Scotland has 2,174 miles of trunk roads, of which 1.7 miles (that’s just under 0.08%) comprise the Queensferry Crossing. For the next few days those 1.7 miles are going to be subject to some partial lane closures on the southbound side for maintenance.
They’ll cause almost no disruption, because as it happens there’s another very similar bridge conveniently located just a couple of hundred yards away – linked directly to all the same roads – that traffic will use instead.
Not much of a story, is it? We don’t know how many miles of Scotland’s roads have roadworks on them on any given day of any given week, but we suspect it’s quite a lot. It tends not to make the news beyond a few seconds on the traffic bulletin at the end, but today was different.
Cash is tight in Scotland’s Unionist-run councils.
If only there was something they could do to bring more money in, something they’ve been demanding the Scottish Government do for at least the last seven years and which the councils now have the power to do for themselves.
Back in the summer we sang the praises of one of Scotland’s tiny semi-handful of pro-independence print organs, the splendid iScot. So it seems only fair that we should offer the same courtesy to the other one we mentioned at the time, The National. It’s three years old today – how the time’s flown – and its editor Callum Baird wants your support. Over to him.
We wouldn’t say that the Scottish Daily Mail was obsessed or anything, but this is just today’s hysterical coverage of possible changes to taxation in Scotland which haven’t even been PROPOSED yet, let alone actually passed into law.
The efforts by the Scottish Tories to pull off some frankly ambitious shenanigans over today’s Budget continued overnight in increasingly bizarre fashion.
As with the Poppy Scotland funding, the party appears to be quite openly punting the line “We knew all along that this was possible and the right thing to do, but we deliberately punished Scotland for not electing enough Tory MPs”, in what can only be reasonably interpreted as an attempt at blackmailing future electorates.
The Scottish media, meanwhile, is doing its best to sell the issue as “a plague on both their houses”, holding the Scottish Government and UK government equally culpable for the mess. So let’s see what we know.
Yesterday’s edition of the Scottish Mail On Sunday devoted most of a page to a weird column from Ruth Davidson (in which she appeared to believe that Alex Salmond was still the First Minister), crowing about the great deal that Scotland’s 13 Tory MPs have supposedly won for Scotland in this week’s coming budget.
The first alleged fruits of the deal were revealed today.
That tweet is quite disturbing in itself, because what it unmistakeably implies is that if Scotland had voted for more SNP MPs in June and fewer Tories, the UK government would have retaliated by spitefully punishing innocent war veterans.
And Poppy Scotland weren’t too pleased about being weaponised either.
Seriously, all those millions in development, all the hundreds of pounds people have spent buying the PS4 and the VR headset and the game and the upgrade – how hard could it be to have it detect when you'd gone seriously off track and have the navigator go "ARGH! SHIT! OW! BLOODY HELL, GET BACK ON THE ROAD YOU MORON!", so as to not completely ruin the whole thing?
How dull-witted do you have to be, how far have you missed the point by, to obsess over every last wheelnut in the name of "realism" and then sit the player beside a virtually-real companion who keeps calmly reading out directions even as the car he's in plummets down a mountainside on its roof? For God's sake.
This is Spectator columnist Alex Massie reacting earlier this week to the news of Alex Salmond doing a show for Russian news channel RT.
Alex Salmond is these days a private individual with no responsibilities to anyone, and RT is a legal, Ofcom-licenced UK broadcaster whose output is beamed free into every home in the land.
The first episode of The Alex Salmond Show featured guests from both Labour and the Tories, opened with lengthy discussion and advocation of women’s and LGBT rights, followed by a 15-minute interview with deposed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont – something which has proven beyond the capabilities of mainstream UK news outlets despite the remarkable events currently engulfing an EU member state.
(BBC Scotland, we should perhaps note at this point, does not currently carry a single dedicated political TV show from a Scottish perspective at all and hasn’t done for more than a year.)
Massie used some slightly more measured language when it came to writing about the show in the Spectator, merely describing Salmond as an “idiot”, a “fool”, a “chump”, “pitiful”, “embarrassing” and “disgraceful”. But when it came to another former Scottish party leader, he was for some reason in a rather more forgiving mood.
We’ll be honest, readers – if this doesn’t make you want to leave the UK all by itself, it may be that there’s nothing that ever will and we should just give up.
(Alternative titles considered for this piece included Live And Please Let Die, Doctor Oh God No, The Barely-Living Daylights and Quantum Of Bollocks.)
twathater on Yelling at the tide: “I have no doubt Professor Baird that irrespective of what you post Hatey McFuckwit would have to comment on it…” Jan 21, 17:22
sarah on The Secondhand Amendment: “Andy Wiltshire: “Does the entire Scottish judicial system have membership of the same Edinburgh club?” Is this the New Club…” Jan 21, 17:14
Colin Alexander on Yelling at the tide: “Remember: In Scotland, Public body / professional body complaint processes are designed to fob you off and frustrate any attempts…” Jan 21, 17:12
Cynicus on Yelling at the tide: “Ian Smith says: “Bear in mind that AI can be prompted to agree with the type of query it is…” Jan 21, 16:57
Northcode on Yelling at the tide: ““What an utter clown you are “Northcode” And who was it who forced me to run away from home in…” Jan 21, 16:56
Lorna Campbell on Yelling at the tide: “No legislation in existence, in Scotland or the UK, gives any man the right to enter female spaces, even where…” Jan 21, 16:31
Northcode on Yelling at the tide: “And you, Father, are a total embarrassment… period. Not least because of your over-reliance on the exclamation mark and the…” Jan 21, 16:00
Northcode on Yelling at the tide: ““Give up son…” No, Father… I will never give up, I will never surrender. And know this, oh giver of…” Jan 21, 15:52
Insider on Yelling at the tide: “Christ ! What an utter clown you are “Northcode” Give up son ! You’re a total embarrassment to the Indy…” Jan 21, 15:15
Northcode on Yelling at the tide: “Here’s anither yin taken fae the online “Dictionars o the Scots Leid”: SIN, adv., prep., conj. Also syn, sen, san(e),…” Jan 21, 14:58
Alf Baird on Yelling at the tide: ““the Scottish Legal System operates in a context free vacuum” The basic principle of any colonial justice system is that…” Jan 21, 14:51
lothianlad on Yelling at the tide: “stick with it warrior Stu! Thank you for all you do for truth and justice” Jan 21, 14:49
Northcode on Yelling at the tide: “” We knew you would not disappoint us…” I wonder who the “we” and “us” are. Must be aw its…” Jan 21, 14:32
Andy Wiltshire on Yelling at the tide: “In reply to your letter, we undertake to give a response immediately after the conclusion of Operation Branchform.” Jan 21, 14:16
sarah on Yelling at the tide: “The plot thickens. Very well done, Rev, and thank you once again for trying, directly, to improve public standards in…” Jan 21, 13:53
Ian Smith on Yelling at the tide: “Bear in mind that AI can be prompted to agree with the type of query it is presented with. If…” Jan 21, 13:50
sam on Yelling at the tide: ““I would bet money that is at the heart of the Kemp fiasco.” Me,too. And “correspondence”? What part did this…” Jan 21, 13:35
Northcode on Yelling at the tide: “God Almighty the colonialists on here are thick. And their reading comprehension of the English language appears to be wanting,…” Jan 21, 13:26
Cynicus on Yelling at the tide: ““If you are satisfied that Judge Kemp did not derive them from generative AI, are you equally satisfied that the…” Jan 21, 13:12
sam on Yelling at the tide: “Scrutiny of the tribunal findings from Genspect. “The Tribunal maintains on the one hand that “having the protected characteristic of…” Jan 21, 13:10
Confused on The Secondhand Amendment: “let’s remember the facts of our own situation; historical interlude … the union, when you look into what happened, is…” Jan 21, 13:00
Ian Smith on Yelling at the tide: “Surely Judge Kemp must have read these landmark rulings by himself and noticed that his judicial colleague was talking nonsense.…” Jan 21, 12:57
Confused on The Secondhand Amendment: “no iranian cleric ever stole your country’s oil, resources, made you second class citizens/white n1ggers, spilled your blood for nothing,…” Jan 21, 12:57
Confused on The Secondhand Amendment: “it’s called the speculative society and its a drop your keks, grab your ankles and bite down on this ……” Jan 21, 12:56
Northcode on Yelling at the tide: “sin [s?n, s?n] adv. Since, ago, from now, from that time. prep. Since, from the time of, after. conj. Since,…” Jan 21, 12:43
sam on Yelling at the tide: “I think it likely that the matter of correspondence with a judicial colleague will be raised in the EAT to…” Jan 21, 12:43
Dave Hansell on Yelling at the tide: “Sadly, for the poster known as Northcode, an award claimed immediately by a post which implies, if not effectively argues,…” Jan 21, 12:30
Hatey McHateface on Yelling at the tide: “Sure about that, Alf? My innate knowledge of Scots, backed up by a check in the Scots dictionary, shows “sin”…” Jan 21, 12:16
Hatey McHateface on Yelling at the tide: “Given that Shona is to be replaced by Susan, it would be interesting if some forensic journalist were to dig…” Jan 21, 12:05
