It is with the heaviest of hearts, readers, that we must report to you that Gordon Brown has done an intervention again.
With a new book to sell, the purposeless former Chancellor and Prime Minister who led the UK into a catastrophic financial crisis that’s now entering its second decade has put on his hindsight goggles and made a whole series of bewildering proclamations after the event, which have – naturally – been dutifully received and repeated by the fawning Scottish press like God handing down the Ten Commandments to Moses.
Quite a few remarkable things were said on last night’s STV debate between the two prospective leaders of the Labour Party branch office in Scotland. This one, though, was especially striking.
That’s Anas Sarwar denying three times that he was a part of the “Better Together” campaign with the Tories. A startled Colin Mackay claims to have seen photographs of Sarwar campaigning with BT, at which point Sarwar insists no, he merely appeared on TV debates which happened to also have Tory guests.
Readers will doubtless be startled to hear that today’s Scottish newspapers have taken a somewhat misleading approach to the facts on one of the day’s big stories.
Several of them report the findings of a commission looking into the idea of a Citizen’s (or Universal) Basic Income, a scheme which pays every adult in the country a fixed sum every year regardless of their own income, almost completely replacing the current benefits system.
The idea is that as well as reducing poverty, the administrative costs of social security are massively reduced, as is the problem of vulnerable people not taking up benefits because of the stigma often attached to them by the press.
The downside is that it’s generally more expensive. But have the Scottish press accurately reported the scale of that cost, or have they massively exaggerated it for shock value and to serve a right-wing agenda? Read on for a surprise!
As readers who were once children will probably recall, papier-mache is a substance in which incredibly flimsy material – such as tissue paper or newspaper – is turned into something rather more hard and durable by dint of combining multiple layers of it with a simple flour-and-water solution.
What’s less well-known is that the process also happens IN newspapers.
For a case study, let’s look at this article in today’s Times.
I apologise in advance to readers for the personal indulgence of this post.
Some months ago, quite coincidentally, I happened to avail myself of Twitter’s archive function, which allows users to download their entire tweet history. For various reasons I’ve been looking at it recently, and until I did I’d been unaware that it records not just a user’s own tweets, but also the tweets from other people that they’ve retweeted.
I’ve collected some of Wings’ tweets and retweets – in reverse chronological order – below. (Famously, of course, RTs aren’t necessarily endorsements, but you can decide on the underlying tone for yourself. Each of them links to the original tweet so you can see the whole conversation, or click on the links being referenced.)
They’re all on one subject, by way of illustration, because Twitter is a transient medium full of people all too eager to jump at the slightest excuse to make spurious and hateful allegations about everything (and anyone) under the sun to serve their own agendas, and for the sake of the future of human discourse it’s worth remembering that nothing exists in isolation or free of context, and we shouldn’t jump too easily to conclusions.
The Daily Record have continued to run Kezia Dugdale’s weekly column despite her resignation as Scottish Labour branch office manager (North British division), and this week we were interested to note her assessment of the devolution years, which could be summarised neatly as “Labour devolution good, SNP devolution bad”.
We raised an especially quizzical eyebrow at the claim that the 1999-2007 Labour/Lib Dem administrations had apparently ended homelessness. So we thought we’d do that thing we do when Kezia Dugdale claims something.
The Scottish media this week has started to rather resemble Argentina under General Galtieri’s military junta – everywhere you look are the ghosts of the disappeared.
In case you don’t know, Alan Roden is the former Scottish Daily Mail politics editor who’s now Scottish Labour’s director of communications. We haven’t edited this pic in any way, those genuinely are two consecutive tweets he posted yesterday.
Earlier today we reported on the mysterious failure of the Herald to notice that its front page lead story about supposedly poor ScotRail punctuality figures made a number of serious errors with regard to the facts, most notably confusing the excellent figures for last month with a 12-month rolling average which was significantly worse.
But as we read the rest of the papers, we noticed the oddest thing.
Southernbystander on These Words Are My Own: “Yes this is all possible and the sentiment is sound, though as others have asked what does deriving sovereignty from…” Jul 21, 11:17
Oneliner on Progressing To Oblivion: “Angus Robertson was a member of the Defence Select Committee. Imagine how disturbing that must have been for his fellow…” Jul 21, 10:39
BLMac on The Wheels Of Industry: “Do any of these polls restrict their canvassing to the only people who should be allowed to have a say…” Jul 21, 10:29
Alf Baird on The Wheels Of Industry: “We know that denial is part of the colonial condition, so no surprise you twa canna, or rather winna see…” Jul 21, 10:11
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “Swinney Speaking to the Press Association at Bute House, said he wanted Burnham to devolve energy and economic powers to…” Jul 21, 09:58
robertkknight on The Wheels Of Industry: “The biggest trick the colonial oppressor ever pulled was to convince the oppressed that their presence was entirely benevolent in…” Jul 21, 09:47
Minceheid on The Wheels Of Industry: “Just on the side, the collected body of Aurelius’ writings which came to be known as “Meditations” reveals a rather…” Jul 21, 09:35
desimond on The Wheels Of Industry: “All the money spinning conventions will move the dial not one iota..but will help the bank balance of a choice…” Jul 21, 09:33
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “The SNP/Scottish government has no power they even took it to court to prove it to themselves. So the new…” Jul 21, 09:19
Chas on The Wheels Of Industry: “They must have a huge amount of paper clips to be counted and pencils to be sharpened at the UN.…” Jul 21, 09:17
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “Is it that you write your best posts between 2 and 3 am? But what’s that got to do with…” Jul 21, 08:18
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “I suspect that most Scots are blissfully unaware of their “colonial oppression”, Alf. Not having to worry about the “colonial…” Jul 21, 08:12
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “Everybody had better wheesht about the £150+ billion per annum. Extraordinary, though, how even two professors together can contrive to…” Jul 21, 08:03
Young Lochinvar on The Wheels Of Industry: “Just pondering history, with some links to (what would be) Scotland. Emperor Hadrian (of wall fame) listed his successor as…” Jul 21, 02:55
Mark Beggan on The Wheels Of Industry: “Kemp is sitting in a crashed car trying to convince the passengers and eye-witnesses that the car is still road…” Jul 21, 00:28
Alf Baird on The Wheels Of Industry: ““Maybe we need to spend a few years wondering what’s to be done before we work out what’s to be…” Jul 20, 23:17
Harper (Kenneth John) on The Wheels Of Industry: “Who funds the National ? as I doubt its sales revenue, hope its not the missing Yes Scotland funds” Jul 20, 22:10
Spade on The Wheels Of Industry: “This is the post-apocalyptic political landscape that was anticipated a few years ago, the inevitable consequence of the SNP crime…” Jul 20, 21:34
sam on The Wheels Of Industry: “Professors Henderson and Wyn Jones have done studies on the “Future of England” over a number of yeaars. The findings…” Jul 20, 20:33
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “I didn’t know the devil bought soles.” Jul 20, 20:25
Knuckle_Heid on The Wheels Of Industry: “Seriously, who pays money to read this garbage? Endlessly promising a better future (we just need to be patient &…” Jul 20, 20:15
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “Thank god you told us the nitty gritty. To be honest I’d rather sell my sole to the devil than…” Jul 20, 19:57
Hatey McHateface on The Wheels Of Industry: “@Dan Your final paragraph is exactly right.” Jul 20, 19:46
sam on The Wheels Of Industry: ““The findings showed: 60% of voters in England say current politics makes them feel angry 55% say it makes them…” Jul 20, 19:26
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “robertkknight A parasite is a living thing the SNP is dead.” Jul 20, 18:33
100%Yes on The Wheels Of Industry: “John Swinney leader of the SNP, just been elected on a huge lie, but his top priority is the cost…” Jul 20, 18:27
Dan on The Wheels Of Industry: ““He doesn’t cite any evidence for that figure, although it does pretty much correspond with what pro-indy parties got in…” Jul 20, 18:22
Neil Singleton on These Words Are My Own: “Do remember that Sturgeon is one of the two “Shipman Sisters” with the now departed Freeman. And never forget that…” Jul 20, 18:19
twathater on The Wheels Of Industry: “What grinds my gears is the amount of gullibility surrounding independence supporters, FFS are they blind can they not see…” Jul 20, 17:53
