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Misleading advertising 52

Posted on April 13, 2014 by

The pitch:

btclydebank

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No That’s What I Call Music 56

Posted on April 13, 2014 by

We’re off to watch the Scottish Cup semi-final now, so to keep you all entertained for the next couple of hours here’s a little something we put together at the request of columnist and broadcaster Lesley Riddoch, and for anyone who was listening to Radio Scotland’s “Headlines” this morning.

Hopefully we won’t need it ourselves by 3.30pm. #COYR

Keep ’em coming 189

Posted on April 11, 2014 by

We didn’t do a stats post at the start of April (still just under 4m pageviews a month, if you’re curious) but when someone tweeted these figures this morning we thought they were worth a wee toot, because they’re more than just nice news for us.

alexavs

They’re from the independent web-traffic analysis site Alexa.com, and they detail the relative rankings for the seven biggest dedicated Scottish politics sites on the web.

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A new society 86

Posted on April 11, 2014 by

The last batch of data from our Panelbase poll concerns social attitudes, away from directly party-political issues. We did a whole bunch of these last time, with a mixture of predictable and unexpected results, and Scots had a surprise or two for us again.

thechanges

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Neither national nor collective 114

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

It’s late, but we couldn’t let this one pass.

nhstogether

Heavens, where do we start?

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Voices of nationalism 171

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

We’ve had these sitting around for a few days without getting round to posting them, but as we’re currently knee-deep in the last tranche of data from our Panelbase poll, it seemed as good a time as any to clear the decks.

First up in the ambiguously-named Posterotron is the “respectable” face of British nationalism, in the form of UKIP European-election candidate David Coburn.

Easy, ladies.

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They talk a lot of wind 108

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

There’s a wonderful opening paragraph in today’s Courier that we’ll quote in full:

“The UK’S Energy Secretary has accused the SNP of employing ‘negative politics of fear and bullying’ as he warned bills could rocket by as much as £189 a year in the event of independence.”

That virtuoso display of Olympic-class irony from Mr Davey was part of the latest fearbomb from the No camp – Nick Clegg’s plea for a “Sunshine Strategy” apparently having been a casualty of Lord Robertson’s “cataclysm” – in the shape of yet another “Scotland Analysis” report from the UK government insisting that every single aspect of Scottish independence would be comprehensively and unequivocally disastrous.

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Beneath the headlines 115

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

With the Scottish Parliament on a two-week break, it appears to have fallen to the Telegraph to take on the role of Johann Lamont this Thursday.

Scottish Labour’s regional manager has recently been under the curious impression that the most pressing issue on the minds of the people of Scotland is the fine detail of the First Minister’s hotel bill during a trip to America to promote the Ryder Cup in 2012, and the Telegraph seems equally obsessed.

telegraph3k

But that dramatic splash isn’t quite what it seems.

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Keeping the records straight 43

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

The one on the left is for these guys, the one on the right is for these guys.

straighten

We particularly like the Scotsman’s use of the word “error”, as in “Whoops, we totally accidentally rewrote this story three times in 24 hours, with four different headlines, in order to make it more and more pejorative and sneery. Tch, clumsy old us, eh?”

People are strange 189

Posted on April 09, 2014 by

We had a couple of questions in our poll that were quite complex and involved, so to give people a wee bit of respite we threw in a little light-hearted one as well.

Q: If this was the referendum ballot paper, how would you vote?

flagballotpaper

That made some quite odd stuff happen.

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Looking forward with trepidation 61

Posted on April 09, 2014 by

As well as asking the respondents in our latest Panelbase poll what they were thinking right now, we also invited them to have a shot at peering into the future – to be more specific, the future of the UK.

lookahead

It’s fair to say that their predictions weren’t exactly overflowing with optimism.

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Anything you can do 102

Posted on April 09, 2014 by

If it’s Wednesday, Labour must have changed their position on their future-devolution proposals again. Following our latest highlighting of the glaring contradictions in the shambolic “Devo Nano” plans, responses have started arriving to your letters.

oscillate

If you’ve been listening closely, you’ll have heard that the position on whether the Scottish Parliament would be able to reduce taxes below the UK level has see-sawed from “No you can’t” (Johann Lamont MSP, 18 March) to “Yes you can” (Richard Baker MSP, 28 March) and back to “No you can’t” again (Tom Clarke MP, 4 April).

Well, guess what?

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    • Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: “@ Minceheid says: 9 October, 2026 at 7:54 am Thanks for the idea. But I think you’re overlooking something. When…” Oct 9, 08:24
    • Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: “Aye, sarah, it’s amazing hoo mony of us ken real colonisers. Ah hae a couple of rellies in Nova Scotia.…” Oct 9, 08:15
    • Minceheid on There May Be Justice: “Hatey McHateface says: 8 October, 2026 at 7:07 pm I’m having beans on toast for ma denner and I hate…” Oct 9, 07:54
    • sarah on There May Be Justice: “@ sam at 8.18. GlobalScot sounds a great organisation. You are right – the Scottish diaspora will help. Every Canadian…” Oct 8, 22:29
    • sam on There May Be Justice: “The Scots diaspora is likely to be a big help to a newly independent Scotland just as the Irish diaspora…” Oct 8, 20:18
    • Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““everything that happens in a colony is due to colonialism” I’m starting to come around to your way of thinking,…” Oct 8, 19:07
    • Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““the North Sea no longer has any oil that is economic to produce” It’s a fact not widely understood that…” Oct 8, 18:54
    • Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““you vote the useless shower out. We simply can’t do that to Westminster, the more alert of you may have…” Oct 8, 18:39
    • factchecker on There May Be Justice: “Fair comment, I think, Rob I can only see one way – vote the SNP out. Abstaining/spoiling a ballot paper…” Oct 8, 18:24
    • Alf Baird on There May Be Justice: ““You grab independence so you have all the levers to make things better” Indeed so. A colonized people have no…” Oct 8, 18:12
    • am firinn on There May Be Justice: “Sarah is right. The idea that you have to set up a perfect administration before you thrown off the shackles…” Oct 8, 17:44
    • Rob on There May Be Justice: “You would trust the current mob in any way at all, I think they make even Westminster look good and…” Oct 8, 17:40
    • Alan Austin on There May Be Justice: “The mines closed because the coal was not economic against oil so the miners lost thier jobs due to economics.…” Oct 8, 17:17
    • Aidan on The Love Of Big Brother: “@“James” – if you want some peace and quiet why don’t you log off the library computer and go and…” Oct 8, 16:50
    • factchecker on There May Be Justice: “sarah says: 8 October, 2026 at 2:44 pm Stay in the false union until we find better local administration? What…” Oct 8, 16:33
    • Aidan on There May Be Justice: “If you listen to Sam, insider, one of them could be our very own Alf Baird!” Oct 8, 15:58
    • Onlooker on There May Be Justice: “Thank you.” Oct 8, 15:48
    • Insider on There May Be Justice: “o.k. sarah! Spill the beans! Who are these honest,trustworthy,capable,inspiring leaders who will magically appear if Scotland becomes independent ? Where…” Oct 8, 15:12
    • sarah on There May Be Justice: “Stay in the false union until we find better local administration? What a very strange position to take.” Oct 8, 14:44
    • Aidan on There May Be Justice: “There are only two countries in the world with double or more GDP than the U.K. – USA 7.7x and…” Oct 8, 14:10
    • sam on There May Be Justice: “Source is BBC and UK government “England’s surface waters face significant chemical pollution challenges, with legacy substances like heavy metals…” Oct 8, 13:38
    • Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: “Exactly, Rob. We’ve had a number of examples since 2014 when it’s the WM government and the UK Supreme Court…” Oct 8, 13:06
    • Rob on There May Be Justice: “So we have two bad governors, one in Westminster and one in Holyrood. Removing Westminster, which on balance does less…” Oct 8, 12:40
    • Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““Things are even worse across the Channel” There’s the usual tensions between the “yoof” and the wealthy wrinklies. The French…” Oct 8, 11:44
    • Captain Caveman on There May Be Justice: “Ever heard of the expression “non sequitur?” Small NW European nations prosper (relatively) because of high productivity, low population density,…” Oct 8, 11:35
    • Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““The obvious lesson is that colonized Scots need to ditch Anglo imperial rule here asap” Sadly, just saying “we’re colonised”…” Oct 8, 11:33
    • Alf Baird on There May Be Justice: “You Britnats dinna appear tae notice how its the larger former imperial countries that are aye in financial freefall and…” Oct 8, 10:54
    • James on The Love Of Big Brother: “Aw, Adrian, petal; put a sock in it gie’s a’ some peace.” Oct 8, 10:37
    • Aidan on The Love Of Big Brother: “James – imagine being a grown adult man and writing something like that in response to losing an argument. Juvenile…” Oct 8, 10:20
    • Captain Caveman on There May Be Justice: “To be fair to Confused, he’s right about the water privitisation shitshow and its aftermath, as yet unconcluded.” Oct 8, 09:51
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