinney pushed for independence, celebrated his party s record on fighting the cost of living as well as attacking both the conservatives and labour. he said people in scotland wanted rid of a disastrous tory government, and he accused labour of giving an awfully good impression of them. let s take a listen to some of what the snp leader said. look, there are some people telling me to forget about independence at this election. but you know what? after looking at sir keir starmer s serial u turns in the pursuit of power, i think people are crying out for political leadership that sticks to its principles. applause ..for leaders who argue for what they believe in. and i passionately believe independence is the best opportunity
and i sat in the back, working out the swings with a calculator and a pad of paper, which i then passed him a piece of paper so that he could sound terribly informed about the swings in each constituency. i also spent a bit of time clock watching output, both the bbc and itv and others, for a private company that was just assessing whether or not they were meeting the election guidelines and giving all the parties a fair crack at the whip. which is why you ve always been so intrinsically fair at election time. it s hard wired into you! but i know that this is probably the first. well, i know for a fact this is the first ever uk general election where the party leaders have had to comment on the fact that a former us president has just been found guilty of a felony. yeah. cos it s never happened before. it is just sort of. when you say it like that, itjust. itjust takes your breath away. and, yes, they ve all had to comment. right, and we will discuss what they ve been saying,
about a developing story today. it s against the rules for taxpayers cash to be used in campaigning, but there have been allegations over the last week that snp staffers have been using postage stamps paid for with public money for campaign purposes. and the mail on sunday has a story today, that someone in your office was involved in discussions about the use of stamps allegedly paid for by the public purse. what do you say to that? well, i ve obviously discussed this with my staff and i have been assured that no parliamentary stamps that have been provided by parliament have been used to support election purposes and obviously the parliament has said they are looking into this matter and obviously will provide parliament with any assistance that they require as they undertake those inquiries was white one one whatsapp message reported this morning sent to an snp group chat, your assistant wrote, the stamp fairy is very useful when it comes to campaigns. who is the stamp fa
we actually had surprised him out of the mediaeval history section, but we are lucky he is here now. the funny thing is, we have been sat in front of the computing section, so i don t know how good yourjavascript per programming is. we will catch up with one newsnight is doing on what is happening in the general election campaign today. newscast from the bbc. hello, it s adam in birmingham. hello it s victoria in birmingham. and it s nick in birmingham. this is where you started out as a journalist. i love birmingham, i worked here in my firstjob as a report on radio, commercial radio, as you know, had no staff, i was the only reporter and comparative bbc local radio, there loads of reporters, so we were so hungry. i had sharp elbows, that s where i developed my sharp elbows. what was your favourite story from that period? it was all quite serious stuff, it was the tail end, this is showing my age, the west midlands serious crime squad and the corruption involved in that birm