The air war 185
Posted on
May 02, 2015 by
Chris Cairns
Archive for the ‘comment’
The mists are suddenly clearing 193
Posted on
May 01, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Daily Mirror’s “Ampp3d” offshoot used to be a fantastic resource for statistical debunking, and sometimes still is. But ever since it’s been officially absorbed into the Mirror, it’s been increasingly deployed as a Labour spin tool.
Today it tries to juggle numbers to excuse Gordon Brown’s bargain-basement sale of the UK’s gold reserves in 1999 – a subject that was raised by an audience member on last night’s Question Time special and which we now know with certainty cost the country a whopping $19bn (or £12.5bn at current exchange rates).
We’ve added the emphasis on that last sentence. And it’s a fair enough point broadly speaking, although of course with the gold sell-off we’re looking back with the benefit of hindsight about what actually did happen, not trying to guess, so calling it “fantasy maths” is somewhat inaccurate, given that it’s exactly the opposite of a fantasy.
The trouble is that Ampp3d isn’t always so dismissive of predicting the future.
The last day of term 157
Posted on
April 30, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
As far as we know, this is the final major set-piece interview that Jim Murphy will have to give before the general election.
As Sally Magnusson of Reporting Scotland makes an admirably dogged but ultimately unsuccessful effort to get a straight answer on just about anything out of Labour’s regional branch manager, we’d swear it was possible to actually measure the delirium of relief on his face as the end draws near and the desperate evasion is over forever.
We gather that for the next week Scottish Labour are just bringing in boardgames.
99 Red Balloons 196
Posted on
April 30, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The toll taken 265
Posted on
April 29, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
On the left, Jim Murphy campaigning for the Scottish Labour leadership a few months ago (the backdrop is distinctive, placing the pic sometime last November).
On the right, Jim Murphy on STV tonight.
Don’t tell lies, readers. It drains your soul.
The spurned lover 191
Posted on
April 29, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Remember that lovely British solidarity you were told by Labour to vote No for?
You probably need to read this, folks.
The stupidest man in Britain 164
Posted on
April 28, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Firstly, we’re not sure this qualifies as “BREAKING” news:
But it’s not the Daily Record’s cub reporter that we’re talking about.
We didn’t imagine this, then 136
Posted on
April 28, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Waking up bleary-eyed this morning at 6.45am, we reached over to switch on Good Morning Scotland, just in time for the news headlines round-up. This is what we heard:
(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 28 April 2015)
.
We honestly thought in our semi-awake state we might have dreamed it.
Fury as new hospital is too amazing 136
Posted on
April 28, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
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.
