Making your mind up 69
Posted on
January 21, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
(Source here.)
Author Archive
Eleven words of truth 173
Posted on
January 21, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It’s a start, we suppose. But it doesn’t take long for the UK government’s latest independence “fact sheet” to start telling fibs again. It barely gets a quarter of the way through its very first sentence before dropping a big old porky on those assembled:
Much as we’d like to think otherwise, there’s no such thing as a “forever decision” in politics. Whether Scotland votes for or against independence, it could change in the future. The USSR fragmented, East and West Germany reunited (having been abruptly split up after the “Thousand Year Reich” only actually managed 12), and even our own lifetimes have seen countless realignments and redivisions of states across the world.
So what else in the paper is, to use the technical term, total cobblers?
Category errors 108
Posted on
January 21, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Veteran readers will be aware that there are basically two types of misinformation perpetrated by the Scottish media. The rarer type is the flat-out lie, where things that are simply demonstrably untrue are presented as facts – a common example being the regular assertion by journalists that all three Unionist parties are committed to giving Holyrood new additional powers after a No vote, which was neatly skewered by Andrew Nicoll in yesterday’s Sun (image link, no paywall).
The subtler variety is when newspapers and broadcasters report true information in a misleading way, sometimes so drastically that it comes out meaning the exact opposite of what it actually means. A story today is a case in point.
108 Days Later 108
Posted on
January 20, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Claimed in full 54
Posted on
January 20, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Much gratitude tonight to alert reader “Albamac”, who’s not only compiled the whole of “The Claim Of Scotland” into a single very small (1MB), easy-download PDF file but has converted it in the process into one with cut-and-pasteable text for quotability. We’ve uploaded it to the Repository, and you can also download it from this direct link.
Big love once again too to Wilma Watts who made our serialisation possible in the first place, and to the sadly-deceased Herbert James Paton for writing a book that for the most part could have been released yesterday. We highly recommend it as a starting point for any undecideds you know who might not want to jump straight into the debate with something as openly partisan as this site. Having read it, we suspect they’ll be hungry for more truth, and then you can send them our way.
When it’s horrible being right 59
Posted on
January 20, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Me, writing in April 2010, before there was a Wings Over Scotland:
Once in a while it’d be nice to get it completely wrong.
Good morning, Britain 68
Posted on
January 20, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Something to look forward to 32
Posted on
January 19, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
#ukok #bettertogether
Fairness In The First Year 88
Posted on
January 19, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
For those of you wanting to look at the report on broadcasting bias from the University of the West of Scotland, we’ve uploaded it to the Repository, and you can also grab it directly from this link. Thanks to the alert readers who sent it in.
Subsidy junkies 101
Posted on
January 19, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We can’t be the only people, surely, to find the latest “Better Together” gambit one of their strangest yet. Never mind the made-up figures or the spurious assertions or their usual habit of having headline amounts which use cumulative sums over many years to make numbers sound bigger. Just look at the barely-concealed subtext here:
“Don’t leave the UK, or you’ll have to give your money to the English! Eurgh!”
Has the lovebombing started yet? 181
Posted on
January 18, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, just discovered:
God DAMN it! Who knew we were just the unwitting dupes of the Belgians all along?
The classic double whammy 145
Posted on
January 18, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Step 1: Write an offensive, provocative piece of trollbait for the Daily Mail, describing your opponents as “kilted bum-barers who bellow ‘freedom’ whenever an English person hoves into view” and suggesting that a Yes vote is an abdication of morality.
(If you can then somehow get the Guardian to reprint it, bonus!)
Step 2: Whine like a baby when you get the response you wanted all along.
