Just for laughs, we thought we’d have a look on the BBC website this morning for some intelligent, detailed analysis of yesterday’s devolution proposals from the Conservatives. Yeah, we know. We must still be a bit drunk from last night.
Not only is there not a single mention of the Strathclyde Commission report in the headlines (which do find room to report the line-up of a book festival in Nairn coincidentally featuring a number of BBC presenters, and the hot news that Roy Keane will NOT be the next manager of Celtic, although neither he nor Celtic had ever said he would), but on digging down into the dedicated referendum section we found something more disturbing.
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Tags: misinformation
Category
disturbing, media, scottish politics
As we forced ourselves unwillingly through the full text of the Strathclyde Commission report in the name of professionalism this afternoon, it struck us that perhaps in our partisan haste we’d been just a tiny bit harsh on it.
After all, while the extension of tax powers is at best an empty charade and at worst an expensive millstone around the neck of the Scottish Government’s budget, and the proposals for devolving elements of welfare vague and highly unlikely to ever be implemented, there are a couple of recommendations that would, while minor in the context of Holyrood’s overall finances, at least be welcome.
Something nagged at the back of our mind, though.
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Tags: vote no get nothing
Category
analysis, comment, history, scottish politics
The Strathclyde Commission report, 15 months in the making and repeatedly delayed, is just 16 pages long. We’re not too sure what the team did for 14 months and three weeks of that time, because in essence the report is the executive summary of Scottish Labour’s “Powers For A Purpose” paper with a couple of numbers changed.
(Luckily they’re fantasy numbers that won’t affect anything, as the powers they refer to can never be used and in fact will be delivered by the Scotland Act 2012 anyway.)
So rather than bore you by going through it making all the same arguments that we made about the Labour report again, we’re going to keep it short.
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Tags: vote no get nothing
Category
comment, scottish politics
This morning’s papers are already full of reports about the contents of the Strathclyde Commission report, the Conservative counterpart to Labour’s shambolic “Devo Nano” proposals. Embarrassingly for Johann Lamont, it looks as though the Tories are going to “outbid” Labour, the self-proclaimed “party of devolution”, with what are superficially greater powers for the Scottish Parliament on taxation.
And like much of the media’s coverage of the entire independence debate, the reporting to date is an insult to the intelligence of the people of Scotland.
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Tags: Devo Nanomisinformationvote no get nothing
Category
analysis, comment, media, scottish politics
The top five most-read stories on Wings Over Scotland in the last seven days.
1. An actual letter from America
A fresh perspective on NATO and nukes.
2. The news less fit to print
The media tries to pretend there isn’t a blue whale in the room.
3. Unrestricted warfare
Just your standard No camp make-people-think-their-child-will-die stuff.
4. A day of shame
On which we learned that 10% = 30% and 4 = 1.
5. Friends and enemies
Anas Sarwar claims the BNP and Britain First for team-mates.
This week’s theme: spin so intense it alters gravity.
Category
scottish politics, stats
We’ve been toasting in the sun with the Wings Emergency Kitten most of today, readers, celebrating the fact that Wings Over Scotland now has more unique readers per month than the sales of any Scottish newspaper.
(As of May we’re reaching 253,000 people monthly, whereas the best-selling paper, the Scottish Sun, shifts 248,000 copies. It is, of course, a ridiculously unfair comparison for all sorts of reasons, but it’s still nice as a purely symbolic milestone.)
Even so, when an alert reader sent us a picture of today’s Scottish Sunday Express we wondered if we might have baked our brains a bit too much, because it carried a feature about something that we didn’t remember doing at all.
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Category
comment, media, scottish politics, wtf
Readership stats for May, if you like that sort of thing.
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Category
navel-gazing, stats
Prepare for the ranting to begin over on his site…..
