Let’s just deal with this quickly.
Because the truth is that we should all be quietly sending BBC Scotland bouquets in appreciation for doing the independence movement a favour for once.
Before becoming a politician Nicola Sturgeon had a brief and somewhat unsuccessful career in the world of law. Which means she has no excuse whatsoever for this:
Because in law, yes it does. That’s EXACTLY what it means.
There was one revealing moment in what was an otherwise nauseatingly sycophantic interview with Nicola Sturgeon by Adam Fleming on BBC2 last night.
And the thing it revealed is what Sturgeon’s book is really about. Because as more and more extracts have found their way into the public domain this week, the overarching theme of “Frankly” has become impossible to miss.
As more and more of Nicola Sturgeon’s memoirs ooze out into the public sphere like pus leaking from a burns-victim’s blisters, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of rank, festering untruth spreading out in all directions.
First she audaciously attempted to blame Alex Salmond for supposedly leaking the news of his own arrest on false sexual-assault charges to the press, a laughably mad allegation totally derided by everyone involved including the journalist the story was leaked to (by Sturgeon’s own chief of staff, Liz Lloyd).
For good measure she then accused the MSPs investigating her conspiracy against him of being mere puppets controlled and directed by Salmond, an obvious nonsense immediately refuted by them directly, in case the idea of Murdo Fraser taking orders from Alex Salmond wasn’t already too idiotic to contemplate.
And her spewing sewage cannon still wasn’t done, managing to dredge up another smear that Salmond had been secretly opposed to equal marriage in 2012, an assertion so laughably obviously disproved by entire truckloads of evidence that making it can only have been a result of the gravest desperation.
(Or perhaps pure jealousy that Pink News never made HER their “Ally Of The Year”, as they did with both Salmond and David Cameron.)
But even so, this might be the boldest Hail Mary attempt of all.
Because even for Nicola Sturgeon, trying to rewrite time itself is an ambitious move.
We’ve written a couple of articles about the media coverage of this already, but as the slow summer season continues it’s worth taking a little time to have a proper look at the source material, because it’s your cash that’s being spent on it, and used to shape public policy in Scotland.
And it’s very hard to overstate both what a waste of money, and what a colossal insult to every woman in Scotland, it represents.
These two Sunday front pages three weeks apart sounded awfully similar.
But it turned out to be a lot worse than we thought.
We’ve said it for a lot of years, but “1984” really does contain a complete explanation of every aspect of modern life, and especially politics.
So let’s look at today’s Herald On Sunday, and in particular its “special report”.
The entire Scottish media and professional-politician community is currently in a self-righteous froth about a campaign ad being run by Reform for the Hamilton by-election targeting Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Obviously none of the acres of press coverage trusts voters to see the ad and decide for themselves, because that simply isn’t how journalism works nowadays. You’re told that a bad thing happened – whether it be a campaign ad, a comedian’s joke or the supposed terrible abuse sent to a celebrity – and how outraged various pundits or other celebrities are about it, with the clear implication that you should feel the same, but you almost never get shown or told what was actually said.
So to start with, as a basic journalistic principle, here’s the ad itself in its entirety.
Now let’s look at what you’re being ordered to think about it.
We were a bit bemused by this yesterday.
The Scottish Tory MSP reacted furiously to a story in The National which said Scotland had been absorbed into England by the 1707 Act Of Union, rather than becoming a “partner” in anything, and had ceased to exist as a state in international law.
Which was a weird response, because that’s been the official stated position of both the UK government and the Conservative Party for at least the last 12 years.
Not for us, admittedly.
(Kelly’s article is here. Link to Grok’s answer here. The ChatGPT analysis that triggered the article can be read in this tweet thread. A verifiable analysis by Grok of the debate, based on a neutral question, can be read here.)
Warning: despite the quite zingy title this is actually going to be a very dry stats post, readers. It is, on the other hand, based on a man having something disturbingly close to a complete psychotic mental breakdown, so there’s always that for a bit of colour.
Because the paragraph above, and in particular the highlighted part, is without a doubt the most dishonest, diametrically false and wildly extreme lie about Scottish politics that we’ve ever seen anyone tell in the 13.5 years of Wings Over Scotland’s existence.
And folks, that’s a high bar.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
