This article by US writer Emily Robinson is probably more instructive than anything we could post today (the Sunday papers are a news desert again, frankly). It doesn’t take a very great feat of imagination to transpose the American terms to Scottish ones – for “Berniebros” read “cybernats”, etc. Phantom news, it seems, is universal.
Nobody could ever accuse the Scottish press of underpromoting its grievances – alert readers will still recall, for example, the long procession of articles with near-identical content in the Daily Mail last year about SNP MPs and their “second jobs”. For 2016, though, the media’s obsessive repeating of the exact same story every few weeks has manifested itself over Nat members’ expenses.
So let’s take a quick look.
Can be half-full or half-empty. Neither of the stories below is untrue.
Readers can make their own judgements on the Scottish Daily Mail’s agenda.
There’s been a running theme recently on Unionist social media.
It’s the claim that the No vote in 2014 was an anomaly – a rare victory of progressive, internationalist, inclusive politics over the anti-establishment, isolationist, separatist tone that won out in the EU referendum and now the election of Donald Trump.
This was the case back even before and just after the independence referendum, where the Yes movement was being compared to the far-right populist movements of England, France, and the Netherlands:
Of course, the alternative view is rather simpler – that perhaps the forces that won the EU referendum and 2016 presidency also won the independence referendum.
One of our favourite things to remember is what Scottish Labour regional manager Kezia Dugdale said when she was elected to the head-of-branch post 15 months ago:
We like to periodically check how that’s going.
I haven’t worn a poppy in 20-odd years, for my own reasons.
But this chilling clip, from the 2005 BBC series “Auschwitz, The Nazis And The Final Solution”, is the most important thing about war that humanity should never forget.
Even seasoned and cynical observers of the Scottish opposition and press such as ourselves, readers, have been rubbing our eyes in startled disbelief this week at the spectacular about-face performed by the aforementioned parties with regard to the Scottish Government’s £10bn Chinese investment “deal” that was never an actual deal, and which may or may not have collapsed.
But today’s Times just about boggled our minds completely.
Well, who could disagree with that? Who would suggest otherwise?
Because, astonishing as it might seem in the circumstances, Ruth Davidson actually genuinely tried to get away with this at First Minister’s Questions yesterday:
They really do think we won’t remember, readers.
There’s a very interesting blog by Douglas Fraser on the BBC website today, pointing out exactly how vague and non-committal yesterday’s “announcement” by UK defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon regarding the long-awaited order of a reduced number of Type 26 frigates for the BAE shipyards in Govan was.
It might explain this extraordinary interview Fallon (alongside a very bad-tempered and unnamed PR goon), gave to Bernard Ponsonby on the evening’s STV News.
What actually happened yesterday was the removal of the threat of blackmail against a Yes vote that had been made against the yards in 2014, and endlessly exploited by the No campaign. The UK government stalled desperately to keep the orders as a bargaining chip in the indyref, not anticipating the prospect of a second one.
But they can’t be delayed forever, and once the orders are in place any possibility of cancelling them is effectively at an end, for a whole slew of mainly extremely obvious reasons. After Fallon had scurried away from him in fear, Ponsonby revealed what the Secretary of State had tried to avoid admitting:
“BAE confirmed to STV News that there is nothing in the contract that would prevent work continuing on the Clyde in the event of a Yes vote in another referendum.”
But Fallon’s toe-curling evasiveness, which finally saw him reduced to hiding behind the skirts of a sour-faced PR woman, had already made that fact clearer than any straight answer could ever have done.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
