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Archive for October, 2016


How things are done in the sewer 130

Posted on October 22, 2016 by

Many readers spotted a particularly repellent article in the Daily Express this week, penned by its clueless and poisonous hack Siobhan McFadyen.

expressbrain

McFadyen, who rather uncharacteristically failed to insert any violent language into a headline about the First Minister, instead leapt eagerly onto an artificial furore around the actions of Gregg Brain, the Australian father battling his family’s deportation from the Highlands by the Home Office, at last week’s SNP conference.

(Their case is so outrageous that even the Daily Mail and David Coburn have joined the fight to have the family be allowed to stay.)

We got an email from Gregg Brain about how the story had come into being, and (with his permission) we thought you might like to see the exchange which took place between him and Siobhan McFadyen, with the purposes of illustrating how the press distorts, perverts and selectively omits quotes in order to mislead.

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The Fear 94

Posted on October 22, 2016 by

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The Simple Ruth 391

Posted on October 20, 2016 by

On the contentious and topical subject of what constitutes a mandate for a second independence referendum, we’re grateful to the super-alert reader who unearthed this clip from BBC Scotland’s election night coverage of 2011, in which Ruth Davidson gives a candid and blunt explanation of the criteria required:

We’re just going to write that one down for the record.

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A strange interpretation 105

Posted on October 20, 2016 by

The BBC and STV are reporting this today:

no10mandate

And yet.

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The Count 274

Posted on October 19, 2016 by

An article by Nick Cohen in the Spectator last night fairly had social media ablaze with a heady brew of anger and mockery.

nickcohenisabawbag

It’s the most extraordinary outpouring of deranged, spittle-flecked arsewash we’ve seen outside of a Daily Express comment thread in a very considerable time, and it merits attention solely because we think it might have broken a world record for the number of empirical falsehoods contained in an article in a respectable media outlet.

Get your clickers out, readers. You’re going to need a fast trigger finger.

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This is how afraid they are 159

Posted on October 19, 2016 by

Because fiddling it in 1979 worked so well in the long run.

supermaj

Stand by for the dead voting again, folks.

Exploring the options 307

Posted on October 18, 2016 by

We had a bit of a debate at the weekend with ITV’s generally pretty decent Scotland correspondent Peter Smith, after he tweeted this:

peterasmith

It wasn’t the curious choice of picture we objected to, nor the fact that the £14.8bn figure is a notional sum which is totally meaningless in the context of an independent Scotland (because it represents a vague estimate of the disaggregated finances of a Scotland that’s inside the UK and subject to UK government policy choices).

Nor was it even the implication that a £14.8bn “black hole” was an inherent permanent feature of the Scottish economy rather than an unusually bad year.

What chafed with us was the idea that it was somehow Nicola Sturgeon’s fault.

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Bowled out by the softballs 497

Posted on October 16, 2016 by

Here’s David Mundell on Sunday Politics earlier today:

It’s a pretty uncomfortable time. But it could have been a lot worse.

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Meet The Ultra-Yoons 490

Posted on October 14, 2016 by

Hardcore nutter collective Scotland In Union are already the de facto unofficial No campaign group for the second independence referendum.

Evidently very well-connected and already flush with cash from sources unknown, the limited company recently raised a reported £300,000 for itself at a “charity” dinner attended by such luminaries of the great and the good as Lord Alistair Darling, Lord Dunlop and (um) Willie Rennie, auctioning off exotic high-end goodies like hunting trips to Africa, polo parties with the Maharajah of Jodhpur and Alpine holidays described in the lavish 60-page auction catalogue as featuring:

“A fabulous chalet and a family home, with six bedrooms sleeping 12, all en suite. Although the chalet does not come with a chalet girl, we will provide one for you.”

(There were also some signed JK Rowling books for the paupers.)

So that’s nice. Extremely wealthy people – just getting into the dinner was £250 – who are doing very well out of the way things are, donating big wads of money to some other people trying to ensure that the rich folk stay that way. No law against it. But just who are the true believers rushing bravely to the defence of the Union’s elites?

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The wrong question 413

Posted on October 13, 2016 by

There was a rather comforting predictability about the headlines the Scottish media greeted the first day of the SNP conference in Glasgow with.

natconfpapers

Unsurprisingly, the Express’ lead story was a piece of fabricated drivel based on alleged quotes from an unnamed source claiming that the Scottish Government would resign in order to force an election and win a mandate that it already has.

(The SNP’s manifesto this May, on which it won a third landslide election victory in a row, clearly reserved the right to call a second referendum should there be a serious material change in circumstances, explicitly citing the Brexit scenario as an example.)

The Daily Mail, meanwhile, puffed up a load of entirely fact-free press-release foaming from some Tory list MSP nobody’s ever heard of into “news”, in the process somehow managing to twist the economic consequences of the Brexit vote caused by his own party into a bewilderingly illogical attack on Scottish independence.

Both articles are essentially the sort of comedy pastiches of terrible journalism one might create as a cautionary example in a media studies degree course, so we’ll waste no more of your time on them. The Herald’s piece, though, is at least marginally more interesting.

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Another lucky escape 115

Posted on October 13, 2016 by

Alert readers may recall that almost three years ago, the No campaign issued a series of dire warnings that independence could cause supermarket prices to rise:

telegraphshopping

btshopping3

btshopping2

Thankfully, by staying in the UK and therefore leaving the EU, Scotland etc etc.

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Getting to Fawkes 375

Posted on October 11, 2016 by

Readers may be aware that Wings Over Scotland is (fairly remarkably, really) the UK’s second-most-read politics blog, behind the hardcore right-wing “Guido Fawkes”.

Our “competitor” isn’t a site we look at a lot – the comments make the Daily Mail readership seem like enlightened and thoughtful moderates – but last week someone asked us about a smear piece they’d run on SNP MP Corri Wilson, and we only just remembered today to check it out. Our initial findings weren’t well received.

fawkescunt

It seems that Mr Fawkes and his minions aren’t too keen on scrutiny themselves.

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