Fury as new hospital is too amazing 136
Posted on
April 28, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Archive for the ‘comment’
The wheels of time grind slowly 116
Posted on
April 28, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re sure we’re not the only people for whom the hours are dragging and we wish the election would just hurry up and get here, but all the same we’re pretty sure that if there were 11 days left to save the UK on Sunday morning, then by Tuesday morning there should be fewer than 10 still to go.
I think the Nazis are pretty good 236
Posted on
April 27, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
If you’re trying to give someone an example of a terrible group of people from history, I think the Nazis are pretty good for that purpose. They fulfil the criterion excellently, what with all the invading and occupying and repression and genocidal murder and everything, and there’s very little ambiguity or any shades of grey about their evil.
Now, alert readers may have spotted that while the headline of this article is a genuine quote from the paragraph above, and could be technically correctly described as my words by someone with malicious and dishonest intent (something which does in fact happen regularly), it gives a highly misleading impression of what was really said.
And with that, welcome to the Scottish media.
The bonfire of policies 85
Posted on
April 27, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Normally you have to wait until after an election for this stuff.
But Scottish Labour’s promises are collapsing one by one with 10 days still to go.
The wild weekend 162
Posted on
April 26, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Labour then and Labour now 170
Posted on
April 25, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Scotland on Sunday, 21 March this year:
And here’s the Guardian today.
We’re sure those miners Scottish Labour laid a wreath for a month ago will be chuffed.
When is a FACT not a FACT? 121
Posted on
April 24, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Remember this, readers?
Turns out it wasn’t THAT kind of “fact”. You know, the true kind.
The end of excuses 198
Posted on
April 24, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
You might not think it, readers, but even after all this time we’re still capable of a certain degree of innocent, naive trust in Scottish journalism.
When Nicola Sturgeon didn’t just issue a boilerplate condemnation at FMQs yesterday after ludicrously overblown allegations of Twitter “trolling” by an SNP candidate, but went on the counter-attack over Labour’s grotesquely abusive Ian Smart, we foolishly thought that might make both sides of the story newsworthy.
And then we opened the papers.
We don’t expect the media to be impartial. But let there today officially be an end to even the slightest pretence that it’s at least fair, professional and honest.
A serious case of hypocrisy 344
Posted on
April 23, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A few days ago, a constituency poll by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft found that the SNP were leading narrowly in Edinburgh South – a seat in which they secured a paltry 7.7% of the vote in the 2010 general election. Keep that fact in mind, readers.
Today the Edinburgh Evening News (EEN) published an article by David Maddox, a senior political journalist on the Scotsman, alleging that the SNP candidate for the seat, Neil Hay, had “liken[ed] anti-independence campaigners to Nazi collaborators” in a tweet over two and a half years ago (from a pseudonymous account under the name “Paco McSheepie”), and had also tweeted a series of attacks on pensioners.
Scottish Labour immediately leapt on the article and demanded Mr Hay be sacked as the candidate, less than two weeks before the election. It’s not possible to replace a candidate at such a late stage – some voters may already have voted by post – and such a move would thereby effectively have handed the seat to the Labour candidate and previous MP Ian Murray by default.
The story turned out to be an absurd, massive exaggeration and misrepresentation of the reality. But it also exposed a level of naked, shameless dishonesty and hypocrisy in Scottish Labour, and in particular its deputy leader Kezia Dugdale, that even this site hadn’t previously dared to imagine.
The blind eyes 91
Posted on
April 23, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Earlier today we highlighted some of the social-media charm of Labour blogger and BBC pundit Ian Smart, after the Scottish branch office deputy leader Kezia Dugdale demanded that the First Minister should take a more pro-active role in policing the comments of party members on Twitter and Facebook.
Mr Smart’s history of incredibly abusive and offensive comments stretches back many years. But of course, it wouldn’t be reasonable to berate Scottish Labour for its failure to act if it wasn’t aware of them. So we had a trawl through his Twitter followers list just to see if there was anyone who might have noticed and brought it to the leadership’s attention so they could have a quiet word.
