We’ve speculated on a few occasions recently on the effect on Scottish public opinion of almost the entire Scottish media being owned and controlled from outside Scotland. So we thought it was time we actually put some facts and figures to it.
It seems that today marked the official start of the much-vaunted “lovebombing” campaign aimed at persuading Scots to stay in the UK by showing them how much they’re loved by the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The opening salvo did some unfortunate and costly collateral damage, but luckily the Union had a white knight following close behind to smooth over any injured feelings.
Would you like to meet him, readers?
The following paragraph closes an article in today’s Observer.
We’re almost lost for words. But not quite.
Sorry we haven’t posted much today, folks, but with a pulsating League Cup semi-final and then Scotland’s first game in the Six Nations (about which events we shall speak no more) it’s been a big day for sport. You know, this stuff:
We hate to be so petty and chippy, but after 40-odd years it wears you down. We’re pretty sure it’s a mistake they’ll stop making if we’re actually a proper country.
So we’ll just leave this here:
And then we’re off to bed.
[EDIT: Story confirmed with Jessica Bridges at Ladbrokes press office.]
Jim Murphy in the Daily Mail last week on the appalling “cybernats”:
And this is a Labour spokesman in 2012 when a user of a Labour Facebook page had wished death on Alex Salmond’s 90-year-old father:
So, as far as we can follow: it’s nothing to do with Labour if its supporters – in a Facebook group subscribed to by all the party’s most prominent Scottish MPs, MSPs and activists – wish for Alex Salmond’s dad to die, but as soon as some random nat calls Jim Murphy a “w*****” (whatever one of those is), it’s no longer a private matter and the SNP and First Minister must take direct personal responsibility and action?
Have we got that about right?
Well, jings, crivvens and help – so to speak – wur boabs. How did we all manage to miss this one in the Sunday Times last month? We assume it’s meant to be comic.
John “Chicogo” Barrowman knocks ’em dead as the special mystery celebrity guest at the “Better Together” Burns Night celebrations, which we are not making up:
(Edit by Jack Foster.)
We normally have a fatwa on all poetry here, but as it’s Burns Night we’re making an exception – this magnificent effort by William Duguid was just too good to pass up.
Had we but known in time we’d have slipped it to John Barrowman, so to speak.
When someone sent us a collection of tweets in the immediate aftermath of the Clutha tragedy late last year, we decided not to use them. It wasn’t for any great moral reason – we’ve previously highlighted despicable No-camp scumbags making political capital out of the deaths of innocent people – but we were just too sickened and sad (as most Scots were) to waste a moment’s thought on such human dregs.
As the Daily Mail ploughs on with its crusade against “vile cybernats”, though, it seemed worth pointing out for the record just what sort of a place the internet really is, and how pathetic its catalogue of mild swearwords and distaste is in that context.
Stop reading now if you’re easily upset.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
