Earlier this morning an alert reader directed us to an article in the Daily Express which seemed to make an eye-catchingly remarkable claim. It turned out to be one actually made by Ruth Davidson on Saturday (which had already been reported in the Express that day), when she appeared on Iain Dale’s radio show on LBC.
A 27% swing? From the SNP to the Tories? Putting the Tories AHEAD in the polls? That would be such a stupendously Earth-shattering development in Scottish politics that you’d think the media would have made more of it than a couple of mentions in an embarrassing low-circulation comic like the Express.
Scottish schoolchildren start their exams today. We wish them good luck, because if any of them have taken their lead in language skills from the nation’s media they’re going to be in a lot of trouble.
For 10% of extra course credit, let’s find out why.
We’ve never tried to put a precise breakdown on how much of the falsehood pumped out daily by the Scottish political media is due to deliberately misleading spin and how much of it is simply due to journalists who are really, really terrible at their jobs.
It’s the holidays, so the papers are desperate to fill space and the political parties are all trying to help out by sending them helpful press releases which can be slotted directly onto pages, titled “PARTY X CONTINUES TO SUPPORT POLICY Z WHICH IT HAS ALWAYS SUPPORTED. ALSO, THE OTHER PARTIES ARE BAD”.
Scottish Labour’s contribution is a piece in most papers today reiterating their demand for the Scottish Government to hike the top rate of income tax – a policy on which Labour stood at the last Westminster and Holyrood elections and which was quite stupendously comprehensively rejected by voters, but which Labour inexplicably feel the SNP should implement anyway.
And that’s all very well and good, because Kezia Dugdale gets paid the best part of £80,000 a year by taxpayers and she’s got to say something all day to justify it. The trouble, as we’ve noted at great length on this site, is that so many of the things she says aren’t actually true.
A terrible article in today’s Observer nevertheless helpfully provides the most utterly categorical refutation yet of the endlessly-repeated Unionist lie that Spain would veto an independent Scotland’s membership of the EU.
The piece ran under the blatantly untrue headline “Spain drops plan to impose veto if Scotland tries to join EU” – it has NEVER had such a plan – and went on to propagate a whole series of further falsehoods asserted without any basis by reporter Jennifer Rankin, but such a spectaculary direct and unambiguous quote bangs yet another nail into a coffin that only the very stupidest of the nation’s pundits are still trying to insist contains a living occupant.
On today’s Good Morning Scotland, a Tory MSP (in this case seven-time voter reject Murdo Fraser) was allowed to repeatedly get away unchallenged – for about the 100th time on broadcast media in recent days – with telling the flat-out lie that opinion polls show a clear and large majority in opposition to the Scottish Government’s position and proposed timing on a second independence referendum.
We’ve endlessly shown these claims to be absolutely and categorically false, yet for some reason that we’re unable to explain, no interviewer has ever stopped Fraser, or Adam Tomkins, or Ruth Davidson, or Jackson Carlaw, and pointed that fact out.
Today, a tiny bar buried on a left-hand page in the Herald delivers yet more proof of public support for the Scottish Government’s stance.
It deserves rather more prominence, and while we’re about it we figured we might as well collect some of the evidence together.
One of the favourite sneering Unionist memes of the independence referendum was the mocking dismissal of claims by some Yes supporters that there might be “secret oil fields” in a location off the west of Shetland known as Clair Ridge.
So amused were the Unionists by this notion that they were still sniggering about it regularly years after the referendum, right up to earlier this month.
Curiously, they’ve gone a little quieter in recent days.
Here’s the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, speaking to BBC News this morning and giving a striking illustration of the term “dancing on the head of a pin”.
Comically, his excuse for demanding another referendum on leaving the EU while opposing a second Scottish independence referendum is that his new EU vote would be a completely different question – he’d be asking voters if they wanted to accept the Brexit deal and exit from the EU (which one might reasonably summarise on the ballot paper as “Leave”), or to refuse to approve the deal and stay in the EU (or put another way, “Remain”).
Glad we cleared that up, then. But then it got weirder.
The announcement that the Scottish Government would seek the uncontested legal right to hold a second independence referendum met with an outpouring of rage and ignorance from the massed ranks of the UK media that was in one sense entirely predictable yet still startling in its fury and ferocity.
Most prominent was the assertion, stated as fact by every pundit and broadcaster – including those required by law to be fair and impartial – that a second referendum would be conducted in the environment of a significantly worse economic case.
And that’s a remarkable claim, because the indisputable fact is that nobody has the slightest clue what the economic case for No will be.
Geri on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Oi Fandan That’ll be eight of yours too then trying desperately to look relevant with zero point but word salad…we…” Feb 28, 20:56
Geri on The Tactics Of Suicide: “*scans Franchise fannies mutterings for any deep & meaningful insight, rebuttal or even a quality counter argument* FAIL! FAIL! FAIL!…” Feb 28, 20:46
lorncal on Two Men Unalike: “Three strands at work here: 1. the big corporates (all male) which have invested billions in the ‘trans’ industry -…” Feb 28, 20:30
Mark Beggan on Two Men Unalike: “Pedophile Apologists. Friends of Groomers. Corrupt to the core. Makes the SNP look like a community project with missing raffle…” Feb 28, 20:22
Aidan on The Tactics Of Suicide: “That’s 8 posts from you Alf, all of which say basically the same thing. You might get beyond rhetoric to…” Feb 28, 20:16
Cynicus on Two Men Unalike: “Don’t expect Parliament to do anything about this in a hurry. It too is virtually captured. Almost 12 % of…” Feb 28, 20:05
Mark Beggan on Two Men Unalike: “They have cut off the head of the snake. The Iranian supreme leader is no longer.” Feb 28, 19:55
Alf Baird on The Tactics Of Suicide: “For the “hard of thinking” colonialists BTL – an ye aw ken wha ye are, an so dae we -…” Feb 28, 19:45
Sven on Two Men Unalike: “Lends a whole new meaning to the term, “Labour of love”, Mark B.” Feb 28, 19:03
Mark Beggan on Two Men Unalike: “God help those who help themselves. Korea next? Why not. Zap the bastards.” Feb 28, 18:36
Young Lochinvar on Two Men Unalike: “Strike Hebes, should have read camel jockeys.” Feb 28, 18:32
Mark Beggan on Two Men Unalike: “Pride in the workplace. Does that include Rent Boys.” Feb 28, 18:32
Young Lochinvar on Two Men Unalike: “Hi tech long range warfare unleashed yet again. God help the Americans if the Hebes and Mullahs get their hands…” Feb 28, 18:28
Northcode on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Correct, Geri. I don’t think most folk will need as many as three guesses… one will probably be enough.” Feb 28, 18:18
Aidan on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Of course no mildly educated person in reasonable control of their own faculties and with a balanced state of mind…” Feb 28, 18:04
Nae Need! on Two Men Unalike: “In my head, that’s pretty much how I visualise the word: Nonce sense.” Feb 28, 18:00
Nae Need! on Two Men Unalike: “Indeed. Anarcho-tyranny doing its thing.” Feb 28, 17:57
Nae Need! on Two Men Unalike: “My thoughts too.” Feb 28, 17:56
TURABDIN on Two Men Unalike: “The fantastic world according to Lewis Caroll is preferable to the sinister world according to D Trump. Where’s the rabbit…” Feb 28, 17:52
Bilbo on The Tactics Of Suicide: “It couldn’t happen to a nicer person lol but I’m cynical that all these recent allegations of misconduct is a…” Feb 28, 17:51
Bilbo on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Thanks Cynicus for your measured reply. I don’t get involved in anything to do with events in the ME especially…” Feb 28, 17:40
Nae Idea on Two Men Unalike: “These trans people are dangerous lunatics. For the tiny number of them they are, they have caused a HELLUVA lot…” Feb 28, 16:46
SilentMajority on Two Men Unalike: “I thoroughly agree. It was wonderful watching Peterson, who very politely, showed just how biased Newman is. Definitely recommended viewing!” Feb 28, 16:30
Andy Ellis on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Geri is about as connected to the truth as Trump and Uncle Vlad and their respective acolytes. She couldn’t rip…” Feb 28, 16:26
Sean Duffy on Two Men Unalike: “Further proof that it’s all noncense! [spelling intentional].” Feb 28, 16:05
twathater on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Oh NO crivvens help me bob , I am distraught Kay with an E the STAR Kaye Adams reportedly axed…” Feb 28, 15:54
twathater on The Tactics Of Suicide: “@ Geri that wee break you had away from the arseholes has did you good , you are on fire…” Feb 28, 15:47
Curtain-Twitcher General on Two Men Unalike: “The NHS are obviously getting bribed. Around 10-15 years ago, all the NHS seemed to talk about wss “acid reflux”.…” Feb 28, 15:41
robertkknight on Two Men Unalike: “We’re through the looking glass here people, what was “normal” is now subject to attack by social anarchists and trans-zealots.…” Feb 28, 15:20
