What we could be 52
Posted on
November 06, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
…if only we could find the courage among ourselves.
Archive for the ‘comment’
The sleepy watchmen 347
Posted on
November 04, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’ve been through all the papers and there’s still absolutely no Scottish politics news, so we’re going to take a moment out for one of our brief but always-popular tangential forays into the world of football. All the usual disclaimers apply.
Because the parlous state of current Scottish journalism can’t just be observed on the politics pages, with all their partisan spin, quarter-truths and hackery. Sometimes you get a better idea of it by stepping back and looking at the broader picture, and rarely is that picture more clear than when it’s a picture of “Rangers”.
The Daily Record devoted only a tiny corner of its back page on Thursday to the club’s latest financial reports, and the bulk of the text was devoted to Dave King enthusing about what great news it all was.
Pretty much every other piece of coverage to be found in the Scottish press was the same, shrugging the figures off as of no notable significance and all someone else’s fault anyway (in this case former manager Pedro Caixinha, even though one must suppose he didn’t spend any more money than the board told him he could), and we waited in vain for any in-depth analysis in the Sundays.
And we couldn’t help thinking we’d been here before.
It’s the same old songs 127
Posted on
November 02, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
“…but with a different meaning since you’ve been gone.”
Labour have now been promising to abolish the Lords for around 110 years, including 37 years as the UK government. But wait! They’ve got more promises for you!
Now featuring Scotland 142
Posted on
October 31, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Or so they say, at any rate. Near the end, we think.
Another disaster for Scotland 535
Posted on
October 29, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
As if it wasn’t enough that one small country had to cope with the terrible burden of hundreds of billions of pounds of volatile oil revenues, now we have to face the grim prospect that with fossil fuels being phased out across the world to protect the climate, Scotland also produces TOO MUCH cheap, clean, infinitely renewable energy.
No wonder the Unionists think we’re too wee and too poor to go it alone.
The apex of the U 205
Posted on
October 27, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
There’s a remarkable piece in today’s Times about Stefan Cross, the lawyer working for the women in the Glasgow City Council equal-pay dispute. (For example it’s over 1500 words long but the word “Labour” doesn’t appear a single time, despite the party having controlled the council for the entire 20 years or so the dispute covers.)
The most interesting passage, though, is this one.
Because the story reveals that the GMB, an ultra-loyalist Labour and Unionist trade union, did absolutely everything in its power to obstruct and hamper the women’s claims until the spring of 2017, at which point the union experienced a Damascene conversion and threw their weight fully behind the women and against the council.
If only there’d been some fundamental alteration in the nature of the council around a year and a half ago which could explain such a “complete cultural change” in the GMB’s attitude and enthusiasm for equality, eh readers?
The rank outsider 410
Posted on
October 24, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
And we do mean rank. It’s been quite a week already for super-hapless Labour MP Hugh Gaffney, but he excelled himself today when joining in with Scottish Labour’s campaign to resist building a new hospital in Gartcosh (which is the recommendation of an independent NHS panel), rather than on the site of the current one in Monklands.
(And yes, that is the same one Labour wanted to shut down in 2007.)
Because it wasn’t terribly long ago that he took a rather different view.
The Last Days Of Pompeii 135
Posted on
October 24, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
In many ways the Glasgow equal-pay dispute feels like the impotent final fury of the dinosaurs after the dust cloud of a prehistoric asteroid impact blacked out the sun and condemned them all to death.
What we’re seeing now is a futile howl of rage against irrelevance by the shady cabal of Labour politicians and senior trade union officials who used to treat the city as their personal fiefdom, as they sink into inglorious extinction.
We highly recommend clicking that link to read the whole series of tweets from Labour member and solicitor Ian Smart, who readers won’t need reminding is no sort of friend of the SNP or inclined to their defence. Because the story goes much deeper than the common-or-garden hypocrisy we saw yesterday.
Just enough rope 200
Posted on
October 23, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We don’t know whether Sky News’ senior Scotland correspondent James Matthews recognised double-jobbing Labour MP and councillor Hugh Gaffney on today’s strike march in Glasgow or not. (We suspect he did, but as Gaffney’s only been an MP for a year and a half we can’t be sure.)
What’s certain is that he gave him plenty of time, opportunity and cues to disclose who he was, and Gaffney didn’t take any of them, leading to this extraordinary clip.
Which is, y’know, pretty bold.
We must just be idiots 79
Posted on
October 23, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
On the face of it, this stuff is like shooting fish in a barrel.
But let’s treat it with more dignity than it deserves and hear her out.
