GERS: The Movie 143
Posted on
August 27, 2016 by
Chris Cairns
Archive for the ‘comment’
How to lose forever 91
Posted on
August 26, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is the demented, McCarthyite state of madness the Labour Party has reached:
This is a party now openly rejecting anyone as a member who has ever supported any other party. We’d take a minute to try to explain to them how the arithmetic of that one works out, but they’re a long, long way beyond the grasp of reason now.
Living in a world of quicksand 181
Posted on
August 26, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Scottish Labour won a council by-election in Fife last night, held after the long-serving Communist Party/independent councillor Willie Clarke (who can be seen on the last page of our Charlie Hebdo feature here) stepped down due to ill health.
The successful candidate Mary Lockhart was understandably jubilant, but there were a couple of what seemed like pertinent facts missing from the local paper’s report.
More phantom news 451
Posted on
August 19, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
For several years now this site has been drawing attention to the weird phenomenon of phantom news – stories presented by the media without even a shred of supporting evidence yet treated as unquestionable empirical fact. And recently there have been more phantoms around the Scottish press than an episode of Scooby Doo.
The thing Alan Roden – who prefers intimidating ordinary members of the public by doorstepping them and vilifying them in his paper – links to in that tweet is an article on the Herald website last night. And it’s a weird article, because it’s an extensive, quote-laden story about something that doesn’t appear to have happened at all.
Swinging free 290
Posted on
August 17, 2016 by
Charlie Hebdo
Alert readers may have noticed reports in the press that the famous French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo this month carried a four-page feature on the state of politics in Scotland, having sent two of its senior staff – accompanied by their French police bodyguard – over to conduct a series of interviews.
We thought you might like to see it, so we commissioned a translated version.
Making your minds up 121
Posted on
August 16, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Here’s the BBC reporting Kezia Dugdale’s speech at the opening session of the new Scottish Parliament, less than three months ago:
It seems the Scottish Labour leader’s had a change of heart since then.
Iron seas 218
Posted on
August 15, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Scottish media has worked itself into an indignant froth over the last few days about the appearance of Sputnik News – an Edinburgh-based arm of a publicly-owned, state-run Russian news agency, fronted by (among others) former Dateline Scotland and NewsShaft stars Jack Foster and Carolyn Scott.
(Any resemblance to publicly-owned, state-run national news agencies of questionable impartiality in other countries is of course entirely coincidental and totally different.)
The Sunday Herald ran a bizarre smear piece yesterday on the pair’s past fundraising initiatives for their two previous projects (which were obviously completely unrelated to Sputnik), and today’s Times has an even weirder column by Melanie Reid in which Foster and Scott are directly and startlingly compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis:
We tried, for the purposes of satire, to think of another country that played host to nuclear missiles that were controversially imposed on it by an external government, but unfortunately we couldn’t come up with anything. Sorry about that.
Tories Together 192
Posted on
August 12, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Annie Wells and Brian Whittle are two new Conservative MSPs. Look how happy and excited they are today at Labour winning a council by-election from the SNP.
The SNP candidate actually won comfortably on first-preference votes, but was edged out at the sixth count under the Single Transferable Vote system when 78% of Tory voters gave their second preference to Labour (whose own vote fell 7%).
We’re trying to think of a good reason why they’re still two separate parties, but to be honest with you, readers, we’re coming up short.
It’s that story again! 246
Posted on
August 11, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
No, we’re not referring to the Spectator’s awful reheated whine from super-Unionist composer Sir James Macmillan, Knight Commander Of The Most Excellent Order Of The British Empire, in which he takes the audacious step of accusing some OTHER artistes of cravenly kowtowing to the establishment.
(A complaint he’s been levelling for several years in any publication that’ll listen, and which today’s piece hasn’t bothered to update with any post-2014 examples.)
We’re actually talking about this:
Because this one’s even older.
A new challenger appears 75
Posted on
August 11, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We thought yesterday’s Herald story – about a Scottish Government initiative designed to increase visitor numbers to island communities “backfiring” when it, er, increased visitor numbers to island communities – would be hard to top for this month’s SNP BAD Award, but when the paper grudgingly amended it a few hours later it seemed we’d have to look for a new contender.
Luckily we didn’t have long to wait.
The unending badness 245
Posted on
August 10, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
There’s a story in today’s Herald about yet another SNP disaster:
Backfires? What, the fares have gone UP?
