From the archives #6 193
Posted on
February 12, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Archive for the ‘history’
The less-vigorous approach 447
Posted on
January 28, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Since we’re talking about sectarianism and bigotry this week, we’ve got you a 1998 Scotsman piece on the subject. The full piece is below, but our favourite lines come from Scotland In Union stalwart and noted Twitter zoomer “Professor” Tom Gallagher.
Wow. And the Ku Klux Klan’s distinctiveness stems from their white identity, we guess, although perhaps they have misgivings about some aspects of lynching black people and setting fire to crosses on their lawns.
By hook or by Cook 553
Posted on
January 23, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is an interesting one. Almost 40 years on from the event, Scottish politics is still plagued by micro-brained Labour types insisting that the SNP “ushered in” Margaret Thatcher after the devolution referendum of 1979 was sabotaged by a Labour MP.
SNP supporters counter that this is complete bollocks, largely because it’s complete bollocks. James Callaghan, the Labour PM at the time, blamed 34 of his own MPs for bringing his government down, by supporting an amendment from Islington South and Finsbury Labour MP George Cunningham which blocked the creation of a Scottish Assembly even though it won the referendum by a narrow margin.
(Cunningham resigned from Labour two years later and subsequently joined the SDP, but in 2012 the Daily Express dragged him out to demand that the same “40% rule” be applied to the indyref.)
History, though, has forgotten someone else who was apparently the true architect of the fix, to the extent that we’d never heard about it until now.
Let’s find out more, shall we?
Norwegian wouldn’t 166
Posted on
January 14, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Now remember, small oil-rich countries bordering the North Sea, there’s just no way you can thrive on your own.
After all, would this guy lie to you? He’s from the fair and unbiased media!
The House Scot and the Field Scot 267
Posted on
January 13, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
An alert reader this weekend linked us to a 1963 speech by the famed American civil rights and racial equality campaigner Malcolm X.
We’d never heard of it before, which is probably to our shame, but as we read it we were overcome by an inexplicable sense of incredible familiarity.
We present it to you below for your interest, without further comment or editing, but we’ve included a few pictures just to break up the block of text.
From the archives #2 516
Posted on
December 11, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
There was a time, readers, when Murdo Fraser was a bright young radical thinker who backed Full Fiscal Autonomy and even supported the idea of Universal Basic Income.
We think “committed Unionist” in this case is a euphemism.
Reheats and revisions 120
Posted on
December 10, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Alert readers of the Scottish Mail On Sunday – if any such people exist, that is – will have noticed that the paper has of late been cutting both costs and the middleman by giving Tory MSPs entire pages to spout party propaganda for free rather than paying a journalist to slightly rewrite it.
First Ruth Davidson, and now the party’s finance spokesloyalist Murdo Fraser, have recently had free rein to say whatever they liked to the paper’s readership, and today Fraser chose to go with the topic of “waste”.
(Following on from a bizarre Scottish Daily Mail piece last month about which we’ll have some startling new information for you very soon.)
It seemed oddly familiar, with one rather significant alteration.
Easy come, easy go 155
Posted on
December 09, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
From the archives 400
Posted on
December 04, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
On today’s news that support for independence is back up to 47%, and that Henry McLeish is calling for federalism again, whatever that is.
(NB In 2009 apparently “home rule” actually meant “independence”. Keep up.)
Return of the classics 337
Posted on
November 27, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Changing their hearts and minds 54
Posted on
October 18, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We long ago gave up expecting any sort of principled consistency from the Scottish Tories. Whether it was Ruth “line in the sand, no more powers” Davidson magically morphing into a champion of extended devolution, or suddenly reversing her position on free prescriptions, the party is now almost as fluid on policy as Scottish Labour.
The underlings, of course, dutifully follow their leader’s example. Readers familiar with Adam Tomkins’ remarkably rapid journey from fiery pro-independence republican to an ultra-Unionist ultra-Conservative monarchist will, we suspect, barely have batted an eyelid this morning as he unblinkingly performed a full 180-degree turn on the concept of universal basic income.
Even though as recently as this January he was full of admiration for it:
And he’s not alone.
The Evergreens 415
Posted on
September 20, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It was nice to see an old friend back in the Scottish media today.
How times change.
