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”.
There was a nice moment at yesterday’s Scottish Independence Convention.
It was widely appreciated by Catalan people, none of whom (so far as we could see) took the expression of solidarity as implicit support for Catalan independence, only for freedom and democracy. But someone wasn’t quite so happy.
There’s so little happening in Scottish politics news today that we had to read David Torrance’s column in the Herald, and we must say we ended up pretty confused.
Not by the fact that it was a free half-page advert for a new Unionist “thinktank” set up by an angry unsuccessful dogfood salesman readers may be familiar with – there were no surprises to be found there from either Torrance or the Herald – but by the thinktank itself, which doesn’t seem to know its Arsenal from its Devil’s Elbow.
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.
The above story is feeble enough as it stands, even allowing for it being a desperately slow news week for Scottish politics. Maureen Watt is 66 years old and has asthma, and making a pensioner with breathing difficulties sprint a mile to get to a speech on time probably isn’t the most cost-effective way for the Parliament to save four and a half quid, once you’ve factored in the cost of the ambulance and everything.
We struggled to summon up much more than a weary sigh about a story in a couple of the minor papers today (the Herald and Express), about a micro-scuffle at Saturday’s pro-indy rally in Glasgow. The most interesting thing about it appeared to be that the Express had written its article several hours before the event took place.
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.
This was Scottish Tory uberdunce Jamie Greene a few weeks ago, bitterly attacking the SNP for spending £22,000 on consulting the public over a policy on which the party won a landslide victory in the 2016 Holyrood election.
You might think that a government pursuing the manifesto policies it was elected on was a pretty legitimate thing to do, especially when it was asking voters for their views in order to shape that policy. Perhaps Greene was confused because the Tories have been acting as if they, not the SNP, won the election. But that raises another question.
sarah on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “@ J Robertson: well done for writing to your MSP and to the Standards Committee. If no-one tells them, they…” Jan 7, 23:03
Neil Mackenzie on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “A Parliament majority is the only majority that matters and it doesn’t matter whether it is won on 30% of…” Jan 7, 22:41
DaveL on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “I see Hatey’s still continuing with nazi terminology to describe and dehumanise a multitude of ethnic groups within a sovereign…” Jan 7, 22:40
100%Yes on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “When you hear, it up to Greenland and Denmark surely its up to the Inuit to decide the colonial masters…” Jan 7, 22:16
Alf Baird on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Scots should know how Venezuelan’s feel about losing control of their oil resource. For over 30 years Anglo-American oil corporations…” Jan 7, 22:07
100%Yes on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Holyrood was the stepping stone to Independence. Now its the vehicle which the SNP uses to stop Independence, with the…” Jan 7, 21:35
100%Yes on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Humans have five primary senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. I have no idea why the wider movement doesn’t…” Jan 7, 21:30
100%Yes on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Scots have got very short memory’s. At the last Westminster election, on the night of the vote, Angus Robertson made…” Jan 7, 20:46
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Orcland is hoaching with oil. They don’t need to import it from Venezuela (unless the Ukie sabotage/destruction campaign has been…” Jan 7, 20:45
agentx on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “It’s amazing how long it has taken for people on here to recognise how useless and crap Holyrood and the…” Jan 7, 20:37
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Thank the Guid Lord ye’re OK, Northy. Those reports that you were last seen, erse painted blue, clad in kilt…” Jan 7, 20:34
100%Yes on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Without a doubt she the cause of everything! Trying saying that to the individuals who read the national you’ll be…” Jan 7, 20:33
Duncan Strachan on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Good stuff Northcode. Best Post of the day. We need to get lives. And that’s the great success of the…” Jan 7, 20:28
Rev. Stuart Campbell on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Aawwww, sadly that group seems to be private.” Jan 7, 20:25
Duncan Strachan on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Good stuff Northcode. Best Post of the day. We need to get lives. And that’s the great success of the…” Jan 7, 20:25
Willie on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Ah who cares about our pretend wee parliament I read this evening that the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force…” Jan 7, 19:57
Aidan on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “That’s exactly right Hatey – the route to independence is much more difficult with a moribund SNP sucking in the…” Jan 7, 19:41
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Every day a School Day. Turns out it has been really quite easy to stop boats, even humongous ones, all…” Jan 7, 19:34
Northcode on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “I woke up this morning with the dim Scottish sunset… shining in. Then I found my nation in a brown…” Jan 7, 19:24
sarah on Off-topic: “I share your worries about the state of the world. The USA is terrifying and so is UK, France, and…” Jan 7, 19:10
Hatey McHateface on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “What the heck, I’ll bite. In each constituency, the Indy aspiring voters need to vote for whichever party (doesn’t matter…” Jan 7, 19:09
Tinto Chiel on Off-topic: “Amen to all that. “It makes you worry for your grandchildren and great grandchildren what a world we leave them.”…” Jan 7, 18:59
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “A trip down memory lane… Gordon Dangerfield: Law, Culture and Politics (17 Oct 2020) « STURGEON: “JE RECUSE” » «…” Jan 7, 18:43
Bobo bunny on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Haven’t you got it yet – there is literary nobody to vote for that will move the independence movement forward.…” Jan 7, 18:32
Young Lochinvar on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “H McH About a week ago I started the “getting blood out of a stone” process of asking a genuine…” Jan 7, 17:06
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “The SNP are doing the job it was meant to do, with the support and assistance of those other political…” Jan 7, 16:47
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Scot Finlayson, Pretty accurate analyses, I believe the Civil Servants are being challenge for parading in the trans marches while…” Jan 7, 15:52
James Cheyne on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “Alf Baird. The devolved parliament under Westminster along with the treaty of union is like one of those big Scams,…” Jan 7, 15:42
Marie Clark on Off-topic: “No luck Tinto trying to get a reply from BDTT. I sincerely hope that he is well enough but perhaps…” Jan 7, 15:26
Scot Finlayson on Grandpa John’s Nightmare: “The transcult staffers rule the roost at Holyrood, every vote,policy,grant,committee decision and color of toilet paper will be vetted by…” Jan 7, 15:22
