The Daily Record is currently faithfully blaring out Labour’s anti-SNP “NHS in crisis” message, as part of the embattled party’s bizarre strategy of fighting a Westminster election solely on policies that are devolved to Holyrood, like health and education.
But an article on its website today dredges new depths even for the Record.
Yesterday we noted that nothing had yet been heard from Scottish Labour’s policy review into universal services, launched amid much hoopla in September 2012 off the back of Johann Lamont’s infamous “something for nothing” speech.
The party has spent much of its time since then attacking the SNP over social justice, claiming that universal benefits are a middle-class subsidy, hurting the poor by spending money on giving the well-off free stuff they could afford to pay for.
Professor Arthur Midwinter, the Labour-friendly academic the party hired to lead the review, was widely reported by the press vowing to “devote at least two days a week for up to two years to prepare a series of reports for the commission, which is being co-chaired by Labour MP Cathy Jamieson and finance spokesman Ken Macintosh”.
Those two years have come and gone, and nearly six months more, and there’s been no sign of a single report from the commission. And it turns out there never will be.
Scottish Labour’s mustard-keen Kezia “Deputy” Dugdale bravely tried a tweet all on her own on Friday without running it past Labour central office in London first.
It didn’t go too well.
The categorical support of Andy Murray for Scottish independence, though only finally unambiguously revealed in today’s Sunday Times (the tennis star’s day-of-poll tweet backing Yes could by a strict semantic interpretation have been said to be somewhat equivocal), isn’t much of a surprise.
So it’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves what the media told us.
Perhaps we’re just being over-sensitive, readers, but we think the Daily Record might be a little bit upset with us.
That’s the editor of the semi-popular Scottish Labour fanzine, Murray Foote, pictured above this afternoon apparently issuing his own very special honours list, but it’s not the crankiest thing the Record’s published in the last 24 hours.
Alert readers may recall that five weeks ago we pointed out a whole bunch of Scottish media outlets reporting as fact that Jim Murphy would definitely stand for the East Renfrewshire seat at May’s general election – despite Murphy having actually made no such announcement, just repeating his weeks-old fudge that he was currently the selected candidate.
Guess what’s happened today, folks?
We’ve posted this video before, but right now it’s all we’ve got to say.
Sometimes a picture can say a lot more than a thousand words. Below, to the left of the vertical red line on our graphic, you can see the prominence that the Daily Record gave to their lies about “The Vow” and the Smith Commission report, which were found to be false by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.
On the right of the line, at the same scale, is the prominence they gave to the truth.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
