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.
sam on There May Be Justice: “The Scots diaspora is likely to be a big help to a newly independent Scotland just as the Irish diaspora…” Oct 8, 20:18
Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““everything that happens in a colony is due to colonialism” I’m starting to come around to your way of thinking,…” Oct 8, 19:07
Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““the North Sea no longer has any oil that is economic to produce” It’s a fact not widely understood that…” Oct 8, 18:54
Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““you vote the useless shower out. We simply can’t do that to Westminster, the more alert of you may have…” Oct 8, 18:39
factchecker on There May Be Justice: “Fair comment, I think, Rob I can only see one way – vote the SNP out. Abstaining/spoiling a ballot paper…” Oct 8, 18:24
Alf Baird on There May Be Justice: ““You grab independence so you have all the levers to make things better” Indeed so. A colonized people have no…” Oct 8, 18:12
am firinn on There May Be Justice: “Sarah is right. The idea that you have to set up a perfect administration before you thrown off the shackles…” Oct 8, 17:44
Rob on There May Be Justice: “You would trust the current mob in any way at all, I think they make even Westminster look good and…” Oct 8, 17:40
Alan Austin on There May Be Justice: “The mines closed because the coal was not economic against oil so the miners lost thier jobs due to economics.…” Oct 8, 17:17
Aidan on The Love Of Big Brother: “@“James” – if you want some peace and quiet why don’t you log off the library computer and go and…” Oct 8, 16:50
factchecker on There May Be Justice: “sarah says: 8 October, 2026 at 2:44 pm Stay in the false union until we find better local administration? What…” Oct 8, 16:33
Aidan on There May Be Justice: “If you listen to Sam, insider, one of them could be our very own Alf Baird!” Oct 8, 15:58
Insider on There May Be Justice: “o.k. sarah! Spill the beans! Who are these honest,trustworthy,capable,inspiring leaders who will magically appear if Scotland becomes independent ? Where…” Oct 8, 15:12
sarah on There May Be Justice: “Stay in the false union until we find better local administration? What a very strange position to take.” Oct 8, 14:44
Aidan on There May Be Justice: “There are only two countries in the world with double or more GDP than the U.K. – USA 7.7x and…” Oct 8, 14:10
sam on There May Be Justice: “Source is BBC and UK government “England’s surface waters face significant chemical pollution challenges, with legacy substances like heavy metals…” Oct 8, 13:38
Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: “Exactly, Rob. We’ve had a number of examples since 2014 when it’s the WM government and the UK Supreme Court…” Oct 8, 13:06
Rob on There May Be Justice: “So we have two bad governors, one in Westminster and one in Holyrood. Removing Westminster, which on balance does less…” Oct 8, 12:40
Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““Things are even worse across the Channel” There’s the usual tensions between the “yoof” and the wealthy wrinklies. The French…” Oct 8, 11:44
Captain Caveman on There May Be Justice: “Ever heard of the expression “non sequitur?” Small NW European nations prosper (relatively) because of high productivity, low population density,…” Oct 8, 11:35
Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““The obvious lesson is that colonized Scots need to ditch Anglo imperial rule here asap” Sadly, just saying “we’re colonised”…” Oct 8, 11:33
Alf Baird on There May Be Justice: “You Britnats dinna appear tae notice how its the larger former imperial countries that are aye in financial freefall and…” Oct 8, 10:54
James on The Love Of Big Brother: “Aw, Adrian, petal; put a sock in it gie’s a’ some peace.” Oct 8, 10:37
Aidan on The Love Of Big Brother: “James – imagine being a grown adult man and writing something like that in response to losing an argument. Juvenile…” Oct 8, 10:20
Captain Caveman on There May Be Justice: “To be fair to Confused, he’s right about the water privitisation shitshow and its aftermath, as yet unconcluded.” Oct 8, 09:51
Captain Caveman on There May Be Justice: “It’s hard to know where all this is going to end – but end it most certainly will, sadly. “We”…” Oct 8, 09:50
Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““In the year to March 2026, central government spent nearly £100bn on debt interest alone, nearly 80% per cent of…” Oct 8, 08:20
Hatey McHateface on There May Be Justice: ““Scotland’s supposed champions for regaining independence, the SNP leadership, are also unworthy” “The only chance of restoring proper standards is…” Oct 8, 07:42
