We’ve been keeping coverage of our ongoing court battle with former Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale to a minimum on the site, partly because little of any material impact has actually happened yet.
However, there was a mildly interesting development last night, which was scooped and accurately reported by the Scottish Sun.
Reactions to the party’s statement have already seen serious amounts of what we’re generously going to call “misinformation” generated and circulating around social media, so we’re going to have to clear some of it up. Apologies.
We think it’s fair to say that our bestest friend in all of the internet, Scottish Labour activist Duncan Hothersall, is absolutely hopping mad about the latest developments in our court case against the branch office’s former leader Kezia Dugdale.
God bless our dear old pals at the Labour-fronted Tory money-sink that is Scotland In Union. Fresh from their latest stirring morning office singalong of “No Pope Of Rome”, they’ve decided to belatedly get in on the fact-checking game.
Vince Cable, who was once apparently some sort of politician, took it upon himself to issue an opinion yesterday on the subject of referendums that had independence supporters on social media hooting with mocking laughter long into the night.
The estimable Wee Ginger Dug has already dealt adroitly with just the 300 or so most obviously ridiculous aspects of Cable’s tone-deaf and spectacularly hypocritical view, so we won’t step on his paws by repeating them here.
Instead we thought we’d do what we do best, and check the facts.
This year’s Scottish Household Survey is out, and the press is in an absolutely gleeful orgy of misery over it. Here’s the Times, for example:
The paper’s leading line is that “only half of those polled were happy with schools, the NHS and transport provision in their area”. So readers would naturally assume that the other half were DISsatisfied, right?
Perhaps the single most striking feature of everyday non-constitutional Scottish politics is Labour’s constantly-recurring habit of highlighting some supposedly unsatisfactory statistic about the Scottish Government’s performance, only for it to be revealed that it’s vastly better than the comparable figure for Wales, where Labour has been in power ever since the Assembly was created in 1999.
So let’s crank up the machine again and see what it says, shall we?
It really takes some going to stand out for especially terrible journalism in the Scottish press this week, given the vast acres of page-space that are still being devoted to truly abysmal, and borderline legally-actionable, barrel-scraping articles about the recent allegations made against Alex Salmond. So hats off to perhaps the only man who could possibly have achieved it.
The Scottish media has really had to scrape the barrel to give a negative spin to some NHS stats today. The Herald, Daily Mail, Daily Record and Scotsman all feature a story concerning an increase in ambulance waiting times, noting that the number of callouts taking more than ten minutes has doubled in four years.
What they’re a lot more reluctant to reveal is that the reason for that is a deliberate policy change which has meant ambulances have been saving more people’s lives.
We’re just going to reprint this piece every year, because only the numbers change.
Today saw the publication of the 2017-18 GERS stats, which are once again triggering a convulsive orgy of “BLACK HOLE!” articles across the media as every Unionist in the land falls over themselves to portray their own country as a useless scrounging subsidy junkie without actually using the exact words “too wee, too poor, too stupid”.
And once again, everywhere you look there’s a “Proud Scot” screaming about how the figures destroy a case for independence that those same people have spent most of the current decade stridently insisting never existed in the first place.
The BBC front page headline for this is actually just the alarming-sounding “Scottish prescription costs rise by 25%”, without even the qualifier about the timespan.
Most of Scottish Twitter has been enjoying itself greatly for the last few hours after England’s exit from the World Cup, but scattered in amongst the amusing memes has been a fair amount of angst about victors Croatia – a nation of 4 million people – being in the final when Scotland once again failed to qualify.
And while we’ll more than happily listen to any amount of criticism of the unbelievably incompetent, hapless clowns who’ve been in charge of the SFA/SPL/SPFL for the last several decades, that judgement is a bit harsh on the players and coaches and the nation as a whole. Because there really hasn’t been much in it.
Scotland’s qualification for World Cup 2018 hinged and ultimately faltered on a split second and a single badly-chosen pass in stoppage time.
My Mum often goes out to Mackays Jam factory in Arbroath to get her jam, lemon curd, Dundee Vintage Marmalade, chutneys etc. She just brought me in this, 36 jars of rasp/strawb preserve, cost her £1.50 at the factory shop. Retails for £14.44.
Worth a visit if you're Angus/Dundee
@WingsScotland @indyclacksman @IanMurrayMP Quite telling is his use of the words "they" and "they'd" Instead of "we" and "we'd"
Almost as if he's describing another country, not the one he lives and was elected in!
