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Archive for January, 2016


The Living End 171

Posted on January 31, 2016 by

Something kept nagging at the back of our minds as we read today’s front-page lead story in Scotland On Sunday about a battle between finance secretary John Swinney and a number of Scottish councils.

sosliving

And then we remembered what it was.

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Charity with menaces 173

Posted on January 31, 2016 by

Brian Spanner Fan Club chair JK Rowling yesterday moved quickly to correct some press reports that she’d abandoned her plans to sue independent MP Natalie McGarry over alleged defamation.

Tweeting to Herald reporter Martin Williams, she snippily noted:

rowlingwilliams

The true nature of the “request” therefore seems unmistakeable – “make a donation to my charity or get sued by someone richer than the Queen”.

And we can’t help wondering whether that’s tantamount to blackmail.

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A world full of philanthropists 364

Posted on January 30, 2016 by

To the astonishment of all, it turns out that JK Rowling isn’t going to sue anyone after all. Or, as the ever-reliable-and-accurate Scottish Daily Mail puts it:

mailsue

(It seems needlessly churlish and picky to also point out that McGarry currently isn’t an “SNP MP”, so we won’t do that.)

Instead, the author, worth hundreds of millions of pounds, intends to try to pressure McGarry into making a donation to her childrens’ charity, Lumos, which we can only presume is happy to receive money generated by what some people might regard as intimidation bordering on blackmail.

So that’s all well and good. If you’re going to bully people, after all, it’s probably best if it’s at least for a worthy cause. Rowling was full of praise for abusive Tweeter “Brian Spanner” when he raised some money for the same charity last year by selling t-shirts mocking the loony “Scottish Resistance” campaign group.

But not all charitable donations attract such gratitude.

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Broad shoulders, short arms 59

Posted on January 30, 2016 by

img162

Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.

Hullo, hullo, we are the bully boys 212

Posted on January 29, 2016 by

On the rare occasions when this site discusses football, and in particular if we mention the three-year-old Championship club known as “Rangers”, we get complaints on two grounds: one, that football has nothing to do with politics, and two, that we risk alienating supporters of the club who also back independence, of which there are unquestionably a significant number.

billyflag

The second complaint is one we’ve dealt with in detail here. But the first one is more important. Because whether you’re talking about the original club which died in 2012 and was put into liquidation or the new one currently challenging for promotion to the top division for the first time, “Rangers” is a totem of the Unionist establishment in Scotland, and the way it’s treated by the media tells us at least as much about that establishment and that media as any amount of political journalism.

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The tweets you won’t read 361

Posted on January 28, 2016 by

Social media amused itself briefly tonight over a spat between former SNP MP (now independent) Natalie McGarry and children’s author and hedge enthusiast JK Rowling.

It started like this:

rowlingnmg

And then some stuff happened.

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The bargain of evil 147

Posted on January 28, 2016 by

The Scottish Daily Mail’s front page lead today is so galactically despicable that it’s easy to overlook another story that it bundles in with the same “SNP BAD” attack.

whitfordkerevan1

While excoriating Dr Philippa Whitford for having the sheer shameless gall to help save women’s lives in her holidays, the alleged newspaper also devotes a page-high article to an attack on another Nat MP, George Kerevan, for employing his wife.

The headline, however, omits a rather key fact.

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The scum at the bottom of the sewer 201

Posted on January 28, 2016 by

As it happens, one of the things that we’ve been occupying ourselves with during the current news drought is pulling together a post called “The SNPBAD Files”, collecting all the desperate smear and innuendo of the Unionist press as it systematically tries to discredit every one of the 56 SNP MPs elected last May.

Until last night we hadn’t been sure which had been the most pathetically dismal. Was it the MP who still did a few haircuts in his barber shop on Saturday afternoons? The one who bought a derelict London house many years before he was an MP, renovated it with his own hands and now sometimes stays there when working at Westminster, rather than charging expenses to the public for accommodation? Or perhaps the one who tweeted that he was opposed to the concept of monarchy, the foul monster?

whitford1

Now, though, we have a clear winner.

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Kezia Dugdale Fact Check, part 675 166

Posted on January 27, 2016 by

Here’s Kezia in the Independent yesterday:

powerful1

powerful

The most powerful? Did it just get promoted?

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The headline is always a lie 133

Posted on January 27, 2016 by

In a cunning meta-twist which simultaneously proves and disproves its own claim, the headline above is itself a lie. It’s of course not true that every single headline you read in a newspaper is absolutely false.

It is, however, a pretty good rule of thumb.

beafraid

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Slow news month 268

Posted on January 26, 2016 by

We’re not saying there isn’t a lot going on at the moment, but today’s Daily Record actually devotes a page to telling women when to change their pants.

drpants

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Truth and wrongs 284

Posted on January 25, 2016 by

Below is a 17-minute section of this afternoon’s John Beattie show on BBC Radio Scotland, featuring me and an amateur blogger with a keen interest in Pedigree Chum discussing the effect of the lower oil price on the Scottish economy.

(John Beattie Show, BBC Radio Scotland, 25 January 2016)
.

Happily, by the end of the show everyone on all sides was agreed that the lower oil price will actually benefit the Scottish economy overall, with the positive effects driving growth and outweighing the downside of lower corporation tax receipts.

So that’s genuine progress – next time some frothing Yoon screams “OIL PRICE! BLACK HOLE! SNP LIES! TOO WEE, TOO POOR!” at you, you can direct them here for categorical agreement from the Yes and No sides alike that actually the falling oil price makes an independent Scotland MORE economically viable, not less.

Unfortunately you’ll have to put up with a condescending, patronising arse sniggering randomly throughout, but it’s a relatively small price to pay.

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