A few days ago we bemoaned the state of the Royal Mail under its partial privatisation by successive Labour and Tory governments, and noted that often the post didn’t arrive until well into the afternoon. And sure enough, it was only a few minutes ago that we picked this up from the doormat.
As of around half an hour ago, the National Collective website looks like this:
The site had recently attracted a great deal of traffic for a post entitled “Dirty Money: The Tory Millionaire Bankrolling Better Together”, which compiled together links to a number of newspaper articles about Ian Taylor, a businessman who donated £500,000 to the anti-independence “Better Together” campaign.
(Possibly coincidentally, the site’s Wikipedia entry has been nominated for deletion.)
As far as we can establish, the stories linked in “Dirty Money” – in, among others, the Guardian, Mirror and Telegraph – are still online. There’s an absurd, huffy, pious whinge on the “Better Together” website complaining with no apparent irony about the article being part of “a co-ordinated dirty-tricks campaign by the nationalists”.
Other than that, we’re as much in the dark as everyone else.
(The next-biggest donator, author CJ Sansom, sent their £161,000 cheque from their home in Sussex, which we’re fairly sure also isn’t in Scotland.)
We’ve dropped Mr Sheridan a line asking if he finds non-Scottish-resident, tax-avoiding Ian Taylor’s huge donation to the No campaign “nauseating”. We’ll let you know his answer the minute it arrives, which surely won’t be long.
We haven’t actually seen any really nice pictures of the impromptu event in Glasgow last night, or at least we hadn’t until Ross Wood sent us some of his. Check out his website for more beautiful shots of this and other things.
We were a little mystified, on watching last night’s newsgasm about Margaret Thatcher, to see the degree to which Tories were suddenly punting the ancient Labour line about the SNP being somehow responsible for her becoming Prime Minister in 1979, and therefore by implication for everything that happened subsequently.
Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph, Michael Forsyth and Ruth Davidson have all been enthusiastically joining the usual parade of absurd Labour pantomime sorts like Lord Foulkes over the last 24 hours or so, which struck us as a mildly odd joint bit of anti-independence smearing, reliant as it is on people not realising that the two parties are cynically colluding while making diametrically opposite points.
We don’t think the electorate is quite that dim, though of course it’s never wise to overestimate people who would repeatedly elect Michael Forsyth and George Foulkes in the first place. So we’re just going to leave this here:
Attentive readers will of course recall the shocking revelations from the No campaign earlier this year about the terrifying cost of independence to Scots – £1 a head. But what’s the latest info on the price of staying in the UK?
We suppose we should thank Mrs Thatcher for giving us the last nudge over this rather special landmark, thanks to our second all-time-high pageview record in two days:
As we browsed the print edition of the Daily Record today to compare its coverage of the latest independence referendum donations news with the online version (with particular regard to Kevin McKidd), we spotted something else curious.
We’ve already noted a curious hypocrisy in the Scotsman’s reporting of the same issue this morning, where it pointedly questioned whether the SNP had handed over some sizeable donations to the party to the Yes campaign, while allowing Blair McDougall to make a virtue out of the fact that Labour and the Conservatives hadn’t transferred party funds to the No campaign. But the Record’s arithmetic is even more confused than the Scotsman’s logic.
Glorying in the death of an individual is unseemly, especially one long past the time when they did their damage. Owen Jones put it well here. Today, though, with no shame whatsoever, we celebrate the death of an icon. Not the human being, but the values they stood for and their appalling toxic legacy of what was once a country one could be proud of being a part of.
That country died in 1979, and its corpse was dug up and desecrated in 1997. Nothing we could say, no matter how awful, would be a tenth as despicable as the changes wrought in Britain over those last 34 years. So we’re going to say nothing, and play a song with words that are impossible to make out. You might prefer some others.
Below is a Daily Record story about lots of people giving money to “Better Together” (although confusingly, apparently it’s for an “election” rather than a referendum), accompanied by a large picture of handsome “Trainspotting” star Kevin McKidd.
One might infer, not unreasonably, from the headline and picture that Mr McKidd was one of the No campaign’s “big-hitters”. There’s nothing at all in the article’s text which would dissuade readers from that view.
twathater on Too Tight To Mention: “It never ceases to amaze me how many fuckwits actually think they are in the same rich league as these…” Jul 10, 03:05
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Young Lochinvar on Too Tight To Mention: “That I believe would be the Celtic mythical Tuatha de Danann, the Celtic equivalent of the Gods of Mount Olympus.…” Jul 10, 01:48
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Young Lochinvar on Too Tight To Mention: “Well that would be you P3nisbreath; posting about “sucking blokes off” (your post), shafting blokes between “spread bum cheeks” (your…” Jul 10, 01:13
Alf Baird on Too Tight To Mention: “Yes, worthless treaties simply used ‘to legalize colonialism’, at least in the eyes of an Imperial justice system. A hoax…” Jul 9, 22:59
Chas on Too Tight To Mention: “How’s the carp fishing going James?” Jul 9, 20:26
Xaracen on Too Tight To Mention: ““–the chair of C-24 is quoted in a Guardian article explicitly saying that C-24 cannot.” Irrelevant, Aidan, because it doesn’t…” Jul 9, 19:56
Captain Caveman on Too Tight To Mention: “I literally asked you to provide evidence for any single one of your dumbass, unsubstantiated assertions. That’s not a “rebuttal”…” Jul 9, 19:39
TURABDIN on Too Tight To Mention: “Treaties are worthless, not unlike cease fires. How many treaties did the imperialist British sign before annexing the other signatories…” Jul 9, 19:30
AndrewR on Too Tight To Mention: “Aidan She didn’t participate in acts of terrorism, and certainly not of treason (this was in Syria). This same murderous…” Jul 9, 19:26
Dan on Too Tight To Mention: “Ah, jist noticed this post by Aidan trying to diminish understanding of how much energy is exported from Scotland’s geographic…” Jul 9, 19:22
Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “@Andrew – I suggest she had her life destroyed by the decision she took to join a murderous death cult…” Jul 9, 19:09
AndrewR on Too Tight To Mention: “Hatey – “… you expect me to feel sorry for the people who slaughter and abuse my country’s and my…” Jul 9, 18:29
James on Too Tight To Mention: “Sam – did the university poll a wide range from the UK? Scotland only would probably throw up different results?…” Jul 9, 18:17
James on Too Tight To Mention: “What, that was your rebuttal? Lol. You surely don’t think I’m wasting any of my time on any of that…” Jul 9, 18:11
agent x on Too Tight To Mention: ““Police preparing for Donald Trump to visit Scotland The Scottish government said it was working with the UK government to…” Jul 9, 17:49
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Too Tight To Mention: “See following Wings over Scotland article ‘Death from above’ (March 13, 2012). Stu writes: « We have a paid subscription…” Jul 9, 17:48
Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Midgies tae. When oor junkies and jakies start being stealed an a’, we’ll ken we’re in the end game.” Jul 9, 17:45
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James Cheyne on Too Tight To Mention: “Captain caveman, 12:04 pm. Actually the programme I am watching is How to Save England, -. The word England being…” Jul 9, 17:03
Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Does any left of centre politician care about the young people born in the UK, sam? Much of the evidence…” Jul 9, 16:48
Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Sae true, NC, the scribblin is oan the wa. In fact, it’s only going to be (checks notes) 4-5 years…” Jul 9, 16:40
sam on Too Tight To Mention: “When you don’t know what you think you know. Cambridge Journal of Economics Cover Image for Volume 44, Issue 2…” Jul 9, 16:36
Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “I’ve just run a couple of searches on ChatGPT for for similar search criteria. Which is helpful and revealing because…” Jul 9, 16:32
sam on Too Tight To Mention: “Not many people agree with you. https://www.derby.ac.uk/blog/margaret-thatchers-legacy/ Survey results In January and February 2019, researchers at the University of Derby…” Jul 9, 16:28
Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Great stuff sam. Now do the type of “personality” that posts interminably about pricks, penises, wanking, shirt lifting, glory holes…” Jul 9, 16:22
Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “James says: “Brexit” Aw, we need to crowdfund the boy a dictionary. Turn doon the page corner on the letter…” Jul 9, 16:16