Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz gave an interesting interview to Good Morning Scotland just after 8am today, in which he expressed a number of careful, measured and qualified views on a variety of subjects including currency.
But obviously Scottish people are much too stupid to understand stuff like that, so the BBC quickly dumbed it down for them.
The problem is that there’s a difference between simplifying and falsifying.
The Scottish Mail On Sunday felt obliged this weekend to devote newsprint in what’s technically an actual newspaper to a piece of snark that might just be a new all-time low in the highly competitive barrel-scraping field of “SNP BAD”:
Half a page was given up to a bunch of sour complaints that the First Minister had built in FIVE MINUTES on her itinerary on a school visit (aimed at encouraging girls to take up traditionally male careers) for people to get selfies with her.
Dismayingly often, the thing that irritates us the most about the Unionist press lying to its readers isn’t the fact that they’re doing it, but the fact that they do it so insultingly badly. As an illustrative case in point, here’s the Sunday Times’ reliably dull-witted Scottish columnist Gillian Bowditch today:
Now, let’s be generous and ignore the honkingly stupid first paragraph, which paints a couple of exceptional bad years as a permanent status, and focus on the second one.
This is the demented, McCarthyite state of madness the Labour Party has reached:
This is a party now openly rejecting anyone as a member who has ever supported any other party. We’d take a minute to try to explain to them how the arithmetic of that one works out, but they’re a long, long way beyond the grasp of reason now.
Scottish Labour won a council by-election in Fife last night, held after the long-serving Communist Party/independent councillor Willie Clarke (who can be seen on the last page of our Charlie Hebdo feature here) stepped down due to ill health.
The successful candidate Mary Lockhart was understandably jubilant, but there were a couple of what seemed like pertinent facts missing from the local paper’s report.
One thing you can always guarantee on GERS Day is that the latest set of figures for Scotland’s devolved economy inside the UK will trigger another uncontrolled spurt of “SNP HONEYMOON OVER” articles from the nation’s dogged commentariat.
Today we’ve seen already examples (links below) from two ex-Scotsman editors, Iain Martin and Magnus Linklater, the latter popping up in the Times by way of a rather crass and unpleasant analogy involving Oswald Mosley and the Blackshirts.
And since we’d rather watch “Suicide Squad” again than spend any more time going over the arguments about GERS (and trust us, readers, we don’t say that lightly), we thought it’d be more fun if we finally got round to compiling a semi-definitive list of all the times the collective wisdom of Scotland’s media and opposition has confidently predicted the SNP’s imminent demise.
We originally wrote this article in March, in response to the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (better known as GERS) figures for 2014-15. We’ve updated it to take account of events since that time, of which there’s been one rather major one.
Today saw the publication (just five months after the 2014-15 GERS) of the 2015-16 stats, which are again triggering a convulsive orgy of “BLACK HOLE!” articles across the media, as every Unionist in the land falls over themselves to portray their own country as a useless scrounging subsidy junkie without actually using the exact words “too wee, too poor, too stupid”.
And once again, everywhere you look there’s a “Proud Scot” screaming about how the figures – showing an essentially unchanged “deficit” despite an almost £2bn fall in oil revenue – destroy a case for independence that those same people have spent most of the last four years stridently insisting never existed in the first place.
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: ““Although where there is a will, there is a way” Naw. That’s gullibility reinforced by the lucky accident of having…” Jun 20, 17:11
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “Breastplate, Aye At what point does a censorship country make a regime change to a dictatorship country. Although where there…” Jun 20, 16:15
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “Somebody had better check the small print. It could well be that at ScotGov, a “disabled” person is somebody trapped…” Jun 20, 15:40
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “Sure, Bip. If only we had more cheerleading for poot and more bigging up of the lassie torturing tunnel skulkers…” Jun 20, 15:36
agent x on Holiday Relief: ““THE Scottish Government has launched a “milestone” report which aims to put disabled people’s experiences and concerns at the centre…” Jun 20, 14:00
George Ferguson on Holiday Relief: “@Alf Baird 10:03am The purpose of being an Independent Candidate is surely that you don’t have a party or organisation…” Jun 20, 13:40
James on Holiday Relief: “Alongside a toon cooncil franchise and 24/7 interference by a foreign media system….” Jun 20, 13:38
Breastplate on Holiday Relief: “There’s a sign that hangs on the wall of the retirement home in The Simpsons. It says “Thank you for…” Jun 20, 13:13
lothianlad on Holiday Relief: “The 2014 referendunm was rigged.” Jun 20, 12:17
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “There were many reasons why the Scottish referendum did not work out for the scottish people in that year, some…” Jun 20, 11:54
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “I hope you can fit the story line together, it had to be done this way, because it kept getting…” Jun 20, 11:48
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “Mr johnstone admmited that their friends had interfered in stuff they had no business being connected too back in 2014…” Jun 20, 11:42
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “However the intelligence committee did a investigation around these new ruskelene friends and found they were not so friendly because…” Jun 20, 11:38
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “Perhaps given the initial info some here may be encouraged to do some research on the group mentioned” Jun 20, 11:31
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “They were a contented and happily connected bunch of party goers at that table, many conversations and ideas were shared…” Jun 20, 11:27
Aidan on Holiday Relief: “I’m not sure what kind of reset you have in mind, but in general jobs in the UK’s professional services…” Jun 20, 11:23
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “There were many interesting people in the Westminter ruskelene forum such as mr rifkind, caroline nokes. Mr Straw, and other…” Jun 20, 11:18
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “I am going to have to make this comments in separate posts, and you are going to have to glue…” Jun 20, 11:01
Hatey McHateface on What We Don’t Know Now: “An excellent post. I would add that recent moves to make it easier to eliminate “unproductives” from society are, as…” Jun 20, 10:46
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “Lots of sound ideas in Dan’s latest post. We should be using our local resources to make our own steel…” Jun 20, 10:35
robertkknight on Holiday Relief: “Another case of “I didn’t leave the SNP… the SNP left me!”” Jun 20, 10:17
Jontoscot21 on What We Don’t Know Now: “David I am with you. Alba were my last hope but they have proven useless. I find with the exception…” Jun 20, 10:07
Alf Baird on Holiday Relief: “Its taken him long enough (since 2015!) to figure out the SNP leadership has been co-opted by the colonial /…” Jun 20, 10:03
Dan on Holiday Relief: “@ Aidan Hmm, so you’re unable or unwilling to even consider looking at things through anything other than the current…” Jun 20, 09:34
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “Cleanup on aisle 1. Now please! His mammie’s hame at 10.” Jun 20, 09:17
James on Holiday Relief: ““Lord! Such a tedious bore.” Aye, yir aw that. Prick.” Jun 20, 08:42
socratesmacsporran on Holiday Relief: “When Fergus Ewing is bailing out of the SNP, why, other than being brainwashed in the cult, is anyone else…” Jun 20, 08:23
George Ferguson on Holiday Relief: “Tenruh Fergus Ewing should become the 4th Independent elected to Holyrood since 1999. His is the sort of profile needed.…” Jun 20, 08:16
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “Here’s a quote from something I read this morning on the subject of assisted suicide: “some might argue that the…” Jun 20, 08:07
Aidan on Holiday Relief: “@Dan you have a very bizarre view of the main industries that drive the economy across the U.K. Why have…” Jun 20, 08:05
