School’s in 203
Posted on
January 09, 2016 by
Chris Cairns
Archive for the ‘comment’
The shifting foundations 201
Posted on
January 08, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
As we noted on Tuesday, Scottish Labour’s opening election salvo for 2016 has been to blame the Scottish Government for unaffordable house prices.
Of the 450 most obvious flaws in that argument, not least the extraordinary efforts a 13-year Labour government went to to keep the housing bubble inflated, the one that caught our eye was that in the past three years we were regularly told of one thing that definitely WOULD bring prices down dramatically, but which Labour pathologically fought every step of the way.
Some very brief thoughts on RISE 394
Posted on
January 07, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
(And the rest of the “pro-indy left”.)
If you’re primarily or solely contesting regional seats, and you’re chiefly (as seems to be the case) targeting people who are going to use their first vote for the SNP, “Vote for us so that we can provide strong opposition to the SNP” is a pretty weird pitch.
You’re basically asking people to use their second vote to cancel out their first. And that’s quite a tough angle to be trying to sell them. Just saying, like.
Clickbait corner 68
Posted on
January 05, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It’s always good to see someone take a strong moral stand.
When indeed, eh?
The sewer press 261
Posted on
January 05, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
So, this appeared in the Herald today:
And that’s a problem, because it’s a complete and utter lie.
Towards a better, kinder 2016 343
Posted on
January 03, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Herald columnist Iain Macwhirter has had some wise words to say on the subject of social media in the past few weeks, most recently on New Year’s Day:
The month before, though, he’d been even more to the point.
The media they don’t like to talk about 229
Posted on
December 31, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Below is a very interesting 13-minute chat from this afternoon’s John Beattie Show on Radio Scotland, also featuring Stuart Cosgrove (presenter of the excellent footy prog Off The Ball) and Eamonn O’Neill, who we presume is this Eamonn O’Neill.
(The John Beattie Show, BBC Radio Scotland, 31 December 2015)
.
Naturally we like it because there’s mention of Wings, which – for just about the first time we can recall on broadcast media in our four-year life – isn’t about how vile and awful we are, but the whole thing is much more wide-ranging and well worth a listen.
(The line “The media the media doesn’t like to talk about” is Beattie’s, not ours.)
The anatomy of a smear 138
Posted on
December 28, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Scottish Daily Mail, which alongside its Sunday sister paper is spending the festive period engaged in an “SNP BAD!” frenzy – attacking the party over everything from foxhunting to the brutal Stalinist suppression of free speech to using taxpayers’ money to send people Christmas cards – today runs the same story across a news page, a comment column and an editorial leader:
Let’s take a closer look.
BREAKING NEWS 126
Posted on
December 28, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Bad wolf baying 268
Posted on
December 26, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Christmas truce on social media ended unusually early this year as Magnus Gardham, the political editor of the Herald, filed a column which had all the hallmarks of a man who’d overdone the sprouts and redirected the usual outcome of such an error out of his mouth rather than the other end of his digestive tract.
Backed up with a series of borderline-trolling tweets from his Herald colleague David Leask (who ambitiously referred to Gardham as a “genius”), the piece triggered a mild stushie on Twitter which we fully expect to see written up in tomorrow’s papers as “VILE CYBERNATS IN ABUSE STORM”, because it’s Christmas and you’ve got to fill pages with something.
Tidings of comfort and joy 98
Posted on
December 26, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Scotland’s two best-selling newspapers on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day:
We suppose we should just be grateful that they don’t publish on the day itself. The “STARVING REFUGEE BABIES RAPED BY AIDS DOGS” story* they’d doubtless lead with might put people off their turkey.
To the bitter end 309
Posted on
December 23, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This was a brief exchange between the Scotland correspondent of the Guardian and the Political Editor of the Daily Record on Twitter last night. (The hug referred to is the one between Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru and Natalie Bennett of the Greens at one of the leaders’ debates for the May general election.)
A little vision of the future, there.
