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The Pollyanna Problem 69

Posted on July 21, 2017 by

Broadly speaking, the psychological phenomenon known as the Pollyanna Principle is a tendency to neurotically see the most positive possible view of a situation. It’s not generally widely found in newspapers – for whom bad news as a rule sells much better than good news – but for some reason the Scottish press makes a uniform exception when it comes to military shipbuilding.

This, for example, is today’s Herald:

Now, in itself that headline is – unusually – true, so far as it goes. But it only takes until the first sentence of the article text before things start to fall apart.

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Tags:
Category analysis, debunks, disturbing, media, scottish politics

Friendly Help For Jeremy 110

Posted on July 21, 2017 by

From today’s Daily Record:

Have you spotted Kindly Uncle Jez’s mistake, readers?

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Tags:
Category debunks, idiots, scottish politics, uk politics

The second-class licence fee 301

Posted on July 19, 2017 by

Today the BBC finally officially revealed what everyone already knew.

So now Scottish viewers definitely know where we stand.

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Category analysis, comment, football, media, scottish politics

The proof of the pudden 125

Posted on July 18, 2017 by

Here’s Kezia Dugdale in the Daily Record today:

If only there was somewhere that Labour DID already run the NHS so that we could judge the truth of that claim, eh readers?

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Category analysis, idiots, investigation, scottish politics

The Victim 452

Posted on July 16, 2017 by

Deep in the summer news desert, the papers today are struggling for material again. The Sunday Herald has a shock-horror front-page exposé about some photos from an Orange Lodge party that turn out to be from 2010 and 2013, while the Scottish Mail On Sunday reaches all the way back to 1940 to fill a couple of pages.

But the Sunday Mail’s timing is even weirder.

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Category comment, culture, football, media, scottish politics, wtf

Glass house heavily stoned 117

Posted on July 14, 2017 by

And no, we’re not talking about Ruth Davidson living it up at Fingers Piano Bar. Kezia Dugdale tweeted this today:

Which would be a little bit like us gloating that Andy Murray was rubbish at tennis on the grounds that he was knocked out of Wimbledon this week.

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Tags:
Category comment, history

Mundell’s Law 75

Posted on July 14, 2017 by

We already knew what David Mundell’s guarantees were worth, of course. So it’s not like we can exactly feign surprise at this.

The best we can say is that at least this time it took four months for the Secretary Of State’s promise to completely and utterly collapse, not 48 hours.

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Tags:
Category comment, europe, scottish politics, uk politics

Good news is no news 97

Posted on July 13, 2017 by

In a month of positive statistics for Scotland – including unexpectedly high economic growth figures, continuing to lead the UK and hitting its own tough targets for hospital waiting times (which drew an incredibly petty and insulting response from Scottish Labour), and huge progress in rail punctuality (now also the best anywhere in the country) – perhaps the most welcome of all was the release yesterday of the lowest unemployment figures for quarter of a century.

(Again the best in the UK, and in fact the best in Scotland of all time, since separate Scottish records only started to be kept in 1992.)

The Scotsman commendably gave the glad tidings top billing on its front page.

But despite it being slow news season, the rest of the media was a little less excited.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics

To last throughout the years 319

Posted on July 12, 2017 by

We’re not often genuinely shocked, readers.

But then we switched on BBC1 Northern Ireland today.

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Tags:
Category culture, media, pictures, uk politics, video

Towers of hate 159

Posted on July 12, 2017 by

It’s a sleepy Wednesday in July, so let’s celebrate some proud British culture!

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Tags:
Category culture, pictures, uk politics

The problem of memory 135

Posted on July 11, 2017 by

So this is a thing that happened yesterday:

Because, as ever, Scottish Labour are absolutely certain that voters are morons.

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Category debunks, history, idiots, scottish politics

Lies spring eternal 502

Posted on July 08, 2017 by

“Colonel” Ruth Davidson took time out from her holidays yesterday to unleash an extraordinary (and unusually defensive) 35-part Twitter tirade about the reaction to her appointment as an honorary military commander. So barren is the summer political news desert that two newspapers put it on their front page today, giving the BBC an excuse to deem it the day’s biggest story.

But that wasn’t the bit that caught our eye.

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Tags:
Category debunks, media, scottish politics

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