Bad wolf baying
The Christmas truce on social media ended unusually early this year as Magnus Gardham, the political editor of the Herald, filed a column which had all the hallmarks of a man who’d overdone the sprouts and redirected the usual outcome of such an error out of his mouth rather than the other end of his digestive tract.
Backed up with a series of borderline-trolling tweets from his Herald colleague David Leask (who ambitiously referred to Gardham as a “genius”), the piece triggered a mild stushie on Twitter which we fully expect to see written up in tomorrow’s papers as “VILE CYBERNATS IN ABUSE STORM”, because it’s Christmas and you’ve got to fill pages with something.
The article is a dull and rather vague whine about how people don’t take hostile stories about the SNP in newspapers seriously any more. It starts with hundreds of words making an unquantifiable assertion that “Mr Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon devote far more time and energy to discussing Labour and the Conservatives than ever was the case when different boots were on different feet”.
It’s more than halfway through by the time it gets to the paragraph pictured above, and Gardham then chooses a particularly unwise example to illustrate what we must force ourselves to unwarrantedly dignify as his “point”:
Firstly, it’s perhaps worth noting in passing that regular maintenance DID stop the bridge breaking. Routine checks uncovered a small crack, which has been patched up pending full repair. The bridge did not “break”, nor was it ever in danger of doing so.
But Gardham mistakes foresight for ridicule. Social media users PREDICTED that the story would quickly be used to attack the SNP, and they were exactly correct.
We’re not going to spend any more time going over how wildly misplaced and outright false most of the press attacks on the Nats over the bridge closure were, as we’ve covered the subject in detail. But Gardham’s pique at people daring to accurately anticipate and appropriately mock the media’s coverage is revealing.
Before the referendum, Scotland’s media essentially answered to nobody. Journalists were – and are – professionally scrutinised by no-one, yet in addition to the platform of their own newspapers are given free rein as commentators and pundits on air, never to be challenged or questioned. (Simon Johnson of the Telegraph, for example, at no point had to explain his actions over “Memogate” in public.)
Since the rise of the new media, many have reacted with fury and indignation to being held to account in the way they conduct themselves. As sites like Wings and others reveal mistruths and distortions day after day, hacks lash out with a level of venom that appears in inverse proportion to their papers’ plummetting sales figures.
The half of the Scottish population that’s almost totally unrepresented on newsagents’ shelves (except when it’s being insulted as a bunch of unthinking brainwashed cultist drones, of course) simply doesn’t listen to the likes of Magnus Gardham any more. He and his ilk, ironically, have infantilised journalism by reducing it to gossip and smears and hysterical hyperbole about things people say on Twitter.
So often have the press cried “Wolf!” over stories which crumbled to nothing under the slightest examination (for examples, stick a pin in just about any page of this site’s “media” category over the last four years) that millions of Scots now react to their latest screaming banner headlines with a mixture of contempt, amusement and pity.
The more Gardham and his colleagues circle the wagons and bay their rage at the ungrateful public, the less credible they become. If they want their “scrutiny” of the Scottish Government to be respected, readers may feel they perhaps ought to give some consideration to greatly increasing the quality of it. Because at the moment, it’s being treated with the exact amount of dignity that it deserves.
It’s always being a truism that there are none more over-sensitive to criticism than journalists.
Some holiday you’re having fella! You’re playing a blinder.
Yet another nippy ring piece speaker.His waste expulsion pipe is in overdrive
As its Media Assault crumbles, London will become desperate and turn to deeds of violence….Scotland will have its 9/11.
Pooped into local shop for newspaper today. No National. Got a packet of crisps.
Tam Jardine summed up Gardham brilliantly under the previous article, ‘Tidings of Comfort and Joy’:
The guy is a complete fucking joke- he’s as partisan as a football mascot picking a fight with opposition supporters- the difference is that instead of wearing a man-size bear costume he is wearing the ill-fitting guise of a professional journalist.
Reminiscent of a ‘crunching tackle’ in the football vernacular of the old days.
Oooft !!
@CmonIndy
Ooh err – Do hope you cleaned up afterwards 🙂
@Cmonindy at 6:29 pm
“Pooped into local shop for newspaper today. No National.”
‘Vile Cybernat in dirty protest’ screams Unionist press… 😉
Yep, we’re going through the stages of grief:
In no particular order, Denial; anger; depression; bargaining and acceptance.
Sound familiar? I would also add humour directed at those same “churnalists” and boy, doesn’t it get right up their nose…
Hope everyone has had a quiet paper-free Christmas! 😀
Hey CmonIndy: It’s one thing just buying a packet of crisps, but d’ye no think hae’in shite in the shop’s takin yer protest a wee bit far??
Yes Rev,you have said something that really rings true.
Today journalists who used to help form public opinion are now having a real battle maintaining that role.
They are being questioned and held to account for everything they write, and they do not like it.
How dare the public question what I have created from my own thoughts. You can almost feel the panic. The more we question ,the more vitriolic they become.
They forget one thing. Most associate this questioning with the SNP,but in reality it goes beyond that now. It is about people no longer being prepared to accept “their” version of the truth about anything.We make up our own mind now after weighing up the evidence.
They have corrupted the role of the journalist for their own corporate ends,and expect us to accept it blindly. Well we did for a long time.No longer
They are the ones who are now fighting to survive in my world.
It seems like there is an anti-SNP story on one of the newspapers pretty much every day. Just par for the course. No wonder it washes over people at this point.
Most folks understand the ‘Scottish’ papers either have rich Tory owners, or are just branches of English papers.
The Forth road bridge attacks came across like sheer desperation.. avoiding the big elephant in the room. That we are getting a brand new bridge because of the SNP.
@CmonIndy
I hope your local shop isn’t my local shop 😉
Elderly relative complaining that hootsman up to £1.95 and Edinburgh Evening News now 75p. How long can they last,particularly Scotsman, when they insult the intelligence of readers..well those who are neutral or back indy.
Isn’t an SNPBaaad article decrying SNPBaaad somewhat tautological?
Some of the comments in the weegeeherald a dead pure brilliant – some are better prose than the weegeeherald article referred to. Which sort of makes the point about new media.
Cheers again.
PS I see I just missed being the 500,000th comment earlier.
Well, we’ve learned the hard way that the press have zero responsibility to be ‘fair and balanced’ in their reporting.
A couple of years ago, these self-same ‘journalists’ would have argued that they’re only ‘reporting the facts’. That time has now passed. As with all things, the dead tree media will slowly sink under the weight of its own dogged stupidity. They flog away at the SNP with whatever whip comes to hand little realising that rather than flogging a dead horse, they’re spurring it on to bigger and better electoral outcomes.
I know, mixing my metaphors, etc. I’m not a ‘professional’ though so I’m sure I’ll get away with it.
‘Every time a Yoon churnalist splutters in rage, the Rev debunks them in Wings’. (thanks ZuZu)
i have said it many times……people only get the respect they earn.
I do not pander to our unelected lords and ladies…….I will call anyone I meet sir until I am invited to use their name or they prove it is deserved.
I can think of precious few who deserve my respect and even fewer of these work in the media.
As you say the more they circle the wagons the more entrenched and ridiculous they become.
They have forgotten that the circle is a defensive formation.
To win respect you have to attack. Therein lies the problem……,how do you attack yourself ??????
Star Wars 10 – ‘the rise of the new media’
I like the sound of it. What is still dragging out its last breath of the old one is an increasingly broad laughing stock.
“the dignity it deserves” sorry not quite accurate would be much more appropriate as the “disdain it deserves”
@cmonIndy, that wiz a typo, right? You surely didnae poop in the shoap. Jeez oh, LOL.
It’s nice to know that we are getting under the skin of these pish peddlers. It seems the more desperate that they get, the more we laugh and poke fun at them, the louder they holler and scream at us.
Well tough titty boys, as ye sow, so shall ye reap. Suck it up. Gardham was the main reason that I gave up the Herald a couple of years ago. The corpmedia would seem to be incapable of learning. Hell mend them. The sooner they disappear doon the stank the better.
Social media has at last started to play apart, watch what you say and make sure you can backup the statement. ….
SC-ottish U-nionist M-edia
The ‘SNP Bad’Bad article is funny. The headline in the paper is.
‘Turning the tables on critics can bite back’
I wonder why The Herald have a different headline on all their online stories! It’s exactly the same story.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
“But it’s no’ right that lot sayin’ SNP bad, ’cause, ehh, ’cause it’s just no'”
Gardham, you’re pathetic! Man-up you sniveling wimp. Is that all you and your ‘friends’ in the virulently anti-Scottish – yes, that’s right, anti-Scottish – and now utterly discredited Scottish press have got remaining in your armoury of lies and faux outrage to stop the people of Scotland from:
a) overwhelmingly voting for the SNP in May 2016’s election; b) handing Unionists their arses (especially Labour) in the council elections of 2017; c) calling for the Scottish government to hold another Scottish independence referendum by demand of its citizens; and d) voting Yes to independence in that referendum…?
Then your tea’s oot, as they say… you know, in Scotland.
You and the rest of the so-called journalists in the now-non-influential UKOK Scottish ‘media’ can continue with your childish and spiteful word-vomiting. But here this, Gardham, nobody, outwith the hardcore Unionist loyalists, gives a fuck what you’ve got to say anymore.
Go get your name on at the bru now. Might save you some time later, you know, when you get paid-off when your rag goes bust – which it will. And that after all you’ve done for the Great British State ‘n’ all. Tough, eh…
It would seem MSM are moving through the stages of grief about their demise. They are currently in denial. one would think with social media enhancing our ability to call them out they would up their game.
After more than 30 years I cancelled my Herald subscription last week and read my last copy today.
I was disappointed they didn’t ask me why I cancelled. The answer would have been: with the passing of Ian Bell there was nothing worth reading.
Haven’t read Gardham or Torrance for years.
2016.
The year SNP go from being bad —
to being BADASS!
I’ve had an article in my “favourites” for a few days that I found recently. Written by one Andrew HN Gray to UK Parliament. Never in my life have I been so ashamed of one of my compatriots. How do I get it onto “Wings” for everyone to read and feel the same revulsion for this Man as I do.
Spot on again thanks Stuart. Thanks WoS…
QUOTE FROM W.O.S.
The article is a dull and rather vague whine about how people don’t take hostile stories about the SNP in newspapers seriously any more.
Magnus Gardham please take note: The WoS website and Stuart Campbell have summed up your diatribe in 24 words. Now THAT is what I call genius. Maybe Mr Gardham doesn’t get irony.
Well at least Magnus will get the going rate of £420 from the Herald for his piece of stocking filler.
By the way, Magnus, I used to buy the Herald for years, and the Glasgow Herald before your bosses got delusions of grandeur.
After it became clear that Unionist press is full of bias garbase, I go to a fact driven website.
Now I get my news from Wings Over Scotland 🙂
Go figure.
Hope everyone had a god one.
As I have said before, this site basically correctly predicts what garbage the unionist media and “news???” papers will run with.
It will soon be 2016 and the shit has still to hit the fan with them.
Expect Armageddon soon, only we will be ready, and then they can all officially disappear us their own backsides.
Laugh? I nearly Shat.
“How do I get it onto “Wings” for everyone to read and feel the same revulsion for this Man as I do.”
Copy the address with Ctrl-C and post it into a comment with Ctrl-V.
Ta Rev – will try!
link to publications.parliament.uk
“hacks lash out with a level of venom that appears in inverse proportion to their papers’ plummetting sales figures.”
Hammer, to nail head.
OOps God is good.
Santa forgot some new specs.
Whoever it was that came up with the SNP-BAD meme deserves huge credit. Was it someone here? It says in Gardham’s wail that it came from social media. Anyone any ideas?
Whoever and whatever, it’s so simple – yet so devastatingly effective, like all successful slogans are. Remember, companies can pay advertisers millions to produce effective slogans for their product(s). The short and sweet-er the better. And there’s nothing more short and sweet than ‘SNP-BAD’!
And you know what? The Unionists hate it with a passion! That’s how good it is. That the likes of Gardham has to rail against it – “It’s not a good thing.” Awwww, diddums! – shows that it pisses the Unionist right off and they can do bugger-all to counter it or even put a stop to it. Now that *is* a good thing!
Its one of those circular group wank things where the acme of a churnalists ambition is to get on What the Papers Say so they write the sort of stuff that the Beeb wants to broadcast to keep the colonials in their place which confirms them in their rightness in writing what they do because its reflected in what they get from the telly.
Sentence break 😀
Is Herald group owner Newsquest still in serious deficit on staff pensions? I think the poor folk should be told.
Contrary to Newsquest’s guarantee, the paper’s standards still fall, and budgets still get cut.
And finally, Newsquest bought the Herald thinking it was a local title, their preferred purchase.
Oh, the irony.
Similar article by the wee ginger dug.
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
So, what would Magnus Gardham suggest would be a more appropriate reply to a load of unsubstantiated drivel passed off as criticism?
“SNP Bad!” seems perfectly appropriate to me.
How can you engage in debate when the other side refuses to present any fact based arguments?
Gossip, hearsay, opinion, or just made up lies – most Scots now see them for what they are. Certainly not worthy of reasoned challenge!
It’s all part of the same logic which blames the SNP for the incompetency of the so called opposition!
It’s been an extraordinary journey. I used to read the Times and the Guardian regularly, ten years ago even picked up the Scotsman, looked at the Herald on line.
When the BBC was under attack from Murdoch and Cameron I was greatly concerned about its future. Defended it in any discussion.
All of them have fallen away. My support has gone along with my support for the Labour party.
Three years and it is gone. I’m not waiting to be reassured by them or returned to the fold, it’s gone.
They could have played a positive part in Scotland’s history and in it’s relationship with rUK but missed that chance completely.
Truly extraordinary.
Bill McLean: You should put a warning with that link!
Somethink like ‘Reading this could spoil your Christmas buzz!’
I’m saving it for a rainy Monday when I’m in a very bad mood!
Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
Copy the address with Ctrl-C and post it into a comment with Ctrl-V.
Only on Windoze!
Less of the Sprouts Baaad they don’t deliberately lie like the majority of unionist journos.
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
wgd putting the boot in, ho ho ho
The SNP is bad. It’s very bad, terribly bad, badly bad. Scarcely a day goes by without the Unionist media telling Scotland just how badly bad bad the bad SNP is. Everything about them is bad, everything the Scottish government does is bad. Scotland is full of stupid cultists who insist on supporting the SNP out of badness, because they’re bad, and stupid, and culty. And it’s all the fault of the SNP for being bad, and controlling the populace with bad mind control rays and neurolinguistic programming that penetrates the thickest tin foil hat fashioned from a handy cut out and keep guide in a Jenny Hjul column in the Scotsman.
brill
Hadn’t realised how far the presence of Scottish print media had faded. ‘Magnus Gardham’? Who he, I thought. So glad Wings told me who he is and who he writes for.
Was a time I knew the names of all the Scottish editors, columnists and so on. Not any more.
The now ironically named Scotsman will disappear first and suddenly. It has to be already haemoraging money – and the owners will only prop it up while it has influence to trade for its losses. That day has to have passed some time ago.
Herald still seems to have support, but its distant owners will only be interested in the bottom line, which is headed inexorably downward, hastened by vacuous tosh like the article pilloried by Wings.
I’ve moved on from watching for ‘SNP Baaad’and I’m now looking out for ‘Scotland Baad’ stories. There is one in The Herald today with the headline
Top Scots publisher: “Scottish fiction can be really boring.”
The print and broadcast media, like the Labour Party, have abandoned the majority of Scots, not the other way round,
@Bill McLean at 7:27 pm
The SNP-BAD is strong in this one – very strong! The ‘Alex Salmond accused’ meme is also particularly overwhelming!
Yer man there is a ranting racist, rather typical of a number of the Unionist creed.
It was compiled over four years ago, November 2011, but no doubt Mr. Gray is as charming and equitable now as he was then…! And probably still a proudScotbut too, to boot!
Looked up Andrew H N Gray on Wikipedia–turns out he’s a LORD with title going back hundreds of years.
‘Nuff said.
I’ve mentioned this before, and the question is, why, when their sales, ratings are falling, and have been for some time, do they persist with their disasterous strategy?
Obviously they are supporting, and being supported by, the Westminster establishment, and will never change tack, even after we gain our independence.
In any other business, the bosses would be demanding answers and people would be sacked, but not here. Why?
All they are doing with their lies and half truths is driving even more people, albeit slowly, towards the realisation that we would be better off running all of our own affairs, and not leaving it to a Government in another country that very few of us voted for, and will never forgive for the industrial devastation visited on our country, not to mention the communities ruined by their policies. And it continues to this day, with Scotland suffering disproportionally, compared with the rest of the U.K.
These so-called journalists, along with their fellow travellers in the establishment, are intent on keeping the Scottish people in the dark, as they have been for centuries, but with todays alternative media, the mist is being removed from peoples eyes, and the truth is being told, much to their chagrin. Due to websites such as this, they are being exposed for what they are, lying cheats, who, by taking the establishment’s shilling, are prepared to sell their own people down the river. Well, as has been pointed out, very few now believe what they say, or write, and as time goes on, it will even fewer. I can’t wait for the day they disappear down the plughole of history.
Leask, who has blocked and unblocked me a few times- which I now realise was because I had the temerity to quote WoS at him – is claiming on twitter that the ‘newspapers’are doing very well and readership is up??
Curious to know if that is true, he is talking about on-line access.
Also I have just been blocked by IMcWhirter. the only reason I can think of is that I was being mildly critical about one of his articles – talk about senstitive
British fourth estate wot won the referendum but it has failed, failed to defeat Scottish democracy, SNP, failed to keep British control of Scotland, maybe, come back in a decade or less.
Decade old good read here from Jürgen Krönig is the UK editor of Die Zeit and if our evolving Scottish democracy has proved anything, its that conventional wisdom UKOK BBC/msm wise, has gone tits up.
link to archive.is
Media language has changed, too. What we are observing is an adjectival degradation. Every report, coming from inside governments or institutions outside is, if it contains some form of criticism, therefore “damning”, “devastating” or “scathing”. Warnings, which most of the time were not heeded anyhow, are “stark”, differences of opinion between politicians of the same party are “dramatic splits”, developments are “alarming” – the consumer of the media is confronted with a permanent linguistic overkill.”
SNP bad, vote SLabour, UKOK, for next 5 months, in their Scotland region, writes itself:D
I think the desperate unionist hacks have finally arrived at their “help me Rona” phase. They have nothing left to persuade people, apart from “SNP bad” and lo and behold, it just ain’t working. The harder they try, the more ridiculous they become in the eyes of the public. The unionist press corps has been writhing in frustration and agony since 2007. It’s about time we put them out of their misery. My heart bleeds. 🙂
Of course pooped in was a typo. It should have read barfed in. Damned autocorrect.
By the way, I am getting a kidney from my SNP wife on 5th January. Can I claim to be the first 3-kidneyed SNP Cybernat on the planet?
Merry Christmas wings and readers. Peace and goodwill time of year. Not feeling it for the UK media employees, nor any employees of the main Unionist parties, but I’ll try not to nurture my contempt during this festive period. Ooops, I shouldn’t have accessed the internet.
The only thing that surprises me about the Brit Nat Press and Media is that they haven’t blamed us for the floods in the North of England and the latest Oz bush fires – YET?
Enjoying David Leask getting Magnus’ back on twitter. I dig two colleagues sticking up for each other… it is pretty much what one would expect.
Couple of tweets caught my eye… “Magnus is an analyst & reporter, not a partisan columnist”
“Magnus says (sic) way more sides to politics stories than I could even imagine exist.”
So in the opinion of Mr Leask Magnus Gardham is an impartial analyst… a journalist of solid standing with a Sherlock like insight into the world of politics. Ok. Got it. Have I been dropping acid or something?
These guys are so funny- they are so precious about being serious journalists, to be taken seriously- like they are Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward breaking Watergate wide open! No wait- thats Paul Hutcheon… taking down a security guard from Hope over Fear because there wisnae a green room for journalists!!!
The other thing I think is dead funny is the endless use of the term ‘ad hominem’ by these journalists who spent an entire referendum and since playing the man instead of the ball. I think they use it because its latin so sounds fancy… what absolute pish.
@ Bill McLean.
Thanks for the link above. I flicked through some of the other writers and there are some real stotters in there. Including this twist on the one we know and love just so much :
“I am a proud Scott, but … ”
Aye, that’d be Walter or yon other one, D’Antarctic was it?
My favourite though was Prof Anthony Trewevas having a good wail at evil Eck’s energy policy, why won’t Eck put loverly nuclear plants and the likes. The poor soul (He’s Chair of the advisory panel of the “Scottish Scientific Alliance” no less and don’t you know by now), and was no wiser even back then that energy policy is entirely and completely and utterly reserved to … Westminster. And that evil Eck got no say. Still, why spoil a good deluded rant, eh? The only one of his SCA favorites he didn’t get in there was an impassioned plea for WM to force GM foods on rebellious Scots (that’s what he used to be a Prof of – interfering with veggies’ reproductive bits).
Anyhow, it’s always a joy reading another of the Prof’s rants, even old ones, they’re all just …, so much the same and so completely wrong. Wunderbar! (That’s a bit like a colossal macaroon bar I’m told)
Who needs Guardham and Torrential anyway? As those questions / submissions to Westminster show (supposedly written evidence), if we want to read hilarious pish written by Scots (or anyone else), we sure as blazes don’t need to be paying the salaries of those hacks to do so.
Let’s wish them all a no-circulation-whatsoever new year!
I had to smile about these so-called journalists wailing about how SNP Bad is a nasty ad hom attack on them whilst they’re still calling those of us who believe in democracy for Scotland cybernats/wackos, etc. There’s nothing quite like epic, blind hypocrisy of that scale to make you laugh and then scroll by to something that’s actually worth paying attention to. Every time they open their mouths or use their keyboards they just make it more obvious that they are not to be taken remotely seriously about anything, let alone believed or respected. They’ve only themselves to blame for that!
Rust Never Sleeps immediately sprang to mind on reading Gardham’s whine. If he wants respect, he will have to earn it. Try journalism.
link to youtube.com
A lot of Yoonie commentators have been on the wrong level for years now.
The political environment in Scotland is certainly no longer centred on personalities. Though we have been blessed with intelligent and charismatic figures.
I would go further and say it’s not even party politics any more. We are now focused on a cause, a greater mission. Yes, the SNP are an inportant conduit for our energy, but I think they are a means to an end for many of us.
OK, so a lot of the Yoonie output is just pish, but IMO their complete failure to look beyond personalities and parties in part explains why the smearing and criticism (justified and fake) is having little effect on voting intention. People have greater things on their minds.
Lazy scoopers,finally hear the pennies dropping,sounds similar to a ticking clock.
You had one job,to inform us truthfully of the facts in an unbiased,balanced way…epic failures….and now we hear your bleating about being reasonable,we must have picked you up wrong etc. etc.
Too late,you disrespectful,insulting,patronising,arrogant,lying douchebags.
The world has moved on,you and your ilk have been exposed for what you are,at best incompetent at worst criminal.
You will not be missed,maybe remembered from time to time,the way one remembers a little stone in their shoe…..not fondly.
Tick Tock
In his excellent piece on SNP badly bad badness, Wee Ginger Dug talks about “peak SNPbad”. He says Gardham’s article has reached it.
I agree that it probably has… for now.
With May, 2016 in their sights, the Unionist troll-press is almost guaranteed to climb higher up the peak of SNPbad-ness. Actually, I’d say it’s a certainty!
There will be, without doubt, regular discussions here and on social media about whether the latest SNPbad Unionist troll-press rant has, indeed, reached peak SNPbad. It should be fun!
Like Match of the Day, there could be peak SNPbad of the month, January to May, culminating in a peak SNPbad of the season. Bring it on!
Such a pity there isn’t Upvote & Downvote options on the Comments here … so many people expressing how I feel …. Personally, I think Gardham & Leask are panicking, as most the British MSM & NO voters are, that the more they attack the Scottish Government & ridicule Scotland’s ability to take its place in the Union of Nations ie the UN, the higher the support for the SNP rises. Thank whoever your God is that they haven’t spotted the connection. I hope they keep it up!
@mogabee says: 26 December, 2015 at 6:39 pm:
” … Hope everyone has had a quiet paper-free Christmas”
Yep! I’ve had going on 40.5 decades of them, give or take a buying the Herald for a spell. I didn’t leave them – they left me.
For those who may find visual metaphors useful in converting wobbly BTUKOKers, this surely is one, although I can’t quite work out what the train/Finney could best represent:
Albert Finney in ‘The Dresser’ –
link to youtube.com
Perhaps the sheer volume and high standard of commentary from the unwashed public is what’s shocked them, they thought they were the only beings in Scotland who could, up till now, throw together a couple of paragraphs but whaddaya know half the population can
As long as there are writers and reporters of the calibre of the Rev and sites like Wings that allow and give us the confidence to vent, we, the common man, will not stop because we’re enjoying the whole experience of answering back, and the “Journalists” should be grateful instead of moaning about it
After all, given the level of lies and distortive bile these same “Journalists” have spewed out in the past, in some countries they wouldn’t still be alive instead of only being mocked for the fools they are
So “Journalists” in our new free country which is coming you will all be allowed to roam freely without let or hindrance, but the mocking laughter, we can do nothing about because it’ll be free for us too
Isn’t writing fun (Mon the writers)
I’m loving the evolution of a meme as I read the above comments and others over a little time.
SNP-BAD!, UKOK’s and Yoonist’s battle cry as they fought and won just over a year ago. What a victory!, they cried.
Pyrrhic. adj. 1885 (usually in phrase Pyrrhic victory), from Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who defeated Roman armies at Asculum, 280 B.C.E., but at such cost to his own troops that he was unable to follow up and attack Rome itself, and is said to have remarked, “one more such victory and we are lost.” n.
No strength left to take on Rome (of the North?), They now cry Foul!
As we shout SNP-BADASS!!!.
Now threshold bound its time to acknowledge Janus, forward looking – or backward, like Mr. Gardham and the other Hackbeens.
Happy Futures.
@carjamtic at 8:41 pm
“You will not be missed,maybe remembered from time to time,the way one remembers a little stone in their shoe…..not fondly.”
Laugh Out Loud!
“The half of the Scottish population that’s almost totally unrepresented on newsagents’ shelves (except when it’s being insulted as a bunch of unthinking brainwashed cultist drones, of course) simply doesn’t listen to the likes of Magnus Gardham any more”
I can’t recall many of them listening to him beforehand either to be honest.
Final Sunday Herald front page for 2015:
link to twitter.com
Good article and sums up very well the sad state of Scottish old media.
They have alientated me and i dont buy their papers or watch their news anymore. Looks like 50% odd of Scots feeling the same way.
Now whatever side you are on that is not healthy.
I hear wagons being circled.
Boo hoo. I’m telling lies and it has no power. Someone please listen.
Times up. Now go away Gardham. Nobody takes you seriously anymore.
SNPgood!
A handful of giant British corporations own most of the TV and news outlets in Britain.
Just three companies account for 71% of the national newspaper market. When online readers are included just five companies garner 80% of the market share. And in local news,four massive conglomerates control 80% of titles!
In TV, SKY -effectively run at the behest of Murdoch’s 21st century Fox empire- is by far the UK’s biggest broadcaster. Channel 5 is already owned by US giant Liberty Media and Channel 4 looks set to be sold off to the biggest bidder.
Granted the BBC staggers on. But its’ budget has been savagely cut courtesy of the last two licence fee deals and its’ political independence -however limited previously- has been further undermined by the London Government.
@Onwards says: 26 December, 2015 at 6:47 pm:
” … The Forth road bridge attacks came across like sheer desperation.. avoiding the big elephant in the room. That we are getting a brand new bridge because of the SNP.”
Then there was the even bigger, but almost invisible, elephant.
“FETA”, (The Forth Estuary Transport Authority), was formed in 2001, it replaced and had a wider remit than, “The Forth Road Bridge Joint Board”, that it replaced. It was enabled to fund road and public transport improvements to crossing the Firth of Forth. Its new powers allowed it to include routes other than the Forth Road Bridge. These included such things as using hovercraft services between Fife and Lothians.
The Forth Road Bridge itself underwent a full structural survey between 2003 and 2005 following discoveries of similar designed suspension bridges of about the same age in the United States were discovered to be suffering corrosion in their main suspension cables. The full survey found significant degrees of corrosion and thus a loss in strength, ( Between 8 and 10% in the cables).
The rate of corrosion and subsequent weakening of the main cables meant the bridge would need to close for HGV traffic around 2014 and close to all traffic by 2019. Plans were made to build a new crossing parallel with the existing road bridge. Dehumidification equipment was also installed to minimise moisture inside of the main suspension cables. This was an attempt to slow or even halt corrosion. This had no guaranteed success and thus FETA and The Scottish Government had no other option but to authorise construction of a new Forth crossing.
However, The Scottish Government awarded the management, maintenance and operation of the bridge to Amey on the 18th December 2014. Amey will operate this Contact as the Forth Bridges Unit and from June 1st 2015, the Forth Bridges Unit has had responsibility for the maintenance of the Forth Road Bridge and the Queensferry Crossing (from Dec 2016) and that includes the northern and southern approach roads (M9 Junction 3, Halbeath to Junction 1A, Kirkliston).
So there you go. The troubles with the bridge were the responsibility of, “The Forth Road Bridge Joint Board”.
The Forth Road Bridge Joint Board oversaw construction which began in September 1958. Freeman Fox & Partners and Messrs Mott, Hay & Anderson oversaw the design and supervised construction, which was carried out by Britain’s three largest construction engineering firms – Sir William Arrol & Company, The Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company and Dorman Long (Bridge & Engineering) Ltd – joining forces to create a consortium known as the ACD Bridge Company Ltd.
SNP doubleplusunbad!
My suggestion for the Herald would be to leave an empty column that would have been filled by Ian Bell. Having tripe from Kevin McKenna in his place is an insult. They haven’t got a single journalist who comes even close. Iain McWhirter used to produce some decent writing but he has declined post Indy and his articles never did have a cutting edge but it now seems to show up even more. I subscribe to the Herald online, but that will be going in the New Year. There’s no longer any point.
The bum must be shitting themselves, everything thing they do makes the independence movement stronger. All their lying is to no avail, everything they try just makes us stronger. The prospect of unemployment is looming, what can they do? Telling the truth, reporting the facts would not be acceptable to the unionist foreign owners. They must feel doomed. We are going to win, sooner than you think. Britexit is coming, the Tories will tear themselves apart, we need to be ready, independence is coming. We are going to have a great new year.
@ Dr Jim there the Churnalists going round n round n round because their wanderers chist wanderers Chuntering Churnalist Wunderers.
Let me get this right: the SNP has 100,000 members…. 1.6 million Scots voted for independence in September 2014… that was 45% of votes and the opinion polls suggest that the figure is now around 50%, meaning an increase of around 11% so say close on 1.8 million Scots want independence…
Now, it strikes me that 100,000 is a very small percentage of 1,800,000 people… so why does the Yoony press and BBC Vote Labour waste so much time on attacking the SNP?
Some free advice to David Cameron: you might want to look at the salaries you are paying to those who told you they know what to do to “save the union”.
45% – Sep 2014
48% – Dec 2014
50% – Dec 2015
Let’s keep going exactly as we are, folks! And thanks to everyone at Pathetic Quay and all of Scotland’s Chumpions for all you have done for the independence movement. We really will have to put up a statue to Jackie Bird come indy…
We are being pounded left right and centre by these (insert word), so sorry Rev for total O/T. If i may add a bit of frivolity in this festive season?
Hector fae Aiberdeen makes a call.
link to youtube.com
Outstanding. I was a long time Labour voter. Not now. An opposition is required. SNP BAD IN A CULT LIKE ROBOTIC WAY IS NOT OPPOSITION.
Busy gulping down painkillers, awaiting punishment.
I’m amazed at the stupidity of continually ramping up the negative stories until it reached the stage of being comical. Efforts that went so over the top they demanded ridicule. They continued even when the general public began to predict the next day’s headlines.
SNPBad was created by Gardham & Co. It is the child of bigoted hacks posing as journalists. A pathetic group who rush to support and defend each other against the mocking tones of the public.
A strange logic now exists in the CorpMedia – The fault lies with us.
We therefore return to one of the great pillars of the unionist case – “We are too stupid”
This is probably massively off topic but…
Over the past year, I have seen many new posters on Wings’ BTL comments. It’s got to the stage where I now only dip into Facebook every couple of days, because 90% of my web time is spent catching up on Wings posts and BTL comments.
Which brings me to…
Quite a number of us have met ‘face-to-face’ at the various Wings get-togethers that have taken place since April 2014 and the rallies for whatever cause at George Square, Hollyrood and Pacific Quay. There have been at least half a dozen Wings get-togethers in Glasgow, a couple in Edinburgh, at least 4 in Dundee/Invergowrie, and the Helensburgh party.
The next get-together will be in Aberdeen on 30th January, the first north of Dundee. If you can make it, why not come along for a night of revelry and chat, with like-minded individuals?
Check out ‘off-topic’ for updates.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Magnus Gardham, David Leask and David Torrance. A hat trick of own goals.
Yes, they seem to be engaging in introspection of the most psychologically inept fashion you’d see outside of an existential denialist conference around an ice-cream van that’s run out of nougat wafers.
They correctly identify a problem, or some fault in modern day journalism and blame it on other people. Santa did bring them a mirror but they just stare at it and say “mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all” rather than seeing their own distorted reflection. They fail to realise it’s a mirror from the hall of mirrors which was rejected as being faulty.
I have absolutely no idea what that all means, I’m thinking of applying to the Herald for a job as a columnist and getting some practice in waffling pretentious 180 degree out of phase self-serving garbage.
Naw indyref2, no way even you would lower yourself
Please turn your hymn books to Salmond (Psalm) 56
Hark at the Herald Anglofiles sing
Gory tales to our bridge’s swing
Misplaced dearth and lies compiled
SNP and Scots to be reviled
Doleful, at this nations rise
Redundant Media forging Lies
While the anglo hosts proclaim:
Scottish revenues theirs to claim”
Hark! The heralds anglos attack
Axes and daggers in our back!
Gardham and his ilk remind me of when my two young sons (primary school age at the time) were out playing and having races with one another. The elder one was faster as might be expected.
Eventually, the wee one started to cry and bubbled, ”He’s cheating, he’s not letting me win.”
The Media are starting to hurt because the ‘SNP Baaad’ stuff just isn’t working any more, and when we throw it back in their faces they really have no answer but to complain that we are ‘cheating’ because we’re not letting them win.
They are losing and losing badly and are now in retreat which is a recognised military manoeuvre. Just because they’re running doesn’t mean we should stop shooting by any means. Keep it coming folks, keep it coming.
We criticise Magnus Gardham, David Leask, Clegg and David Torrance as editors and commentators but we may just have been overestimating their positions.
Part of the problem is that many previously long term Labour supporters know the way the media worked for Labour and how they got their stories.
As these supporters have moved over to the SNP or other parties they see the same tactics still in use but they are wise to them and yet the MSM haven’t moved on.
Leask et al thought twitter a useful tool to promote themselves and their work. instead it has drawn attention to how poor their work really is.
That they can win awards for writing the same bilious article for the past 3 years or establish a career based on FOI requests shows their limitations. They resort to using Yoon bloggers’ work but yet have the cheek to decry Wings.
They cannot win on social media and they are terrified.
Do these pishmeisters really think that after nearly 10,000 people have contributed over £200,000 to The Orkney Four crowdfunder that we are not a serious force to be reckoned with?
Ffs, what kind of slap in the face do they need to wake up and realise that lies dressed up as tripe will no longer feed the Nation?
Roll on May 2016, SNP/SNP
link to caltonjock.com
Alex Beveridge says:
26 December, 2015 at 8:02 pm
I’ve mentioned this before, and the question is, why, when their sales, ratings are falling, and have been for some time, do they persist with their disasterous strategy?
They are obviously an accepted loss leader for the super rich who
own the banks, corporations, and UK political leaders.
They have nothing to do with morals. truth, or justice, they exist only to mask reality from our ordinary hard working citizens.
You will see all of these Rags close down the day after independence as their reason d’etre is lost forever.
Gardham (and Leask) seem to think that skepticiscm about media coverage is a new thing, and it only seems to have crystallized in their minds around “SNPBAD”.
Anyone who’s ever tried to get the media to cover issues that don’t fit into their acceptable mindset and agendas is only too familiar with the media’s age-old failings. But now, thanks to social media, it’s harder to ignore – though not impossible, as Leask’s instablocking of anyone who crosses his imaginary Maginot line shows.
They’ve got it arse about face anyway. It’s the media that needs to improve its game – it’s needed to for many years, but more especially nowadays as cutbacks mean that newsrooms have fewer resources than they once did, 24-hour saturation “news” coverage on the airwaves means that unsubstantiated stories that don’t survive the next news cycle gain currency whatever their relationship to the truth, subediting has all but disappeared as a craft, and there are many more alternatives we can select from to assemble our preferred forms of news and information intake. How can the media improve if it just dismisses this implicit criticism as SNPBADBAD?
The other way they have it arse about face in the context of Scotland is that the country has a generally functional government (though obviously most of us would like to see the SNP do better in certain policy areas), what it lacks is a functional opposition.
How does consistently rewarding the likes of Dugdale and Baillie and the rest with free-pass coverage for their lame, transparently opportunist attacks, financially illiterate policy statements and the like do anything to foster a better and more constructive opposition?
That last point is what spurs the meme of SNPBAD, and these are some of the serious questions the likes of Gardham should be asking themselves, rather than lashing out at others who refuse to buy into their game.
This was a post from a forum after the SNP won in 2006 and Ian Gray got humped at the chance of FM along with his sojourn through the “Killing Fields of a Union Street Subway”
It’s posted in full , in 9 years he appears to have learned very little
SHOCK at the Daily Record today as self-proclaimed political editor Magnus Gardham was allegedly told to clear his desk!
The disgraced journalist, who works for the English based newspaper, was responsible for unintentionally playing a large part in the humiliating defeat of Labour in Scotland. This comes after he led a disastrous 4-year campaign of deceit making outrageous claims in a desperate bid to re-elect the party. The campaign ultimately failed as Scots refused to be scammed by the Labour supporting newspaper.
A spokesman for the London Labour party is believed to have said:
“We the Labour Party very graciously gave £1million to the Daily Record. We do not just hand out others people’s money like that for nothing you know; we expected them to tow the party line. Of course we told them it was for advertising revenue, but what did they expect us to say. After Magnus let us down so drastically were starting to think the fool may actually have believed it”.
He then went on to talk about Iain Gray, the Labour MSP, who had amusingly announced himself as ready to be Scotland’s next First Minister:
“We even allowed that Scottish chap, I think he may have been called Iain Gray, to tell Magnus what to write and run things up there. However, it seems he spent more time running away”.
“They both stupidly seem to have got wrapped up in their own perceived importance. Their priority was solely to get us back into power here in London; as everyone knows that’s where the real politics take place. Take it from me both of them are finished and Mr Gardham’s dream of becoming a Labour MP is now nothing more than a fantasy worthy of one of his reports”.
Mr Gardham was widely lampooned after he launched a prolonged “campaign of deception” in order to cheat hard working Scots into voting Labour. The scheming reporter would often use hearsay and half-truths in his articles to distort actual facts. A favourite trick was to simply ignore any story, which showed Labour in a bad light. After years of treating Scots with contempt his ranting reports became increasingly ludicrous, leading some online commentators to question Mr Gardham’s mental well-being.
A contact linked to the newspaper allegedly made the following comments:
“Here at the Daily Record we all loved Magnus, almost as much as we loved Iain Gray. There was even talk of putting his picture up in the staff canteen beside Tony Blair’s hand drawn portrait.”
“Around here he was a bit of a hero and his fanatical dedication was frightening yet reassuring to behold. Magnus would often let us know when Jesus had personally phoned him on behalf of the Labour Party.
But that’s not all as further comments appear to give an insight into the humiliated reporters out of control and increasingly manic mentality:
“Magnus would strut around here in his smoking jacket listening to You’re so Vain on his ruby encrusted iPod. He spent most of the day impressing the office junior with tales of how he alone controls the Scottish electorate. He was often heard loudly proclaiming he was the most powerful man in Scotland, and often, the Universe!”
Circulation figures for the Record have hit rock bottom and its arch rival the Sun now outsells it daily by tens of thousands. A reliable source claims fellow reporter Torcuil Crichton, who conspired along with Mr Gardham, allegedly wept and his lip visibly quivered under his moustache as he whimpered:
“Now we have lost Magnus and we don’t have Lord Iain of Sandwichshire to tell him what to write. They were our only hope of saving this paper and putting London back where it belongs, firmly in charge of Scotland”.
To work colleagues he was known as Magnum PI due to the “egotistic and cavalier” style he used to report Scottish politics. However, after the rumour of his departure, even his assistant is now calling him Magnus P45.
Mr Gardham was unavailable for comment and has apparently filled in an online application, for a part time post, as tea lady to Trade Union officials. Colleagues claim the discredited reporter was last seen in a tearful embrace with fellow collaborator Mr Crichton.
Hope posting it is not out of order?
Re Andrew H N Gray
He is such a regular SNP-bad correspondent to the Scotsman letters page that I think he must be related to the editor.
I met him once when I was delivering Yes campaign leaflets in his street in Morningside.
Having passed down one side I was returning on the other when a furious figure rushed out of his garden and demanded to know if I had delivered his leaflet. On admitting that I was the guilty party I was subjected to a tirade which basically consisted of “Alex Salmond is a liar and Nicola Sturgeon is his organ grinder’s monkey.”. Not what you expect in Morningside, where even the Unionists are generally polite and ready for a friendly discussion.
Fortunately that very day Denis Heally had admitted that successive governments had lied about oil reserves in Scottish waters, so I was able to trump his liar accusation, and he departed muttering.
I got the impression he was a bitter little man.
Where do they get their language from? Who taught them to write like this?
If ‘SNP Bad’ is ‘not good’, does that mean that ‘SNP Good’ would be ‘not bad’?
And does the phrase ‘different boots on different feet’ actually mean anything? It seems to make a comparison between two completely dissimilar realities, since neither the boots nor the feet are the same.
Is it possible to compare two things that have nothing whatever in common?
The normal phrase is ‘when the boot was on the other foot’. Since the boot is the same, the comparison holds (even if the feet are different). But ‘different boots on different feet’… ? I may be wrong, but it seems senseless to me.
Yet the author must mean something by it, even something precise. What is he referring to? Why has he changed the standard phrase? What is he trying to convey?
The only explanation I can think of is the following:
Maybe someone – Genius Gardham, for instance? – put his left boot on his right foot, and his right boot on his left foot. That’s what it sounds like, and it would certainly have consequences: ‘Different boots, on different feet …’
Let’s develop this idea, and take take the phrase as an unconscious (or even a conscious) self-description on the part of the author, or his ilk.
Then, let us suppose that when the good man went out into the night (over that unsafely swaying Forth Road Bridge, for instance), it was all the SNP’s fault that he was incapable of walking in a straight line. An investigative journalist has to investigate, after all.
If he couldn’t co-ordinate his leg movements, if he was losing all direction and floundering all over the place, this was nothing to do with his ‘foot and boot’ problem. Oh no! To the contrary, it was entirely the fault of the SNP.
And if the poor man’s fellow travellers (or readers) cannot grasp this, but just presume he is legless, this is because the damned fools cannot see that the dastardly SNP have ‘broken’ the bridge he is crossing …
The idiots on social media can’t even understand the inherent nature of the ‘troubled waters’ underneath, into which the wrong-footed boots of hapless Marcus are always turning and his wrong-booted feet continually falling. These ‘troubled waters’ are not his, but the SNP’s. All theirs. They are the bad ones.
The SNP ‘broke the bridge’ and, because of that, he can no longer find his way across it; nor can he come to his senses or build a coherent argument. This is nothing to do with his waning journalistic powers, with emotion overturning logic, or with any inherent paranoia. None of that – it’s all caused by the SNP, who must be stopped. And, anyway, everyone knows that the SNP’s bad ‘minimum-priced-alcohol policy’ is ‘not good’: it’s bad, very bad, and it simply isn’t working.
Time to pull himself up, and together … In view of which, he will attempt another valiant lunge at his outwardly turned boot-straps …
This little outing on the rain-drenched bridge has not been without its instructive moments, however … He could even be quite satisfied with it. After all, these boots were made for lashing – and kicking – out… In any direction whatever, and however wildly, just so long as they hit the SNP target.
‘Different boots on different feet’ suggests outwardly turned footwear, ever-ready to have a go …
We might say ‘Boots and Addled’: a perfect mixture of violence and incoherence.
Without mentioning any names, not such a bad description – or symbol, even – for some of our ‘bovver-boy’ pressmen. Really quite accurate, after all. Well done, Marcus – maybe you are a far better writer than I was giving you credit for.
The perpetual snp bad story outstrips the 70000 moderates in Syria lie. Tells you all you need to know
@ScottishPsyche says: 26 December, 2015 at 10:45 pm:
” … They cannot win on social media and they are terrified”.
There are very good reasons why they cannot win on social media. Mainly because they are not social media – if anything they are anti-social media, in that they are going against the general trend of social media.
Social media is a strange, not yet fully understood, media. Witness the surprising, quite rapid, formation of the YES Movement that just grew out of several different groups.
Before the internet they would have remained just different groups but they gelled into a coherent YES Campaign and an unstoppable movement developed.
Different driving forces interacted one with the other and you could literally feel the strength of it growing.
I believe we have all changed our views a bit and influenced each other a bit. I feel this is what is now spooking the hacks in the older medias. They feel it too.
Magnus Gardham seems to have triggered a, more or less, united front. His quite naïve article is triggering a fairly concerted chain reaction within the social media that you can almost touch. It may yet indeed sweep the old media hacks away in its wake.
What then for the Scottish MSM?
Effigy at 10.40
Very clever 🙂
This is just too entertaining.
BenInsular
I find it deliciously ironic that the free pass given to scottish labour over the years by the press is what has allowed it reach this vegetative state whilst the forensic scrutiny the SNP has been subject to has led it so be such a disciplined, competent force.
The press did that. The beeb did that. And now, when the arse has truly fallen out of the remnants of better together and the SNP look like they are ready to express themselves in May we have these herald twats bleating about how low their stock as journalists has fallen and its all the fault of the stupid people of Scotland.
Guys like Leask and Gardham are the architects of their own failure.
Anyway- I waste time thinking of them and writing about them. It is not worth our precious time. Lets think about more fruitful matters.
Has everyone read GA Ponsonby’s book? Available FOC here:
link to ponsonbypost.com
I had a bit of time over the last few days and cannot recommend it highly enough… I had put off reading it as I thought it would be an exercise in finding out what I already knew but it, yeah- just read it.
Another PQ protest is long overdue.
Cybernats: A Modern Prometheus. 😉
In a grotesquely contradictory Scotland on Sunday article, badly conceived and badly written, much of it bordering on racial abuse, the deadhead Brian Wilson ably demonstrates why that rag and its weekly sister The Scotsman, are going under rapidly, and without attracting reader regret.
link to scotsman.com
The Tory Herald under Gardham’s Political Editorialship has become a byline for infantilised hackery. Every single week in 2015 witnessed HS headlines linked to JK Rowling, Michelle Mone, or “SNP accused”. And, almost criminally, he has allowed the pages under his stewardship to become a vehicle for puff-piece, anti-SNP diatribes and undiluted opposition press releases with little balance or right-of-reply. Bias By Omission is just as bigoted as outright attack dog tripe. An impartial observer Gardham ain’t! David Leask is a wee wet walloper for idolising the arch-purveyor of Scottish broadsheet infantilism (aka his boss).
[…] link to wingsoverscotland.com […]
Effijy says: 26 December, 2015 at 10:40 pm: Please turn your hymn books to Salmond (Psalm) 56
That was very clever! I had to adjust my underpants to get the required high pitched tone as I sang it in the kitchen with the lights out and fridge door open just enough for subtle lighting..
Grouse, fixed that link for you:
link to archive.is
“Most associate this questioning with the SNP,but in reality it goes beyond that now.”
Yes. Signs of it in Corbynism, but it “smells” slightly different. I guess England doesn’t yet have a moment, such as the indyref, to focus all this on. As such, the movement resisting the papers’ angry propaganda is not coalescing. As soon as it latches onto something tangible, structure will emerge.
And no, I don’t think the EUref will be that basis, since the media will be pulling in different directions, so the media war will be internecine, not directed against the ordinary folk (any more than it currently is).
I await to see what piece of grit will grow the pearl in England’s shell. I have an odd sense that a change of head of state might start something, if our incumbent succumbs to the only deselection she can ever face.
SNP baaaad…..the language of British SHEEP!
Snp baaaad……the language of British SHEEP!
Other than the £50K (plus hidden extras) these guys get each year, what is their motivation other than being partisan shites who can’t or refuse to see the way the wind is blowing.
Journalists in Scotland are either highly principalled and are following a cause they believe in above all else, either that or they are unprincipled shites securing £50K, I fear the later!
Thanks for that Rust never Sleeps vid, Capella (8.35). Nice to know another NY fan here. He does a lot of anti pollution, anti big conglomerates destroying land and lives activist type things now, I think. Saw him at the Glasgow Apollo in 1976 (?..a few years back, memory going now).
Have been up for for Christmas, a bit tough now coming home with one very elderly relative in care and another needing a care package in the home. Had Christmas lunch with my family in a restaurant in George square. Haven’t been in ‘the town’ for twenty odd years. It was looking great. Tinged with sadness seeing wreaths to the bin lorry victims and I kept seeing the Britnats rampaging round this lovely sq after the ref in my head.
Came down south in the early eighties with many others due to partners need to follow the work and every year the home sickness gets worse…one day maybe, hopefully to an independent and self governing homeland.
Shame I will miss the wings get together as I will be back on the 29th. I would love to get together with some like minded folk..they are few and far between down here as you can imagine.
Happy new year to you all!
Meindevon,
‘Wings ower Aiberdeen’ will be toasting ‘Absent friends’ on the 30th Jan..
You’re included.
A’ the best for 2016 – ye soothmoother!
@ smithie says: “Naw indyref2, no way even you would lower yourself”
Nice one 🙂
Bill McLean;
I was interested to read Mr Gray’s account whereby he ” narrowly avoided being attacked by a gang “. I too have narrowly avoided being attacked by a gang; many hundreds of times. Every time I’m not attacked by a gang, I have in fact avoided it. And not just narrowly – such attacks are extremely rare in S—land!
I was also interested to hear the latest MSM Bad! gripe. In real life, what goes round comes round.
No doubt many ukok hacks will narrowly miss being attacked by a gang because of this.
I have relatives who work in the “National press” and they tell me that the journalists are under pressure to dig the dirt on any story that involves the SNP. Even to bend the story to put the SNP in a not so brilliant light.No wonder their circulation is dropping As it,s said you can fool some of the people some of the time etc.
Slightly O/T,
But shows the power of new EMERGING MEDIA such as Wings Over Scotland against the Bad Wolf Baying theme of this thread.
WoS and contributors to this website have played a decent part in the fundraising for the campaign to clean up politics by seeking to remove lying politicians who cheat their way into a £74,000 job by outright lying. Carmichael may have lost the current action, but he is not yet out of the woods.
One good thing is that the Crowdfunder to disinfect the toxic Carmichaelitis has now breached the £200,000 mark. EXCEPTIONAL…
link to indiegogo.com
Magnus Gardham’s durge has encouraged me to donate another £10 to the Orkney & Shetland 4 🙂
Independence has never been closer, stick together, we will win. As night follows day, Freedom is ours
These BritNst “journalists” are really bricking it. Their end is nigh – if you see what I mean. Ooooh, matron!
This is about the 90% across the British Isles.
So, let’s get this straight: the red’n’blue tories plus the unionist media don’t have the ideas or can’t be arsed to come up with anything more popular or stronger than the SNP.
So instead of presenting an alternative or proper critique they bleat out negative attacks and smear stories about the SNP being bad.
This feeble strategy gets labelled, like Project Fear before it, as SNP=Bad and is rightly seen through by anyone with an independent will and mind.
Then the same red’n’blue tories and unionist media claim that the SNP=Bad label is a way of suppressing a debate about the real issues which they have failed to address.
You couldn’t make it up – but they do.
Gizza break! When you are serious you will be taken seriously. Until then roll on May. SNP x 2.
Tick effing tock.
Tam Jardine @11.32
Say this,
“the forensic scrutiny the SNP has been subject to has led it so be such a disciplined, competent force. ”
Makes me think of this
link to youtube.com
Don’t be conned people.
This introspective concern that the bias against the SNP isn’t working is nothing more than cynical posturing while these Unionist hacks tweak and reposition their strategic offensive.
There is no conscience here to be reasoned with; they are ardent enemies of Scotland’s independence, and if they cannot defeat us one way, they will try another way, and then another.
Do not hope for their redemption. They sold out their own integrity a long time ago, but with elections on the horizon, they need to tart up their tired and dismal anti-Scottish propaganda bandwagon for the next round in our struggle. This introspection is just Unionist code; “Smearing the SNP is at saturation point, better lay off it a while lads, the effect is weakening”.
A growing number of us are now alert to the con, but don’t forget, it isn’t us they are aiming to con. Their target audience are those poor unfortunates who don’t yet see through them. Their target market is that shrinking edifice of blind Scottish Unionism which suffers continual coastal erosion from wave after wave of the truth.
jdman
Hi John- exactly. I wonder why they didn’t think this would be the consequence of the constant attacks? The media on behalf of the establishment have tried to skew politics- it worked for decades but the internet is weakening it, and the barrage has left our side stronger.
We seem to be at a fascinating crossroads right now at the (approx) 50/50 mark. It feels like what is being wrestled over is the very soul of our country- if we get a consistent majority for independence over the next few months and an SNP majority then it will be inevitable- we will have passed the tipping point, but if support falls away now, having come so close it will be a bitter blow.
So no pressure then! We can all bask a little over Christmas as the national movement is in good cheer and our enemies are failing, but as the prize becomes visible for us the UK establishment will start cranking it up. And if they concede the Scottish Parliament Election then the mind boggles as to what the next step will be to try and neutralise us.
History moves slow, slow, quick quick slow in that change can take a long time to reach a critical point then all of a sudden there is an earthquake and the plates shift. I can’t see this strain lasting too long.
For me the EU referendum next year will be the moment. If we can work for a strong showing in May then push a really strong campaign essentially for an independent Scotland’s place in the EU (visible from here and in the EU) the cracks will become chasm’s.
Nicola Sturgeon is strong enough and smart enough to strike the right balance. This is an opportunity to spell out to the rest of the EU exactly where we stand- a golden opportunity. It will drive the tory right absolutely wild that their EU referendum is being hijacked by the SNP… interesting times.
Hope you and Irene enjoy Hogamany and 2016
@K1 says: 26 December, 2015 at 11:51 pm:
Grouse, fixed that link for you:
link to archive.is
Don’t know why you bothered.
The ravings of a hate filled semi-idiot are really of little interest to normal Scottish people.
Blinded, deafened and mentally handicapped by his own artificially generated fear, hate and loathing of all things that seem, in his fevered imagination, to be Un-British but which to almost everyone else are simply Wilson’s anti-SNP, and Scottish in general, loathing.
Let us put Wilson’s imagined fears for his beloved, “United Kingdom”, that he imagines is really, really Britain, into a little real perspective.
Alex Salmond was the First Minister of the Scottish Government and as such he had to do as all leaders of governments are bound to do. Deal, within the strict bounds of diplomacy, with characters such leaders would much rather not deal with.
How many such loathsome evil dictators can the likes of Blair, Brown, Obama, Merkel, Hollande, Et Al, be found in on-line photographs shaking hands with?
Yet in Wilson’s fevered mind only Salmond stands accused of fawning, simpering and granting special favours to such as Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch.
Quite laughable when it is considered that all the Unionist party Leaders spent a damned site more time and money and took back a damned site greater personal favours from such people over a greater period of time.
Dealing with such people is one of the things the voters pay their leaders to do. It is a normal part of the leader’s job. Wilson is nothing more than a frightened wee unionist and he is far from being alone. You can smell the pungent smell of abject fear, mainly emanating from London, all the way North in the Shetland Isles.
@Stephen Armstrong says: 27 December, 2015 at 12:06 am:
“SNP baaaad…..the language of British SHEEP!”
Correction – “SNP baaaad…..the language of
BritishUnited Kingdom SHEEP!@Meindevon says: 27 December, 2015 at 12:33 am:
“I would love to get together with some like minded folk..they are few and far between down here as you can imagine.”
They tell me there’s a fair sized group of them in the HOC at the moment, Meindevon.
;-))
Robert Peffers
Interesting to read how much Wilson hates Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, describing her job as spokesperson on trade and investment as “surely a satirical appointment”.
Trump won’t be banned from the UK but Mr Wilson sees not the wit in creating a mammoth petition to ban one person who wants to ban everyone from a specific religion from entering the USA. He also seems blind to how offensive Trump’s proposal (for I think it is not a joke) is to ordinary folk, and people of the Muslim faith like Tasmina in particular.
I wonder what the root of the specific hatred of Tasmina is? There does seem to be something of a witch-hunt against her and this dismissive, patronising crap from Wilson who kens the sum total of fuck all about Ms Ahmed-Sheikh is quite telling I think.
“Nationalists” as I am labelled, whether I like it or not, are meant to be like us: argumentative white males of various ages.
The concept that this “virus” is equally at home and thrives when the host is a young, attractive Muslim woman scares the bejesus out of guys like Wilson.
Fear and loathing… Wilson is to be pitied.
They are only talking to 20% of the voters. So let them talk.Minorities with money always make a lot of noise.
Tam Jardine said
“Nationalists” as I am labelled, whether I like it or not, are meant to be like us: argumentative white males of various ages.
The concept that this “virus” is equally at home and thrives when the host is a young, attractive Muslim woman scares the bejesus out of guys like Wilson.
————–
I think you have absolutely summed it up here. It’s so far off their scale of recognition, it’s scary.
Makes me sick they don’t give a toss about mocking and belittling her position, thereby crapping on those who elected her.
But hey, that’s just what they do.
one day Magnus Gardham will get an actual scoop but it will be too late, we will be all ignoring him. A tragedy all round.
It might help if they stopped insulting readerships and or attempting to manipulate public opinion.
Nah, they’ll not change. Its not in them.
The british unionist media does not like scrutiny. Scrutiny reveals that they have all been at best disingenuous and at worst telling outright lies. They hate the internet because it provide a platform for ordinary people to question their ‘journalism’ and their integrity.
They try very hard to promote their ‘united kingdom’ in the face of growing dissatisfaction with that ‘united kingdom’ in Scotland and then can’t understand when a cry of “PISH” comes at them from the crowd.
Hell mend them, I have no sympathy at all.
(was “a cry of pish” one of yours Ian Brotherhood?)
“the Scottish media is being treated with exactly the amount of dignity it deserves”. I would suggest that until it’s being used to replace toilet paper the scribbles of Gardham,Torrance Clegg and Creighton are being treated with far too much respect.
Re craig p
The only thing Magnus will be scooping is a dog turd and he’ll fuck that up!
Monbiot on the mesdia.
link to archive.is
@Tam Jardine
Tasmina strikes fear into the Yoons because she knows her subject and looks them straight in the eye and holds her ground
Soft soap won’t work with her and they aren’t able to deal with that, even Andrew sarcastic slippy Neil didn’t try to mess with her when she was on his programme
She’s a considerable force of a woman
You wouldn’t leave your socks on the floor or make a mess in her hoose… Brrr
Ronnie, thanks and have a dram for me.
Robert, haha, yes there are ‘a few’ but not down my way. It’s funny, I have lots of Scottish friends down here but they are almost all proud Scots but. The ones that felt Scotland would do better independently are the ones of Scots parentage or only brought up for a few early years in Scotland. I think the Scots down here were not aware of Wings or like minded sites and were conned by the English media to concentrate on Salmond and the SNP and forgot about the bigger picture. Many when asked about Indy for Scotland just said ‘no way I can’t stand Salmond’.
My New Years resolution is to work on them and hopefully they will pass snippets on to folks back home.
The first regular English daily newspaper was launched in 1702.
The Act of the Union was passed in 1707.
300 years is long enough. We don’t need people to “run our lives” or “tell us the news”.
It’s tatties o’er the side for the Union and the press barons.
lol, I cant believe Magnus “Softy Walter” Gardham wrote that article
I smell fear from all the unionist journalists, in the next 18 months their unionist buddies are about to be wiped out
be careful, they wont go without a fight, I see 1500 squaddies are to be trained in social media trolling. I see a concerted attack in the new year against us all
The Monbiot article is interesting. Shame he’s had to look to Canada when over here…oh, he’s got a boss too.
I wish G Monbiot would join up his resonance, he exposes fair truths then leaves a sigh, instead of exposing the cause.
Softly softly go the environmentalists, why?
Say it how it is..
Hi X_Sticks.
“A cry of pish”:-
link to youtube.com
It’s from the ‘Murphy – Saviour’ video.
I see a bad yoon rising!
SNP X 2
Interesting prog oil crude story of Britain this morning on gms radio scot at 7.30 am with next episode tomorrow morning.
Oil price of $12 saved uk from bankruptcy in 1976
Almannysbunnet says:
“The first regular English daily newspaper was launched in 1702.
The Act of the Union was passed in 1707.
300 years is long enough.”
Print newspapers will shortly go the way of typewriters, VHS videos, slide rules, etc …. they had their place for a period but were made obsolete by progress.
My concern is that the type of news agenda promoted by ‘press barons’ shifts onto new technology. However, they have competition like never before and instant criticism of their stances. So perhaps they will never again achieve the free hand they exercised using dead trees.
Makes you wonder what shite and dirty tricks they got up to pre SNP surge. Decades of lies and deception on the Scottish public.
“Grouse, fixed that link for you”
Thanks, Peffers.
Incidentally, teach me how do you get a shortlink out of a normal newspaper article?
Absolutely excellent Sunday Herald today. Every page worth dwelling on. Even Tom Gordon. Must have been hellish for him writing about the demise of the Labour Party in Scotland.
@ Meindevon
I liked the Neapolitan urchins showing off too. BTW there’s a video of NY busking in Glasgow in 1976. Maybe you’re in it!
link to youtube.com
Perth Railway Station’s WH Smith say people keep asking to buy a National newspaper but they have to tell them that not enough people want to buy them which is why they don’t sell them!
Needless to say got on train newspaperless!!!!
” … ‘Nationalists”’as I am labelled, whether I like it or not, are meant to be like us: argumentative white males of various ages.”
Not only are there two kinds of, “nationalism”, but there are no more nationalistic people on planet Earth than the faux nationalists of the United Kingdom type.
First of all theirs is a corrosive, hate filled, type that hates everything non-UK on the planet and secondly it begins with the false title they (dis)grace themselves by calling themselves, “British”.
Real Nationalism only seeks to be free to run its own affairs and to be friends with its neighbours and to co-operate with them for mutual benefit.
The UKers are no more, and no less, British than the Irish Republicans, the Channel Bailiwicks and the people of Manx. BTW: The term British also applied to such as Jamaicans and the other, “British”, colonists who carried British Passports when their countries became independent. There won’t be any of these left now.
On the much misunderstood subject of, “British Passports”, the explanation is simple.
While The United Kingdom is a bipartite kingdom formed by the Treaty of Union, (1706/7). The Monarchy also remained head of State for the three Crown Protectorates. These have never been ruled by Her Majesty’s Parliament of Her Majesty’s United Kingdom but are protected by Her Majesty as Crown Protectorates.
The only part of Britain NOT entitled to that passport are Irish Republicans born after the creation of the Republic of Ireland, (1800/1). Thus they would now require to be 215 years old to qualify.
“The concept that this “virus” is equally at home and thrives when the host is a young, attractive Muslim woman scares the bejesus out of guys like Wilson”.
The fact that it applies to any non-white, non-Protestant Christian of any sort scares these arrogant people.
Remember they are in denial of two of the first three Articles of the Treaty of Union.
Which three articles state that Scotland is an equally sovereign partner, that Scots Law is sacrosanct, as are Scottish education, and her right to not only the Pound Sterling but to print her own Banknotes.
The other article is that as the Monarch is not legally sovereign under Scots law then the Monarchy cannot be head of a Scottish Church nor a Roman Catholic ever be monarch or have anything to do with the monarchy in the United Kingdom.(Guess which is the only one they recognise)?
“Fear and loathing… Wilson is to be pitied”
Indeed he is to be pitied, (but that doesn’t prevent people despising Wilson on the grounds that they do not suffer fools gladly).
@Big Jock says: 27 December, 2015 at 9:48 am:
” … Minorities with money always make a lot of noise”.
Aye! Big Jock, but so do happy bairns and empty barrels, (and they are neither happy nor bairns).
A call for “Labour … to remind voters of its century-old Scottish origins, including Keir Hardie and support for Home Rule”
Too late, they have totally missed that bus.
The time for Labour to assert itself as the party of Home Rule was at the outset of the Indy campaign where it could have stood on a DevoMax (the real deal) ticket. Instead they spent their time campaigning with their Tory chums, sold Scotland a devolution pig in a poke, and then went in to ensure we were denied any useful economic devolution.
The quicker they disappear and become a distant memory, the better. Betrayal demands no less.
link to archive.is
Re; Alison rollo@1.03
So WHSmith are not stocking the National, even though people want to buy it, sounds a tad sinsiter.
It’s getting harder to get the National in my local Edinburgh shops, so either they are bought up quickly, ( unlikely in Stockbridge) or fewer, or non are being stocked. I will need to make some enquiries.
and here is me thinking the Rev was having a break ha ha , anyway re – Tam on the EU ref , what’s the betting the votes will not be separated on a region or country basis so as to remove any chance of Scotland -Wales-Northern Ireland -England being identified as in or out the Tories are in charge they will do what they F/n like
Imagine having most of the press at your beck and call to press home your policies, your views and your desires for Scotland to the voters? What a weapon, what a game-changer that should have been.
Yet they use it like a kid writing childish taunts on a desk or playground wall. Which is not only a shocking waste but also a good indicator of the un-electable mentality held by most of these dinosaurs.
And, when these troglodytes do venture onto the internet, their ham-fisted, unsophisticated attempts to bludgeon the same old spin and bluster onto the newer mediums at least provide some decent comedy for us to enjoy.
The Labour plan is to PRETEND a return to its century-old Scottish origins, including Keir Hardie and a support for Home Rule.
As with Garham & Co they also think we are stupid. I fully expect a raft of promises regarding the formation of a Scottish Labour Party / a return to the founding principles etc . It will not be to gain votes but to try and stem the losses.
@schrodingers cat at 11:06 am
“I see 1500 squaddies are to be trained in social media trolling.”
Do you mean the 77th Brigade? If you do, these guys are already active, and have been since April 2015.
From Wikipedia:
The 77th Brigade is a British Army formation, created in January 2015 under the Army 2020 concept. It is the renaming of the Security Assistance Group which was created under the Army 2020 concept. It is based at Denison Barracks in Hermitage, Berkshire and will be fully operational by April 2015.
It also states:
The Ministry of Defence said that the “77th Brigade is being created to draw together a host of existing and developing capabilities essential to meet the challenges of modern conflict and warfare.
For “challenges to modern conflict…” read, ‘for challenges to the continuation of ‘the UK’ as an entity, for example, the SNP, its MPs and MSPs and the Scottish independence movement and its supporters…’
With Labour in Scotland depised, Conservatives fur the old yins and Loyalist loons, and LibDems ignored, (the Greens are meh) the cry from the English-owned Unionist press is that Scotland is now a one-party state.
Well, if they mean that there is now a party in Scotland with a huge number of members, has been, and continues to be competent in government, has 56 MPs in Westminster and looks to be on its way to receiving another overwhelming mandate in May 2016 from the Scottish electorate – ie the SNP – being pish-poorly ‘opposed’ by the aforementioned Unionist trollopes, then, if that is what qualifies as their ‘reasoning’ and ‘analysis’ on politics in Scotland, so be it.
The actualité of the situation is that now, by and large, the Unionist mainstream media *is* the opposition in Scotland. Not officially, of course, you understand… And with that in mind, they can get away with saying and writing things that wouldn’t be allowed to pass in Holyrood, never mind any parliament anywhere – lies, misinformation, smears, fears and sneers.
They have plucked the baton out of the official-but-rubbish opposition’s hands and are now running with every negative they can find, no matter how slight or unimportant, or just falsify their own negatives, in a deluded attempt at influencing the May 2016 election in their favour. It is a Project Fear 2 attempt, with added SNP-bad for flavouring. And may they choke on it. Fuck them.
There is only one way to guarantee an independent Labour party, but frankly they’re not up to the challenge. It would require an independent Scotland and for their leadership to have the ability to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves.
It would also require them to be cut off from their comfort blanket of a UK media and take responsibility for their own actions, make policy, take a stand, be answerable to their electorate.
Y’know, ethics and the courage of their convictions.
Well said Skooshcase@2.23 -oor very own 500,000th comment winner.!!! from yesterday.
Well done.
Always manage to pick up national at wh smith in edinburgh airport.harder in Dunfermline as i think they sell out
A one-party state? Well the same can be said of Ireland in 1918 and South Africa in 1994.
In 1918, Sinn Fein won the elections in Ireland with 47% of the vote (sound familiar?). The next party was the party of the UKOK, the Irish Unionists, with 25% (sound familiar?). The Sinn Fein share of the vote of 47% gave them 73 seats (sound familiar?).
Oh, and four years later, Ireland was an independent state…
Another great article Rev but well matched by many of the comments below the line.
You guys and gals never cease to amaze me, the knowledge, the wit, patter and just what you have to say keeps me reading and reading.
I didn’t wish you all a merry Xmas as I’m not a particularly Xmas type person. I do though wish you all the very best for now and any other time of year.
Scotlands Champions, everyone one of you! Thank You.
I’m hearing hapless Jim Murphy is contemplating following in the footsteps of Ms Dugdale by accepting an invite to go on TV to take part in ‘university is a challenge’ quiz program.
Ha ha ha
Even the Spanish Ayes think the Diddy Press and State Sponsored Broadcaster in Scotland are a bunch of untrustworthy, lying gits:
link to tinyurl.com
“Since the rise of the new media, many have reacted with fury and indignation to being held to account in the way they conduct themselves. As sites like Wings and others reveal mistruths and distortions day after day, hacks lash out with a level of venom that appears in inverse proportion to their papers’ plummetting sales figures.”
Really?
What of Wee Wingsy’s own ‘Figures’?
“NEVER SLOW to blow his own trumpet and maintain the myth of a massive readership, Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland recently confirmed to his ‘alert readers’ that just under 300,000 unique visitors or “readers” – as he often refers to such numbers – visited his blog in October 2015.
Very impressive and a potentially powerful political influence if the figures were to be believed which, according to web traffic and internet specialists and user analytics experts Incapsula, they can’t.
According to Incapsula’s findings, 62.3% of traffic to medium sites like Campbell’s – with 10,000 plus visitors per day – are bots. Or non-human traffic in human speak.
Doing the math, the impressive figure of 293,753 unique visitors for the month of October, suddenly whittles down to a less impressive 95,400.
It’s still a formidable figure in anyone’s language but, unfortunately for Wings, it’s exponentially less than the 300,000 claim.”
# Indeed. seems like ‘Wings over Scotlands’ very own ‘Alert readers’ may want to ask the ‘Rev’ some questions about that.
As if they are donating so much money for so few ‘Alert readers’ visiting ‘Wings’, just what is the money being spent on?
Perhaps someone can tell us?
“According to Incapsula’s findings, 62.3% of traffic to medium sites like Campbell’s – with 10,000 plus visitors per day – are bots. Or non-human traffic in human speak.
Doing the math, the impressive figure of 293,753 unique visitors for the month of October, suddenly whittles down to a less impressive 95,400.”
Bless your bilious wee heart. Unfortunately for you, our hosts have already detected and excluded bot traffic from the stats we publish. Do try again.
Perth Railway Station’s WH Smith say people keep asking to buy a National newspaper but they have to tell them that not enough people want to buy them which is why they don’t sell them!
Needless to say got on train newspaperless!!!!
I also get the above response from the same paper stall. I ask for a National every time I visit Perth Station and, just like Alison, leave with nothing.
I suspect that there is a wider campaign to stifle sales of the National. Trying to find a copy in any large supermarket can be a trial. And you can’t get the paper at all in Aldi or Lidl
Well, well, guess what has washed up on the swollen Clyde?
It’s only Steven Purcell – a ‘former leading light’.
It’s too tragic. He is warning that Slab will go the way of the Tories in Scotland. I checked the date several times, but it’s today’s date all right.
I read this yesterday morning, and boy …what a load of tripe! Magnus Gardham now blames the SNP for causing the media to keep crying out ‘SNP bad’.
The sheer bloody irony! I sometimes wonder if our mainstream journalists are doing articles for a bet. I can’t believe that they come out with some of the nonsense that they do. If Magnus wasn’t kidding …then he’s seriously blinkered (and I’m willing to bet at this point, that it’s the latter, and nothing to do with a bet or a laugh at all!)
His article is right up there with the BBC journalist this morning when she was reporting from York. Standing in the middle of a roundabout, with one side of the area seriously flooded, she noted that groups of people were gathering to take photographs of the submerged area and ‘soaking up the atmosphere’ …what!!! Either she said that for a bet (introducing the pun of ‘soaking’) or she’s another one where her mouth is engaging before her brain. Because …Yes …the floods are creating a carnival type of atmosphere as people enjoy this new wintry addition to their Christmas festivities!
I’m sure the peoples of Cumbria, York, Leeds, Manchester and all other affected flood areas are ‘soaking up the atmosphere’ as they watch their houses being drowned, and all their furnishings and holdings destroyed.
Clootie says:
“The Labour plan is to PRETEND a return to …. support for Home Rule.”
Herald, McLeish … “Scottish Labour must split from UK party … Scottish Labour should not oppose a second independence referendum but demand a home rule option on the ballot paper.”
link to archive.is
It is impossible (illegal?) for SLab to campaign at present on different policies from London. As you say, pretending, is their tactic.
However, if they were to become a separate party as McLeish suggests, they could offer whatever they thought was popular. The problem, of course, is that they (like the SNP just now) would have no way of forcing policies through WM.
Certainly something like Home Rule would NEVER be passed by WM.
We have the potential, therefore, for Labour to become independent of London in yet another attempt to con Scottish voters!
There is another way. labour could become independent of London and declare a neutral stance on Indy allowing individuals to campaign as they wished. And, for heaven’s sakes, we all need to move on from DevoMax / Home Rule – it’s been ruled out and laid to rest by WM!
We’ve just had one referendum on Home Rule versus Indy. We know how that turned out! What would be the point of that? We need an IndyRef2 of DevoFA versus Indy.
@Valerie
Here’s your article: Purcell
He said Labour “hugely under-estimated” the damage of campaigning with the Tories in the referendum and had to remind voters of its century-old Scottish origins, including Keir Hardie and support for Home Rule, and convince them the party has not lost its political spark.
link to archive.is
Turkey paella and figs… Burp 🙂 Footie 2-2.
Steven Pucell former Glasgow Council leader?
Well,well. This guy had a bad coke habit courtesy of major gangland figures to whom he was indebted for supply.
Perhaps Mr Purcell could explain why security site work went to these people at enormous cost. Wonder if he cares to acknowledge that drugs were being transported in Council vans.
This guy is as dirty as they come and is in no position to talk about values of Keir Hardie,considering he has never had any of them.
Bought the Herald man & boy but I’m alright noooooooooooooo!
No probs getting The Nash in my Coop & Morrisons
Even if there were another party good enough to oppose the SNP they’d have to be hell of a good but they’d still have to be Yoons and what would be the point of that anyway, we’d be right back where we started in Zip time
We’ve almost got the yolk off our necks is anybody going to be daft enough to vote it back on again
The tiniest slip of the SNP vote will allow the Yoons hope
Remember Cameron the next morning after the NO vote, you could see the glee and power in his eyes as he announced his EVEL plans TO fCUK Scotland over the first chance he got and he’s doing it now
No Yoon Red or Blue can be trusted, they’ll turn on Scotland like they’ve always done,
I keep the TV pictures in my mind of how happy the Yoons were when they won the NO vote to deny Scotland it’s own choices and freedoms and did they enjoy rubbing it in at every opportunity, I think so
SNP/SNP…. Until the YOONS are gone
One party state? Pish, There will always be other parties to choose from but they’ll be Scottish parties and that’s Freedom of choice
Our day will come when unionists will lick our…
An indelicate subject: link to wp.me
Re: The National, my mum – who doesn’t talk about politics and prefers the gossipy press – reads it when I leave it out. (She’s an auld yin too but has become a Yesser. She’s also convinced the Ref was a stitch up btw which will bring some of the commenters on here out in hives, I’m sure! ;-)). Anyway, the reason I’ve stuck with it so long is that she always goes from being quiet and resigned about politics to being quite voluble about her opinions after reading it. That’s special in itself and I think it’s something that we should all try and aim for. We’ve been putting up with things, thinking there was no point speaking up, while *our betters* have told us what we should think, for far too long.
We’ve been begging for political discourse for years. That’s one of the reasons why I find the unionist press (and many useful idiots on Twitter and the like, unfortunately) whining about how the SNPBad meme is damaging discourse and is an ad hominem, so distasteful. Didn’t we try and have a political discourse but were told, ‘There’s nothing to see here, folks; it’s just the Cybernat, fascist, robotic, cultist wackos who’re speaking, so move on!’? Even my mum, who couldn’t be less interested in political parties, can see that. That’s why I genuinely believe that this latest tactic from the unionist press won’t work. They’re too late. Once you’ve lost the 70-year-old granny/granda market, you’re done guys! If the journalists want some respect; earn it by doing some real journalism instead of re-printing party political pamphlets as fact and calling those who call you out on it cybernats or cult members!
Davie boy cares deeply about the flood victims, so much so he’s sent more soldiers to carry folk from their flooded homes, nice man eh
I wish somebody would ask Davie boy something like
How come Holland isnae flooded Davie diz it no rain there in that below sea level country, I wonder how they avoid they floods there eh?
Or am I just being thick and the rain falls up in Holland
Liz says,
“Leask, who has blocked and unblocked me a few times- which I now realise was because I had the temerity to quote WoS at him – is claiming on twitter that the ‘newspapers’are doing very well and readership is up??”
Now that’s good news Liz, cos if they had been loosing a lot of readers they might have had to move into smaller offices and even lost a lot of staff!!!
They really do think our heads are zipped up the back, haha!
MSM ‘journalists’ trying to press the reset button, the return to factory settings. They want it back to the way it was before the Ref, when they were in control.
Maybe the National are playing a wider game, ignoring cynics on both sides..by seeming to stay in the centre.
The odd, oddly negative angle, can be seen as proof of even-handedness and may create appeal around other issues.
The more copies of it lying around, the better.
Dear Scottish Corporate Unionist Media,
The truth of all your woes has been laid bare for you to see in the article above and made plainer still in all of the BTL comments.
You ignore it at your peril.
SNP dammed with faint praise as Macwhirter reviews the last year in Scottish politics. SNP not proven to be bad!
link to archive.is
Now on the marzipan and white wines…Hic!
I prefer reds but got 6 whites as a pressy!
Love it, love it, love it Stu.
@Bob Mack, 4.39
Perhaps Mr Purcell could explain why security site work went to these people at enormous cost. Wonder if he cares to acknowledge that drugs were being transported in Council vans.
Wrong tense. The following is from July 2015
link to scottishconstructionnow.com
Organised crime is the fourth largest industry in Scotland. It will take more than the resignation of a “made” man to eradicate this corruption.
How about car stickers with:-
‘Vile Cybernat On Board’
Bad Wolf.. aah those were the days when Dr Who was good… now a steaming pile of shit frankly
Macwhirter reviews the last year
“I make no apologies for hammering home the magnitude of the SNP victory. It was so comprehensive that in a way it suffered from being under-reported. I don’t think this was so much Unionist bias in the media as superlative fatigue. After you observe that Nicola Sturgeon had won everything, there’s very little left to say. I still come across people in Westminster and the London media who are unaware of the sheer scale of the Nationalist sweep.”
He certainly likes to soft soap the union and its ghastly meeja does McWhirter, with lashings of details made up on Thompson and MacGarry. But that’s Herald’s market.
Nothing at all on greatest UKOK liars of the year like Fozzie Carmichael, or the lying creeps and UKOK henchman that are now Baron Darling of Roulanish Baron Bruce of Bennachie, Sir Daniel, ah fcuk it, we all know how farcical UKOK democracy really is.
“I still come across people in Westminster and the London media who are unaware of the sheer scale of the Nationalist sweep.” – Iain Macwhirter, The Herald.
Hmm – I wonder why that would be?
“…the magnitude of the SNP victory… was so comprehensive that in a way it suffered from being under-reported.” – Iain Macwhirter, The Herald.
Ah – now I see.
There’s just been an Amber warning for flooding for Central and Southern Scotland for the next 24 hours. I wonder if flooding occurs, will it appear on the “National” News? i.e BBC.
On Christmas Eve there was buckets collections in Tesco’s Ayr for Carlisle/Cumbria. I asked the assistant what about Galloway, to be told by her, (she was about 18), that our country comes first before foreigners. Galloway foreign? It’s next to Ayrshire ffs. I asked how she voted in last years Referendum, she said NO, as Scotland had enough foreigners.
Tescos and Asdas are only good for after 10 at night.
Stephen.
‘Nothing at all on greatest UKOK liars of the year like Fozzie Carmichael, or the lying creeps and UKOK henchman that are now Baron Darling of Roulanish Baron Bruce of Bennachie, Sir Daniel, ah fcuk it, we all know how farcical UKOK democracy really is.’
Exactly mate. And there in lies the problem for our media. Very happy to ‘try’ and find fault within the realms of Scottish nationalism, but they steer well clear of insulting the more widespread ‘popular’ journalism.
That is why they are baffled as to why the people aren’t accepting their nonsense; they still can’t get their heads around the fact that 50% of Scotland is very aware of what is going on; that at least another 20% are seeing through some of the fog of lies; and that potentially …2 million odd people out of 65 million can potentially rip their precious Union to pieces if given a chance.
That fact alone scares them so much, that they don’t want to acknowledge it, let alone even discuss it!
Well it is true that the Nats are able to bat away any criticism that they do not like as ‘SNP bad’. Stu points out the reason for that, but it is nonetheless not a good state of affairs. And I think there is an easy solution to the issue, but it does require Scotland to be independent…
That fact alone scares them so much, that they don’t want to acknowledge it, let alone even discuss it!
He could have mentioned colossal UKOK tory fraud like
link to thenational.scot
especially after tory freak show signed up to
link to thehindu.com
Carbon capture could have a been huge boost to Scottish job market, especially in Aberdeen where oil jobs all now have P45’s pinned to them and it had vast potential, all gone down the UKOK pooper, for no good UKOK toryboy reason either. Or at least no given and certainly none asked by UKOK hackdom or maybe its
“I don’t think this was so much Unionist bias in the media as superlative fatigue.”
Everything UKOK said would happen if we voted YES, has happened.
McWhirter knows who pays mortgage though.
An interesting wee snippet of info folks.Retired employees of the daily rancid were having a crimbo reunion in the horseshoe bar the other day.They were discussing the plummeting sales figures of the rancid,no matter what the rancid may claim,sales of 160,000 a day and plummeting are the real story,tick tock.
Ongoing toryboys trolling of their Scotland region, a knighthood for the reprobate that cooked up vote blue because Salmond’s on the rob
link to bellacaledonia.org.uk
“Lynton Crosby knighthood discredits honours system, say Labour MPs
Australian political strategist is reportedly set for place in New Year honours list after running Tories’ 2015 election campaign”
That’s rancid the Graun. This is someone who enjoys sex with pigs, with Sir Lynton of Mayfair’s not racists words in his head. Its not racist if its Scottish you see.
link to youtube.com
@Meindevon says: 27 December, 2015 at 10:55 am:
” … Many when asked about Indy for Scotland just said ‘no way I can’t stand Salmond’.”
As a schoolboy, way back in the mid to late 1940s, I was lucky to have the sister of my Primary School Dominie as my history teacher at secondary school. These pair of fine teachers came from a very long line of fine teachers and Miss Igo could make that driest of subjects, history, interesting, vibrant and alive.
However, her greatest gift to her pupils was to teach them to look at history in a different manner than just long lists of almost meaningless dates. The importance of history is the effect it has on what was the future when the events were taking place. It creates a sense of continuation through the ages.
Sorry about that long preamble but now the point of it is that from ever British history has been recorded it has all been leading to the events not just of today but also of tomorrow.
Now here are some stone cold facts. When the Romans first arrived in south Britain they began to record British history, as they saw it.
Thing is each record sent back to Rome by different reporters was as that individual saw it from their own point of view. Furthermore, most reporters here in Britain were spinning the reports to enhance their own political careers back in Rome. Note that some head Romans in Britain were to end up as Roman Emperors. Political spin is nothing new.
Basically the Romans ruled by Romanising the former heads of the south Britons and then let them get on with running Britain while the Romans operated a Custom & Excise System and levied tax upon the native south Britons.
It is thus quite creditable that Hadrian’s Wall was thus not built to keep out the unconquered North Britons but to prevent smuggling both in and out of the fringes of the Roman Empire. BTW: The Romans also dealt in slaves.
Consider this – why would the North Britons want to attack South Britain? The North was even less populated than today and the aboriginal Britons had all they needed in the North. (a bit like today even).
What the Romans created was a south Britain ruling elite that did not really interbreed with the natives who they treated as slaves. Which is the situation that has, (more or less), continued ever since. We have after all still got hereditary peers sitting in the HOLs and a Royal Family.
The Romans left and were followed by a long succession of Germanic Tribes. The Angles were the ones who gave their name to Angle Land and the name Normans is a corruption derived from a tribe of Norsemen who were also invited to settle in what became Normandy. Both Bruce & Wallace were Norman Knights.
The one big historic difference between Scotland and England was that in the south the elite rulers treated the native Britons as slaves, serfs or villeins while the Normans who made it in Scotland did so by intermarriage with the Northern tribes leadership and thus were absorbed as Northern Britons who had become dominated by the Scottii. Who, BTW: did not really come from Ireland but in the days of the dense Caledonian Forest were distributed around what became the Irish Sea. The seas and rivers were the highways and the land almost impenetrable.
So there you have it. There are less than 5% of the population of Britain of Anglo Saxon descent and the rest of the British, (bar more recent immigrants), mainly descended from the old stone age Hunter/gatherer/farmers.
Our differences in Britain are cultural – not genetic.
O/t I was walking my dog on Christmas day and I met an elderly lady walking her dog. She was talking about the flooding down south and how not enough was being spent on flood defenses. She was of the opinion that all politicians were a waste of space. From discussing that she agreed that spending £167 billion+ on trident and costly illegal foreign war’s was waste of money. She then said Tony Blair should be in jail for war crimes. She also said that she wished, she had not voted no in the referendum because she would vote yes now after all the lies. The encounter made my day
@Joemcg says: 27 December, 2015 at 11:50 am:
“Makes you wonder what shite and dirty tricks they got up to pre SNP surge. Decades of lies and deception on the Scottish public”
Sheeesh! I’ve just been explaining, (upthread), that the South Britain ruling elites have been, (At It), since before Jesus /Christ was born. Roman recorded history is full of political spin.
The Angles Jutes Saxons, et al, spun history too. Then the clerics of the Christian Church at the behest of their Anglo Saxon masters spun history. William Shakespeare’s plays contained political spin and Caxton’s Printing Press printed lots of political pamphlets.
Daniel Defoe was a political pamphlet writer and an English Spy in Scotland in the thick of bribery and corruption pre-Treaty of Union.
Decades be damned – they’ve been at it for over 2015 years.
Hi Robert
Love reading your posts, Robert. Would love a wee sit down and chat about History. I think you and I could talk for hours LOL!
Anyway….it’s a fair point, but…
…while the Normans who made it in Scotland did so by intermarriage with the Northern tribes leadership and thus were absorbed as Northern Britons who had become dominated by the Scottii.
The thing is, I don’t believe the ‘Scottii’ as some history books tell us are the ‘Scots’. I believe it to be bad terminology. ‘Scottii’ is deemed to be the tribe that came from Ireland. Some books even state that because the Gaelic culture came from Ireland, that therefore the Scottish came from there too (hence Scottii). The answer is almost correct, but just not quite.
I believe that the Romans called the peoples of Ireland as ‘Scottii’ (meaning ‘land pirates’ (I’m doing this off the top of my head, so apologies if not quite correct)). From that point on, history books referred to the Irish tribes as ‘Scottii’ even though they themselves, never called themselves that!
The peoples that crossed over from modern day Ulster were Gaels who settled in Strathclyde, and thus formed the Kingdom of Dalriada. These Gaels didn’t create the Kingdom of Scotland, nor did they name their first Kingdom in these lands as ‘Scotland’ (as stated, it was Dalriada). As we all know, the Gaels and Picts eventually coalesced to create the new Kingdom of Alba, and over time, slowly forged Lothian, Dumfries, the Borders, and eventually, the Highlands and Islands to the greater realm. We are 5 peoples (Gaels, Picts, Britons, Vikings and Anglos) made as one (6 if we include the Normans) …but no ‘Scottii’.
The ‘Scots’ is the term in one sense, of the various Kingdoms coming together to create the Kingdom of Alba, otherwise known as Scotland and the Scots.
(And I’m led to believe that the actual word ‘Alba’ means ‘white mountains’ …which is a fair answer as to what Alba may mean, since the Gaels may have been enamoured with the Highlands in winter when covered in snow. I believe the name has lost its original meaning through time, and has instead, come to mean the name of our Kingdom …but it’s a nice thought all the same.)
Not sure if this has already been linked to. More on the same theme as above.
link to newsnet.scot
“Scotland isn’t being damaged by a ‘One Party State’. It is in fact suffering due to a ‘One Media State’. There is a lack of plurality. Aside from The National, there is no national newspaper currently backing the SNP or independence. It is why the term ‘SNP Bad’ has taken”
@Grouse Beater says: 27 December, 2015 at 12:14 pm:
“Grouse, fixed that link for you”
Actually Grouse Beater I didn’t fix it for you – K1 did that. Sorry I misled you by copying and pasting K1’s comment that I was replying to.
“Incidentally, teach me how do you get a shortlink out of a normal newspaper article?”
There are several ways to shorten a link, but by far the best, and easiest, is to archive the article using the archive.is website. Use the link below.
link to archive.is
Copy the above link into your browser address bar.
Then add that address bar link to your websites toolbar.
Browsers usually have a one click way to do that. (It is a wee yellow star with an green arrow on it on Internet Explorer’s toolbar).
Then when you want to post an articles link into Wings :-
You highlight the link in your browser address bar.
Right click upon it and select ‘copy’, from the drop down menu.
Then click on the toolbar link for archive.is.
The Archive.is site opens up and you paste your copied link into the archive.is red highlighted space.
After a short pause = a new short link comes up and you cut & paste that new link into your Wings comment.
The big advantage is that the newspaper, or whatever, doesn’t get paid for however many click throughs by wingers who go to read the archived article.
I hope that is clear for you to follow but my keyboard has just developed a fault that is making it hard to type at a normal speed. The , “N”, key either fails to print a letter to the screen or it inserts several letter, “N”‘s.
Most annoying! I probably need to adjust the repeat rate.
(And I’m led to believe that the actual word ‘Alba’ means ‘white mountains’ …which is a fair answer as to what Alba may mean,
The problem with the history of our country is that oftentimes, this is what it comes down to, what people believe or what suits their UKOK politics. Some think the Scots came from Ulster but there is no record of their existence, written record or archeology. Greco-Egyptian geographer Ptolemy is good place to start. He didn’t record any Scotti tribe in Ireland but all the rest are there. How did he miss them?
After and before that, check out archeology, whats there and what’s not. The Romans couldn’t defeat the Scots, nor the Vikings, nor the Angles, Saxons and the Normans. Our country was sold to our neighbour for a few carts of gold, to pay off much the same kind of yoons we have to listen today, as they bettertogether bullshit us we’re too small, stupid and poor, BBC style.
Wiki
The name of Scotland is derived from the Latin Scoti, the term applied to Gaels.[1] The origin of the word Scoti (or Scotti) is uncertain.
No its not. Its right here in front of them and has been for rather a long time too:D
This Orwell essay, ‘The Prevention of Literature’, is from 1946. Perhaps not as celebrated as some of his other essays, but brilliant anyway, and should be of particular interest to the BTUKOK ‘journalists’ we’ve all come to know so well. 😉
link to orwell.ru
JLT, dont forget the Catti tribe from Germany who settled in Caithness and intermarried with the Picts. Even now, those of us from Sutherland are known in the Highlands as Cattachs.
Robert Peffers
I enjoy and learn much from your posts explaining the history of these Isles Robert. Two quick and perhaps ridiculous questions – what outside of Wings have you had published on our history?
Secondly- how do you rate the assorted writers of our history… Tom Devine, Magnus Magnusson,
TC Smout, Stuart Mchardy to name 4 off the top of my head.
Anyway- wishing you guid health and a braw new year
Cheers
Tam
Just read your comment Robert (Peffers) regarding that Scotsman article, I didn’t read it, just copied and pasted to archive it. I wouldn’t read it for all the reasons you outline, I don’t like to go to bed filled with Unionist anti SNP bile…so thanks for confirming my instincts that it was indeed bile. 🙂
Cannot emphasise enough that archiving lessens their revenues folks, please try to archive whenever possible, you know it makes sense.
I quoted above @9:10 the phrase ‘one media state’. I keep thinking about that very valid observation!
How did Scotland become a ‘one media state’?
Firstly, journalism has all but ceased in the traditional print based and broadcast media. They reproduce stories from newsfeeds, from simply copy press releases, and most importantly copy from each other. The same identical story appearing everywhere, is the outcome. And, because there is no journalism, there is no checking of sources and facts, so stories may have little substance. Appearing widely, doesn’t make it any more accurate.
Secondly, there is a pro-Union, pro-Labour, pro-UK, pro-Dependency, anti-SNP, anti-SG, anti-Scottish, anti-Independence bias in varying extents from almost every traditional outlet targeting Scotland. Why? Perhaps ownership in the case of print. Perhaps WM influence in the case of broadcast. Perhaps Establishment pressure on both.
Add those two together, and the ‘one media state’ that is Scotland becomes inevitable.
K1
Sensible approach- though it is instructive to understand just how afraid Wilson is. He dismisses the formidable Tamsina as a satirical appointment.
The Rev makes it crystal clear on this site that we should post whilst bearing in mind that no-voters and the undecided read it. We sometimes do and sometimes don’t. Wilson will reinforce the preformed opinions of some but he will not convert a single Yes voter to his cause.
If you are a Muslim reading his article or a woman, or someone under 40 or even just an ordinary punter who disagrees with Trump you would be repelled by his writing.
It’s why No will ultimately lose and Yes will certainly triumph in the fullness of time. Shoring up support alone is not a long term strategy.
My daughter was given a badge machine by Santa and she pressed her first Yes badge today. We are in it for the long-haul and not only are we shoring up support, we are reaching out to the disaffected and the next generation.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, boom!
Blair McDougall was in state funded education up to and including university. Whilst still at University he took up work with the labour Party. He left University and worked for his mentor Jim Murphy before gaining a promotion to Special Adviser(SpAd) move to London (Westminster).He has, in effect been funded by the taxpayer throughout his entire working life. Unelected and undeserved he has attracted earning and expenses well in excess of £2.5Million.
In my view the appointment of state funded SpAd’s is very wrong and should be stopped or at the very least curtailed significantly.
Cameron’s Downing street office employs in excess of 40 SpAd’s, many of them son’s, daughter’s and or family friends possessing no relevant qualifications. Minimum salary around £65K with many enjoying salaries in excess of £150K. Cameron costs the state around £5Million annually.
Disgraceful state of affairs and a basket case economy. Makes me sick
Ian Brotherhood@9.42,
Wasn’t George Orwell a bit Anti-Scottish in his writings, or am I thinking of someone else? Although I’ve been a fan of Charles Dickens over the years, I since heard he was a bit Anti-Scottish as well.
Stephen.
galamcennelath@9.50
That George Monbiot link is an definitive comment on where we are with the mess that’s supposed to be Scottish Media..A beauty.
One Media State-says it all.
Referendum on Sovereign Money in Switzerland to withdraw banks ability to create money link to rt.com
Probably too much to hope for, given its easy adaption to any state or aspiring state – the big guns will be against it.
But this and the ongoing courageous campaign in Catalonia well worth watching in the New Year.
Aye Tam agree wi your points regarding posting differing views and the ‘instructive’ bile. My point is about archiving the links from the corpmedia to reduce revenues, this hurts them, as well as their own ‘instructive’ bile, which hurts them more. 😉
@bugsbunny
Found ….
In May 1945 George Orwell published his “Notes on Nationalism” essay, with this section on the Celts:
“Welsh, Irish and Scottish nationalism have points of difference but are alike in their anti-English orientation. Members of all three movements have opposed the war while continuing to describe themselves as pro-Russian, and the lunatic fringe has even contrived to be simultaneously pro-Russian and pro-Nazi. But Celtic nationalism is not the same thing as anglophobia. Its motive force is a belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples, and it has a strong tinge of racialism. The Celt is supposed to be spiritually superior to the Saxon — simpler, more creative, less vulgar, less snobbish, etc. — but the usual power hunger is there under the surface. One symptom of it is the delusion that Eire, Scotland or even Wales could preserve its independence unaided and owes nothing to British protection. Among writers, good examples of this school of thought are Hugh McDiarmid and Sean O’Casey. No modern Irish writer, even of the stature of Yeats or Joyce, is completely free from traces of nationalism.”
Bollocks, basically, from the ‘great man’. An assumption, many have in present time too, that Scottish nationalism is ethnically elitist and supremacist. Worse, anti-English.
I don’t know, but I suspect Orwell like many others, failed to see or accept the existence and reality of British (actually English) nationalism.
@bugsbunny –
It’s notable that Orwell was a great admirer of Tobias Smollett, calling him Scotland’s greatest novelist, but in his ‘Notes on Nationalism’ he was dismissive of the Scottish independence movement. I certainly wouldn’t regard Orwell as ‘Scotophobic’, although he moved in circles where he would’ve been exposed to pretty extreme strains of it on a regular basis.
Orwell’s a tricky one – anyone could trawl his work and cherry-pick sweeping statements which support their cause, but I still love his work and believe he was a truly decent human being. He tried his best to make sense of what he witnessed in a relatively short life, and his advice for writers (in ‘Why I Write’ and ‘Politics and the English Language’) has never, imo, been bettered.
In the midst of austerity I’ve seen little on the MSM press about countries like Finland pressing ahead with universal basic income (and they don’t even issue their own currency)
Right, back to benefits street Xmas special. ..
Well it’s an honour Mr Peffers, for my comment to have initiated another interesting history lesson for us. It’s made my year ( at this late hour of it!).
Next years’ moments will be a May election rout and ( something I hadn’t considered until I saw it on the Rev’s Twitter thingy) England voting very narrowly to come out of Europe and the devolved countries keeping us in. England would go mad! And if the devolved countries are dragged out against their will, they would go mad. Either way it’s no end of constitutional mayhem for Westminster and the Tories in particular.
What fun!
Bugsbunny, yes, George Orwell was a bit anti-Scottish… he seems to overdo it a bit in his novel “Keep the Aspidista Flying” (see below)…. rather stereotypical images! Orwell went to Eton and he was definitely a unionist and a rather patriotic Englishman, for all that he was a socialist…
Having said that, Orwell was treated for TB in Scotland (Glasgow area, can’t remember where) and of course wrote “1984” on the island of Jura! “1984” was the culmination of his life’s work and it is not kind to “English” values… the Ministry of Truth is based on the BBC, where he worked in Room 101, and the thought police and telescreens are the twitching net curtains and prying landladies of private boarding houses. He set “1984” in London, not in Berlin or Moscow…
Anyway, here goes for the Scottish excerpts… to be honest, it reads more like what you would expect from a Guardian writer or the Scottish cringe, rather than a “real John-Bull Englishman”! Mind you, his real surname was, of course, Blair…
‘Gordon Comstock’ was a pretty bloody name, but then Gordon came from a pretty bloody family. The ‘Gordon’ part of it was Scotch, of course. The prevalence of such names nowadays is merely a part of the Scotchification of England that has been going on these last fifty years. ‘Gordon’, ‘Colin’, ‘Malcolm’, ‘Donald’ — these are the gifts of Scotland to the world, along with golf, whisky, porridge, and the works of Barrie and Stevenson.
Mr McKechnie, a sleepy, benign old Scotchman with a red nose and a white beard stained by snuff…. Mr McKechnie wasn’t a bad old stick. He was a Scotchman, of course, but Scottish is as Scottish does. At any rate he was reasonably free from avarice — his most distinctive trait seemed to be laziness. He was also a teetotaller and belonged to some Nonconformist sect or other… Gordon had sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t also a secret drinker, in the traditional Scottish style. His nose was certainly very red. But perhaps it was snuff that did it.
On the wooden seat upstairs he was wedged against a small dirty Scotchman who read the football finals and oozed beer.
Down in the bottom shelves the ‘classics’, the extinct monsters of the Victorian age, were quietly rotting. Scott, Carlyle, Meredith, Ruskin, Pater, Stevenson — you could hardly read the names upon their broad dowdy backs… Dead, all dead. Carlyle and Ruskin and Meredith and Stevenson — all are dead, God rot them. He glanced over their faded titles. Collected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Ha, ha! That’s good. Collected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson! Its top edge was black with dust. Dust thou art, to dust returnest. Gordon kicked Stevenson’s buckram backside. Art there, old false-penny? You’re cold meat, if ever Scotchman was.
Why is it that English Nationalism is never mentioned, never questioned?
It’s the constant decrying of ‘all forms’ of Nationalism that we hear about and of course this has been milked exhaustively from the Unionist side over the past few years in relation to us seeking self determination for Scotland.
England is one of the most fiercest Nationalistic countries you could encounter on the planet, and it’s not just yer EDL’s and BNP types I’m talking about here. The core of the British/English establishment is extreme Nationalism imv. Their state is the English state, dear old blighty is England, from the anthem to the Union Jack it’s England dear England all the way.
But we have not to notice that, we have bow to their ‘superior’ Nationalism, Queen and Country is England, not the Union. I dislike like intensely the pejorative use of the word when applied to the Scots, but the noble prerogative as applied to the English. Sickeningly hypocritical.
That’s yer infantilism richt there.
Meindevon@10.44pm and others,
Can someone more knowledgeable than me in politics, (lol that won’t be difficult), please tell me when this European Referendum is supposed to take place as I’ve seen numerous dates flouted. As a long time Anti-EU’er, how should I vote in this referendum? I’m gravitating to holding my nose and voting YES, hoping that Scotland does the same and England/Wales/Northern Ireland votes NO, hence starting the ball rolling towards an IndyRef2.
Scottish Independence is more important to more than a Britexit. I can always hope for a second bite of the cherry in an Independent Scotland in a multi-referendum on membership, or otherwise on Europe, Nato, U.N. and a Constitution and Bill of Rights.
You are right about Orwell, a visionary yes, but his politics towards Scotland? meh. I prefer Jules Verne and Aldous Huxley myself.
Stephen Roney.
I decided to give my full name. To fuck with lurking nawsayers. A new leaf for a new year. If certain folk round where I live read this tough. It’s called democracy and free speech. Get used to it.
new genetic research is causing a certain amount of revision regarding origins
link to youtube.com
see towards the end for barry cunliffe’s latest theory
facing the atlantic is an archeologic take on 2000 bc to 100 ad
alex woolf and james frazer
link to ebay.co.uk
link to ebay.co.uk
alex is a good yes supporter
moffat has written many books, all worth reading and easy reading too
link to ebay.co.uk
@JLT says: 27 December, 2015 at 8:44 pm:
“Hi, JLT, Yes we probably could talk together for hours
The thing is, of course, there is just so much of history that is imagined by past historians and much of the imagined stuff is utter rubbish and fairly easy to disprove.
I always ask for the thinking behind the theory and what, if any proof there may be. So I’ll give you some of the proofs and thinking behind what I claim. Let me explain something first, though. I run a wee campervan and before that had a quite small caravan and before that a tent. I’ve covered all Scotland well, and most of the rest of Britain too.
On one trip out for the day I stopped to walk my wee dog. Just by the picnic area at the Dollar Bends. The old rail line is a great walk and during the walk I chanced upon a group of Archaeologists on a dig on the old Gask Ridge and Roman Road. After befriending them and several such visits I learned a great deal about Scottish History but even more about the many myths taught as Scottish History.
Let’s deal with the terms used first. The Romans, being first to record our history, were the ones to name the North British Tribes and it was the Romans who coined the generic term Picts. Anyway, to attempt to keep things short, modern discoveries, and simple logic, have exposed some truths. The Oil Industry has seen the North Sea give up lots of facts with proofs.
What we now call, “Doggerland”, is well mapped and it disproves the old theory that the Channel was the land bridge to the main European Continent. When the rocky ridge that held back the cold polar waters burst Doggerland slowly became the North Sea. The residents made for the nearest higher ground – Britain. These were the aboriginal Britons.
The dig at Howick in Northumberland : –
link to news.bbc.co.uk
is the earliest known Stone Age dwelling yet found in Britain. Startlingly, a genetic test locally found a woman actually descended from a person whose remains were found at the dig. Howick is just around 25 Miles from Doggerland.
Workers on a building site in Inverness came across a thin layer of pure white sand and it dated to the time of the North Sea forming. The sand layer showed that the sea had briefly flooded the area in Inverness. So we now know the where the first settlers came from.
As to the theory of the Scots coming from Ireland. Recent digs on sea stacks and remote uninhabited Scottish Islands have thrown up artefacts that pre-date similar ones from Ireland – indicating the immigration was, if not in
the opposite direction, then at very least the Scots were on both sides of the Irish Sea.
This follows the logical thoughts that as the land was covered by the dense Great Caledonian Forest, then travel by land was hard to do. While travel by water was comparatively easy. Add to this the evidence that the shorelines, on both islands, are littered by, “Middens”, formed of discarded sea shells and fish bones and the evidence points to the early Britons, (Hunters Gatherers), had a mainly fishy diet. i.e. they lived by the sea in more senses than one.
It points to the Scots, (and probably other tribes), inhabiting both sides of the Irish Sea. Truth is that at it’s most narrow point the distance between the Irish and Scottish landmass is less than 25 miles.
You may thus get the idea now of where modern history is tearing old theories apart and offering solid evidence to prove it? Yet only last week I read someone claiming that the Normans were a different invasion from those that invaded before. Yet the history of Normandy clearly shows that the Normans did not get their name from the Place but the place was named after a branch of the Norsemen, (a.k.a. Vikings), who were invited to settle in what became known as Normandy after the local leader figured it was a good way to prevent them raiding the area.
Which calls into question the veracity of the tribes of Angles, Jutes, Saxons. et al, who were similarly invited into South Briton around the same time but the claim was it was to protect the South Britons from the North and West Britons, or as the English have it, from the Scots hordes.
Sorry if I’m repeating something up thread, but I’ve just finished watching Andrew Marr’s programme on Hugh MacDiarmid. It’s interesting and quite fair except that he leaves the impression of MacDiarmid as being a fascist sympathiser, unqualified. My understanding is that MacDiarmid said he preferred German fascism because it would be easier to defeat than English fascism.
link to bbc.co.uk
@Kenny (10.47) –
🙂
What a great extract, can’t remember ever seeing that. Mind you, it wasn’t a great novel, and Orwell pretty-much disowned it. (The clumsy use of ‘Scotch’ is embarrassing for a writer who was so meticulous.)
Have often wondered what kind of book he would’ve written had he chosen to ‘take the road’ to the west coast of Scotland/Glasgow rather than Wigan Pier?
It’s just such a shame that we’ll never know what he may have written had he enjoyed a normal lifespan, in which case he would’ve witnessed the moonlandings and Watergate!
“In 2003 the Russian President signed into law a further “Private Garden Plot Act” enabling Russian citizens to receive free of charge from the state, plots of land in private inheritable ownership. Sizes of the plots differ by region but are between one and three hectares each [1 hectare = 2.2 acres]. Produce grown on these plots is not subject to taxation. A further subsequent law to facilitate the acquisition of land for gardening was passed in June 2006. (according to a footnote in “Who We Are” by Vladimir Megre, pg. 42)”
link to thebovine.wordpress.com
RussiaBad, PutinBad, SNPVeryBad.
UKFair UkJust..
Capella@11.08pm,
A lot of Labour supporters forget that between the third week of August 1939 and the third week of June 1941, a lot of European Socialists were anti war because of the Nazi-Soviet pact, including a lot of British Left Wingers. But a few folk from the SNP do the same and they foam at the mouth.
Stephen Roney.
bugsbunny says:
“… voting YES, hoping that Scotland does the same and England/Wales/Northern Ireland votes NO, hence starting the ball rolling towards an IndyRef2.”
There are a lot of people around who are anti-EU and pro-Indy. I suppose you are right and those people need to ask themselves, which matters most and decide how to vote from that.
Your mention Northern Ireland. Anything I have seem implies NI is very pro-EU.
link to archive.is
That must raise the issue of what happens there if England votes to leave and NI votes to stay. As part of the Good Friday agreement they can hold a reunification referendum (but no more often than every 7 years).
It seems to me that many in NI might opt for a United Ireland rather than have the EU border on their doorstep. Perhaps if it also looks like Scotland will have another referendum on the Union.
I really don’t know how NI might go under these circumstances.
However, it does raise one issue. It was assumed in IndyRef1 that if we voted Yes, then rUK would be the continuing state. Under circumstances where Scotland opts to stay in the EU via full Independence, and NI opts to stay in the EU via reunification in Ireland….. where does that leave England (and Wales)? Not exactly a continuing state, but just another component in a disintegrating state.
@bugsbunny –
Good on ye with the ‘real name’ thing.
Not easy for many, for all sorts of reasons, and a wee bit ironic given that we’re discussing Orwell/Blair. 🙂
heedtracker at 9.16
The presence of berber in the DNA of a significant proportion of today’s Scottish population (I think it is as high as 12%) rather supports the ancient legend that the Scots who had come from Ireland into the South West and Kintyre had been on a centuries’ journey from the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa, across Iberia and into the south of Ireland (and perhaps further back from central Asia around what is now northern Afghanistan) .
Interesting front page on ‘The National’.
link to twitter.com
The National
Offshore workers are being blocked from getting it. The shop which has the franchise at Bristows stopped stocking it months ago. It was selling well and I cannot get a straight answer from the staff. It looks like its being blocked – need to do more digging.
Ian Brotherhood
I remember being blown away by Orwell’s ‘Why I Write’… will re-read it now so thanks for reminding me. I always found it quite strange that someone so seemingly anti-Scottish would spend so much time up here.
Was he a great writer? He certainly wrote some great books. I thought his writing was often poor (in my humble opinion). He was an idealist and a thinker and in that sense he was pretty much spot on.
The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out… still feel very fresh. As for Animal Farm and 1984 they seemed like predictions. Now they seem like historical allegories written with the luxury of time travel.
Or something. What do I know? 100 years on and Robert Tressell could have been writing about today.
Re Eric Blair aka George Orwell
He seems to be higly regarded in the Far East, on one trip I had to Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia their was a glowing article about him in the Korean Airlines inflight magazine, then in Cambodia a page about him in an English Language Newspaper, he also is known in Vietnam. Presumably he is known in the region due to his time in what was Burma as a Colonial Policeman. Also presumably his thoughts on Celtic Nationalism are clouded by his experiences at said job.
Robert Peffers at 8.01
William Wallace was not a Norman knight. He was a Strathclyde Briton. His name, Le Walys in Norman, which is the same name as Walsh and Welsh, indicates that
Regarding Scots DNA, if I remember correctly there is around 2% of Scots with dogger land DNA.
Both The Herald and The Scotsman look to be in their death throws. But The Scotsman has one big asset which will long outlive the paper: its name and masthead. Keep an eye on The Times …
The Sunday Times has an article in its Business section which states that Whitehall is now considering rival bids for the Type 26 frigates currently promised to BAE on the Clyde.
The existing guarantee of work for the Clyde yard expires in 2024, by which time BAE will have built just three of the original order of thirteen ships, which has already been reduced (since the referendum) to eight.
Despite the uncertainty in the yard, the MOD has still not signed any contracts for the ships, and as Whitehall says ” all options are being considered”.
Well, we told them what would happen if there was a no vote.
@Tam Jardine –
Yeah. Good shout.
I’m just about to read it again, and here’s a link for anyone else who wants to do so without having to root around shelves. (Most of us have a hard copy of this somewhere, whether we realise it or not!)
I’ve never tired of reading this essay. Orwell was no saint, and we can say that for sure by reading his own stuff. He had problems with ‘women’ generally, and a lot of hang-ups about his upbringing/class. Perhaps that’s why people love his work – just the fact that he tried to be honest about so much is, in itself, a very attractive quality.
I’m chuffed we’ve discussed the man here this evening. The passing of Ian Bell should remind us all that, in mainstream media at any rate, Scotland has very few writers who are truly free to exercise their critical faculties.
George Orwell, ‘Why I Write’ –
orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw
Badges – did someone mention badges?
@ bugsbunny
you’re right about the anti-war stance of many socialists at the start of the war. MacDiarmid seems to have had a very bad press then and now. Good though Marr’s programme is, it still feels as though thick fog obscures much of our political, historical and cultural landscape.
I blame the woefully inadequate media. Surely one function of the media is to reflect back the social fabric we all live within. Ours purveys a view of society that bears little relation to our lived experience.
TO: Robert Peffers. Are you a Teacher?…please don’t correct my comments.
Who where waiving Union Flags in George Square, in September 2015…the British!
I am Scottish…what is YOUR nationality?
My statement holds true: SNP baaaad….the language of BRITISH Sheep!
George Orwell was a man of his time and basically socialist in his politics, and at that time all socialists were automatically anti-nationalist, seeing the brotherhood of workers worldwide as the basis of future peace and progress.
European Nationalism was suspect in the 1930s because of its association with the wilder strains of extreme right wing politics from Spain through Italy and Germany. Orwell served with Republicans in the Spanish civil war. ( see his “Homage to Catalonia”) and this certainly coloured his opinions of right wing nationalism.
Today, I am certain he would be for our progressive, inclusive and non-threatening nationalism.
Incidentally he was anything but a little Englander. His book “Burmese Days” is a scathing attack on what he witnessed there as a Colonial police officer in the 1930s.
From his experiences in Burma he became a lifelong critic of imperialism.
I think Orwell is to be congratulated for his time spent on Jura – a place I have such a close affinity with, but only through the medium of their excellent Whisky. Currently quaffing a bottle of superstition -I think there may be some hidden metaphorical message in that…
“I am Scottish…what is YOUR nationality?
My statement holds true: SNP baaaad….the language of BRITISH Sheep!”
Oh God! its like talking to a brick wall!
In a slow political news day Kezia gets a mention on BBC online under Scotland Politics. link to archive.is
Kezia does make me smile now and then. She is on university challenge, tonight I think, and I quote “I didn’t get any questions wrong, although there were some serious tactics deployed in that regard as to who answered what”. Can’t wait to see if she answered any or just sat there saying “ah knew that”.
On another story they report that timber from South America was used for replacement decking on some of the bridges on the borders railway project, shock horror. Surely not an attempt to “SNP bad” another very successful SNP project. They need to be careful though as Betty did turn up to open the Borders railway or was she tricked by the SNP to be forever associated with South American timber. Woooo
What’s the betting for the year on year average drop of the Scottish MSM dead trees this time round. More than 10%? We are also still in the throes of an accelerating switch from a print based society to an IT based one so maybe we could get a real treat this time round. Seem to see bigger piles of all the crap left in local supermarkets every day.
Listening to radio 4 reporting the awful flooding in York. The local newspaper in York is suggesting that the flooding is unavoidable and the North has been neglected (suggesting the opposite would be controversial).
I was waiting to hear opposition politicians and pundits firing in to demand the head of the environment secretary and demanding answers. Surely at this point the BBC should be orchestrating a campaign to have the Environment Secretary sacked and David Cameron is being asked to apologise to the country? Nothing.
It is strange- I have been reading ‘London Calling’ and the chapter on the heavy snowfall that paralysed the M8 in the early days of SNP government. The contrast between the BBC’s handling could hardly be greater.
jdman
“I am Scottish…what is YOUR nationality?
and:-
The patron Saint of my country is St Andrew.
Who is the patron saint of your country?
😉
Anybody suggesting that the ‘scottishy’ papers are doing well is talking hogwash. Just consider, the laughably named ‘Scotsman’ used to reside in one of the most magnificent and commanding building in central Edinburgh on the North Bridge. Then they sold that and moved to their magnificent modern building based in Holyrood, just across the road from the Parliament, and near the Scottish Government at St.Andrews house – what a location for any newspaper to have.
Now they have some rented offices in a non-descript ‘carbuncle’ multi office block down by fettes, on the road out of Edinburgh.
Still to this day, the laughably named ‘Scotsman’ carries on with its twee, parochial, ‘London is best’ view of Scotlandshire, as its numbers plummet. Real head in the sand stuff, completely ignoring political reality in Scotland. A relic of the past.
I can only assume their shareholders view it as a political tool, rather than as a means of making money.
‘The Scotsman’ is, quite possibly, the most inappropriately named newspaper in the world. A better title for it would be ‘The cringing Scot’.
@Tam Jardine
The BBC have pretty much avoided the subject of climate change over the past decade. Orders from on high.
Just read the latest offering from Gerry Hassan. As always, much to say. This time about what 2016 might bring.
Then also, as always too it seems, when it comes to the SNP he says something which is basically hard to comprehend …
“The Nationalists need a different credo and mindset …. they cannot afford to be complacent, and have to radically alter their message, style and politics.”
Why, in the name of heavens, would a party which is so high in the polls, has such high positive ratings, and arguably has been very successful against considerable odds – change direction!?
Change into what? And, which direction?
I can only guess he means take a leap to the left. A fair enough opinion, but to what end? The SNP would lose much of its broad church support and return to the fringe of Scottish politics IMO.
ScottieDog says:
“The BBC have pretty much avoided the subject of climate change over the past decade. Orders from on high”
Indeed. And also, the way they handle Middle East issues. We must never forget that their propaganda mission runs far beyond the Scottish constitutional situation.
Fireproofjim;
I think the issue of the reneging of the unionist vow to build these frigates here is extremely important, and should be included as another major bullet point in any updated info sheet compiled by the SNP.
The list is surely extensive by now.
Scorched earth policy being inflicted upon Scotland by London after No vote in IndyRef#1.
Renewable industry shafted by London. Oil industry shafted by London. Ship building industry shafted by London. HMRC Scotland shafted by London. The list goes on.
It’s a win-win poicy for London as it allows them to redistribute jobs elsehwere in rUK and, at the same time, making Scotland more dependent on rUK. It also makes a YES result less likely in IndyRef2 as more and more of our working population will have to leave Scotland (thus losing their IndyRef#2 vote) to find work elsewhere.
These barstewards know exactly what they are doing.If you voted NO, this is how London will reward you.
Hope you are listening, Nicola.
IndyRef#2: JUST VOTE YES
SNP x 2 SE2016
We gotta get outta this place. And quick.
Effijy@10.40pm…….. Fabulous……… And seasonal at the same time…… Was so good Her Indoors asked me to sing it twice…..true.
One thing following on from Gardham’s snotty scribble, is that he and his pals continue to print a Big Fat Lie under the Editorial (the Herald is does not favour any political party or cause) …… A clear example of treating their readership as fools and imbeciles.
galamcennalath – I enjoy reading Gerry Hassan and am convinced he means well but he does have a tendency to confuse himself – as well as his reader!
Kezias on University Challenge? Wth is she reading? Politics? Economics? More like the The Broons maybe?
Stephen Roney.
A wee shout for Kev and the lads at independence live, they have a crowdfunder available from here.
link to blog.independencelive.net
Have a great new year when it comes, though my celebrations are restricted to the shortest day.
I’ve just been wading my way through one excellent, well-informed and interesting post after another. Written by morons, robots and sheep, as per people like Mr Gardham.
This is what’s causing the Gardhams of the World to feel insecure and threatened. Once upon a time they could print what they liked with no repercussions at all. Now their articles (thanks to Stu) are being scrutinised by highly intelligent, politically enlightened individuals, torn to shreds line by line and the findings shared Worldwide on SM. They of course are enraged about this: dented egos, plummeting sales and the political party / s that they endorse in chronic decline. More than anything signifying that their profession / livelihoods are now in jeopardy.
To counter being ‘outed’ they then attempt to further (SNP Baad) undermine and discredit SNP politicians, their policies / decisions, and Independence supporters by demonising them: a well known propaganda technique used to brainwash the masses. The problem, insurmountable obstacle, that they now face is that ‘masses’ support the Independence cause and are not so easily duped. Their ploy, if anything, has been very counterproductive indeed as I know that many undecided and prior no voters are now wondering what’s going on and questioning their blatant bias.
And as they, Unionist newspapers, grub around at the bottom of the barrel dredging up another SNP Baad ‘tale’ to report, such as the utterly, utterly ridiculous ………..Herald: ‘SNP has been blamed for fewer people in Scotland dancing’ ….
(Tory health spokesman, Jackson Carlaw, said ”The focus on the referendum has drained the country of energy … If ever proof was needed that the SNP has sapped the energy from people’s feet, this is it.”)
they are not reporting, suppressing in fact once AGAIN, news that’s critical for the Scots. ALL Scots …. Labour, Tory, Libdems, Greens and SNP. And they wonder why no one has any faith in them anymore?!
Jim Cuthbert ‘Fiscal Settlement: Flawed IFS Report Bad News for Scotland’
link to bellacaledonia.org.uk
Poor sods in York are getting a royal visit from Cameron, very stage managed, and much as I dislike Harpy Burley, she climbed a metal barrier, to get at him, cos she said she had been told ” no questions”.
Next up Prof Ashley, from Sheffield Uni completely demolishing any notion this is just rain. He was very coherent in setting out climate denial and systemic failures, and penny pinching by the Tories.
He said all it needs is money, and big proper solutions and gov’t is accountable for protecting the country’s “estate”.
Good man.
@Tam Jardine says: 27 December, 2015 at 9:32 pm:
“I enjoy and learn much from your posts explaining the history of these Isles Robert. Two quick and perhaps ridiculous questions – what outside of Wings have you had published on our history?
Nothing published by me, Tam.
I did run my own website many moons ago. There was some pages of Scotland’s history but it was mainly for my own short stories and poems. Much of which were slanted towards politics and disability issues.
Back then there was not a lot to prove the historians theories true or false. The historians compiled their theories from the historic records of earlier writers and historians. Much of which has since been shown to be utter bunk.
As I commented, up-thread, political spin can be found in the Roman’s recorded histories of Britain. If you compare one contemporary Roman record with another they each have a different spin. As I pointed out some of the Roman Generals in Britain spun well enough to eventually become Emperors.
My take on history is to treat it all as unproven unless there is sound logic and archaeological evidence to back it up. We now are finding more and more such evidence and most of it disproves the old historian’s theories.
However, on the present thread’s slant. The first British history was recorded by the Romans but the ancient Greeks made several references to Britain. It was the Romans who coined the names for the many British Tribes and we do not know what these tribes called themselves.
Terms, like, “Picts”, seem rather generic. What we do have that is mostly undisputed is archaeologically, scientifically and genetically provable.
Apply a little simple logic and we just might be closer to the truth than all the history books ever written. Strangely much of the modern archaeological stuff goes almost unreported.
On the Subject of we Scots and where we come from. We know nothing from the Ice Ages as the ice wiped just about everything out. What we do have that cannot be disputed is the evidence that under the North Sea is an inhabited area we now call, “Doggerland”.
The evidence was first proven when a trawler brought up some peat in its nets. The skipper knew enough to identify flint tools in the peat and took the peat to a University.
Then the North Sea Oil boom saw the North Sea extensively sonar mapped and the old theory of the first immigrants coming across a land bridge across the English Channel was disproved. They came from Doggerland.
A dig in Howick, Northumberland, is around 25 miles from Doggerland and it contains a long established Stone Age settlement. This knocks on the head the historians theory the Stone Age people were only Hunter Gatherers. We also had farmers alongside the Hunter/Gatherers and the Howick settlement is the earliest human dwellings yet found. It also provided genetic evidence.
Logic and the long established evidence of vast middens of seashells and fish bones all around our coasts proves that the early settlers were mainly seafarers. This bears out the fact that the natural habitat on land was The Great Caledonian Forest in the North and The Wildwood in the south. It was much easier to travel by water than hack your way across country.
As Ireland is less than 25 miles from Scotland by sea it is logical that these mainly seafarers lived all around the Irish Sea coasts and were one and the same people.
Furthermore, archaeology has carbon dated artefacts on Scottish Islands and sea stacks that pre-dates similar artefacts dug up in Ireland. It also seems the old idea that the first settlers crossed into south Britain from Mainland Europe and made there way north on land is unlikely. They most likely came round the coast by sea and certainly not all from south Britain as the evidence from Howick and even from Skara Brae, on Orkney shows.
link to ancient.eu
The above link to a Skara Brae site well illustrates the way past historians have wildly theorised as to the ancient historic village’s history and most of it utter bunk. Supposition without proof is nothing more than imagination.
While imagination and theorising have a part to play they must be engendered by scientific proof and logic to hold water.
As to your named historians, if they offer scientific proof to back their suppositions I tend to believe them – no proof offered and they are no more qualified to suppose than either Tam Jardine or Bob Peffers.
“Secondly- how do you rate the assorted writers of our history… Tom Devine, Magnus Magnusson,
TC Smout, Stuart Mchardy to name 4 off the top of my head.”
I rather like Tom Devine, he tends to use more than just the writings and records of older, dead, historians. He also seems to be more able to see things from a common sense and logical point of view. Pure Academics can be, shall we say, a bit other Worldly for my liking.
“Anyway- wishing you guid health and a braw new year
Cheers
Tam”
Believe me, Tam, I need a guid bit of yon guid health, ye wish me.
I wish you all the things you would wish yourself – (now that leaves you lots of scope”.
;-))
Dave McEwan Hill says:
27 December, 2015 at 11:29 pm
heedtracker at 9.16
The presence of berber in the DNA of a significant proportion of today’s Scottish population (I think it is as high as 12%) rather supports the ancient legend that the Scots who had come from Ireland into the South West and Kintyre had been on a centuries’ journey from the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa, across Iberia and into the south of Ireland (and perhaps further back from central Asia around what is now northern Afghanistan)
Did they keep going though? I heard that lots of Spanish sailors ship wrecked in Scotland via the Spanish Armada 1588, settled here and married lots of Scottish lassies too. Which is why everyone in Brora looks a lot like Rafa Nadal. Could also explain why Andy Murray’s one of the greatest tennis players in the world. Although the English hanged a Spanish Armada crewman who turned out to be a poor monkey.
Plus ca change:D
Just been informed that monkey was French during the Napoleonic wars and it was Hartlepool.
As a late addition, and following up a reference somewhere above to some of Orwell’s writings, I ended up reading something I hadn’t looked at since my late teens (don’t ask!), his essay on the nature of the English written in 1941.
If any of you have the time to read it, it should I think, provoke some interesting thoughts and speculations, seen now from the perspective of 3/4 of a century and an adjacent country.
So I give you, “England your (sic!) England” :
link to orwell.ru
Stuart the drive-by Troll says
It’s still a formidable figure in anyone’s language but, unfortunately for Wings, it’s exponentially less than the 300,000 claim.”
You do not appear to understand the exponential function and cannot do the mathematics. (Your score today is -1.145)
You do not seem to understand network monitoring although you could probably ask some coworkers who specialize in that.
This is more interesting than your usual drive by “one comment of insult wrapped in factual inaccuracy”.
I look forward to your attacks, their origins are probably mundane, but their bitterly twisted nature is fascinating.