Ole Ola 235
Posted on
September 23, 2017 by
Chris Cairns
(Buy Chris Cairns’ second great book of cartoons here. Plus cuddly Hamish!)
Archive for the ‘comment’
The Evergreens 415
Posted on
September 20, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It was nice to see an old friend back in the Scottish media today.
How times change.
Nice Parliament you’ve got there 88
Posted on
September 20, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Be a shame if anything happened to it.
Black affronted 211
Posted on
September 18, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We struggled to summon up much more than a weary sigh about a story in a couple of the minor papers today (the Herald and Express), about a micro-scuffle at Saturday’s pro-indy rally in Glasgow. The most interesting thing about it appeared to be that the Express had written its article several hours before the event took place.
But we weren’t quite right.
Fooled you twice 84
Posted on
September 18, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Three years ago today, Scotland bottled it. Almost uniquely in world history, its people turned down the chance to take control of their own affairs forever without a drop of blood being shed. They did so on the back of a package of vague promises, not least one of “extensive new powers”, almost all of which have subsequently been broken.
The Secretary of State for Scotland has chosen the anniversary of the referendum to let it be known that on top of that, the most fundamental building block of devolution – the premise that any power not explicitly reserved to Westminster in the Scotland Act 1998 would belong to Holyrood – will now be torn up, in the light of the exit from the EU that Scots were promised a No vote would protect them from.
In poker we call that a rubdown.
The nuclear umbrella 325
Posted on
September 16, 2017 by
Chris Cairns
(Buy Chris Cairns’ second great book of cartoons here. Plus cuddly Hamish!)
The dog too big to see 71
Posted on
September 14, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This was Scottish Tory uberdunce Jamie Greene a few weeks ago, bitterly attacking the SNP for spending £22,000 on consulting the public over a policy on which the party won a landslide victory in the 2016 Holyrood election.
You might think that a government pursuing the manifesto policies it was elected on was a pretty legitimate thing to do, especially when it was asking voters for their views in order to shape that policy. Perhaps Greene was confused because the Tories have been acting as if they, not the SNP, won the election. But that raises another question.
The boom blockers 219
Posted on
September 13, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A story from the Financial Times this week revealed the UK government’s latest act of sabotage against the Scottish renewable energy industry. It’s just one more in a long line stretching back to just after the independence referendum, when a string of “Better Together” promises were broken almost the minute the No vote was secured.
It was a particularly weak argument in the first place – if there’s a market in the rUK for Scottish energy, it’ll be there whether Scotland is independent or not. But it unravelled faster than most as soon as it had done its job.
Making your own news 315
Posted on
September 12, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Today’s papers all report, with varying degrees of prominence and glee, this “story”:
But which internationally-regarded rankings are these, exactly?
Sour grapes and bad wine 244
Posted on
September 11, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
20 years ago today, Scotland voted to have a Parliament for the first time in almost three centuries, by an overwhelming margin (although with modest enthusiasm – less than 10% more people actually voted for devolution than voted for independence in 2014, at 1.78m and 1.62m respectively).
Just 20 months after the vote the Parliament came into being, and Scotland’s media has been complaining about how useless it is ever since.
Today’s newspapers commemorate the anniversary by unleashing the full pontificating weight of the punditariat – most of whom have been opining wearily on Holyrood’s failings for the entire period – to bleat with their customary single voice about what a disappointment it’s all been.
The weird thing is that after all that time, none of them can actually explain why.
The paper it’s written on 257
Posted on
September 09, 2017 by
Chris Cairns
(Buy Chris Cairns’ second great book of cartoons here. Plus cuddly Hamish!)
What we stand to lose 209
Posted on
September 05, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A Scot living in the EU, and an EU national living in Scotland, discuss the implications of the Brexit being forced on Scotland against its will by the UK government.
The clock is ticking.
