Well, that was odd. No sooner had we posted a rather lightweight little piece this morning, revealing that the fake-grassroots “Vote No Borders” campaign had been in development since June 2012, than the story got a whole lot more interesting.
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Tags: memory hole
Category
comment, investigation, scottish politics
The fact that the millionaire-backed fake-grassroots “Vote No Borders” group arrived on the referendum scene with so little warning got a bit stranger yesterday with the news that the “unpolished voters” campaign has been gestating for almost two years.
Alert readers will recall that Acanchi is the London PR company run by Malcolm Offord and Fiona Gilmore, the directors of VNB. And it seems they’ve been busy.
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Category
investigation, scottish politics
Some more people who want you to vote No so we can all be One Nation.
Although like Scottish Labour, they don’t seem to be very keen on foreigners.
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Tags: and finally
Category
uk politics, video
Because some of you won’t have seen it yet. This is NOT a spoof.
That’s what they think will persuade people to vote No, readers.
Category
comment, culture, scottish politics, wtf
Labour’s Douglas Alexander got himself in a right old pickle this weekend, at first claiming that the party’s new campaign around a poster about VAT referred to an annual bill of £450 for the average family, but then trying to backtrack in a panic and claim the sum was calculated over the entire period of the coalition government when it was pointed out to him that the figure was ludicrous.
Wings Over Scotland is of course dedicated above all to keeping the record straight, so our sinister network of shadowy cyber-agents got straight onto the case.
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Tags: flat-out lies
Category
comment, investigation, uk politics
This morning’s Daily Mail reports that Alistair Darling has been “sidelined” by the No campaign, with Douglas Alexander drafted into his place. We’ve remarked previously on this site about our bemusement over the reverence with which Mr Alexander’s intellect is regarded by the Scottish media, and we’re none the wiser after this:
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Category
analysis, comment, media, scottish politics, uk politics, video
The deeply dodgy fake-grassroots “Vote No Borders” group of wealthy London-based PR people has been rolling out its “unpolished” voters (their term, not ours) again, this time in a series of what must have been fairly pricey adverts in the Daily Record.
The simplistic, often dreadfully-misinformed quotes in the ads have been causing some irritation and anger among Yes supporters on social media, which is understandable but not constructive. After all, many of us have relied on the press for our information about one thing or another in the past too, and learned a bitter lesson.
So let’s see if we can’t actually be polite and helpful instead.
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Tags: perspectives
Category
comment, scottish politics
It’s been fascinating to watch the media slyly turning Chris and Colin Weir’s quite understandable objection to being defamed by loathsome right-wing newspapers and MSPs into an attack on “cybernats”.
But this morning Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph – who we rarely read even for laughs now, so far gone is his grasp on reality – added a particularly deft twist which we thought worthy of note for those who like to study how the press does its business.
And yes, we entirely meant that double entendre.
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Tags: misinformationphantomssmears
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
Alert readers will have noticed that we’ve been studying the UK government’s latest independence paper today. The 24-page booklet comes with a foreword from the Secretary of State for Portsmouth promising that it contains “the positive case for Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom”, so we thought it’d be fun to share some of our favourite snippets of positivity.
We could do with some cheering up.
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Tags: the positive case for the union
Category
analysis, comment, scottish politics
