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The Great Urging 594

Posted on January 10, 2017 by

As we’ve always understood it, readers, the definition of “news” is supposed to be “a new thing which has happened that people didn’t previously know about”.

brokenrec

Evidently the rules have changed since we were young cub reporters.

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If I’m right and you are sinful 341

Posted on January 08, 2017 by

We’ve never been all that convinced by the political strategy of parties angrily pointing out their rivals have supposedly broken their manifesto promises once in government. After all, since by definition the complaining party was very probably opposed to the policies in question, shouldn’t they be delighted if they haven’t been enacted?

(It’s different, of course, in the event of something like a referendum, where something that all of the parties concerned agree is good – staying in the EU, say, or protecting jobs in the civil service or the oil industry – is promised in return for a particular vote, but then swiftly trashed once that vote is won.)

bteu

It’s even weirder if the opposition was the REASON the policies didn’t get enacted. It’s incredibly bizarre to vote something down (as the Unionist parties did repeatedly to the SNP minority administration of 2007-11 when it brought its manifesto pledges forward), and then huff at the governing party for the fact that you outvoted them.

But today the Scottish Tories have found an intriguing new twist on the wheeze.

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Data without information 193

Posted on January 07, 2017 by

This week a Scottish journalist told us ruefully that over the festive holidays, all parties send the newspapers “Christmas boxes” comprising a load of ready-made and pre-chewed garbage stories, each embargoed to specific days, for them to run in the news desert between Boxing Day and January 3rd with no further effort required.

(This year’s crop had been particularly dismal, our source revealed.)

emptybox

It seems, though, that the media plans to continue the practice all year.

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The Big-Stats Quiz Of The Year 168

Posted on December 27, 2016 by

So called because doing it makes our traffic figures get larger 😉

jimmycarr

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This time they really mean it 301

Posted on December 07, 2016 by

Alert readers may have noticed with barely-concealed disinterest that Scottish Labour have announced their intention to have another really hard think about devolution.

With Labour not looking like being in power at either Holyrood or Westminster for at least a decade, and their opinions therefore being about as relevant as our ideas as to who should play in the back four for Real Madrid next weekend, most papers treated the news with the gravitas it deserved, such as this report in the Sunday Post:

kezpost

But we thought it might be a snappy idea to keep track of all the times the Unionist parties have promised that they’ve come up with the ultimate form of devo-X.

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In remembrance 349

Posted on November 13, 2016 by

I haven’t worn a poppy in 20-odd years, for my own reasons.

But this chilling clip, from the 2005 BBC series “Auschwitz, The Nazis And The Final Solution”, is the most important thing about war that humanity should never forget.

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Wait, what did we miss? 108

Posted on November 13, 2016 by

You did WHAT in May now?

sldwon

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For the record 221

Posted on November 11, 2016 by

Because, astonishing as it might seem in the circumstances, Ruth Davidson actually genuinely tried to get away with this at First Minister’s Questions yesterday:

davidsonchina

They really do think we won’t remember, readers.

(Source 1, Source 2)

Please be wrong 627

Posted on November 09, 2016 by

It’s 4.36am. I’m going to go to bed in a minute. I’m hoping that I get up in a few hours and laugh at this, delighted at my own unfounded pessimism.

trumpcall1

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The Simple Ruth 391

Posted on October 20, 2016 by

On the contentious and topical subject of what constitutes a mandate for a second independence referendum, we’re grateful to the super-alert reader who unearthed this clip from BBC Scotland’s election night coverage of 2011, in which Ruth Davidson gives a candid and blunt explanation of the criteria required:

We’re just going to write that one down for the record.

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A strange interpretation 105

Posted on October 20, 2016 by

The BBC and STV are reporting this today:

no10mandate

And yet.

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Bowled out by the softballs 497

Posted on October 16, 2016 by

Here’s David Mundell on Sunday Politics earlier today:

It’s a pretty uncomfortable time. But it could have been a lot worse.

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