As we write there’s a protest going on outside the Scottish Parliament regarding the privatisation of ferry services to the Western Isles. It was formally announced almost three hours ago that there definitely wasn’t going to be any privatisation and that the service would remain in public hands, but the protest still went ahead.
The people conducting the protest, who’ve got the exact thing they wanted, are now doing their level best to lose it again. Welcome to Scottish politics.
In amongst a torrent of pretty mad analysis of the election result at the weekend, we noticed the most insane reason yet suggested for the loss of the SNP’s majority:
The co-founder of a much-lauded but little-read pro-independence website asserted that the SNP were cruising to victory until the Nats got the backing of the Scottish Sun and Nicola Sturgeon was pictured posing with the front cover endorsing her party.
The whole litany of gaping flaws in that argument is something the Yes movement has needed to talk about for some considerable time now. So let’s bite the bullet and do it.
We were having a quiet night in, readers. (Living in a cul-de-sac, it’s quite peaceful here in the evenings, unless we’re hosting a soirée.) We’d just made ourselves a late snack of a tasty baguette – preceded by a small apéritif, and a few canapés serving as hors d’oeuvre – as the au pair is on holiday in Paris this week with the chauffeur, taking in some haute couture.
As we relaxed on the chaise-longue, pondering an indulgent dessert of a chocolate eclair or some crème brûlée, we glanced at Twitter, in the hope of being amused by a few bon mots in the milieu of the internet. Sadly, the reality was a cliché.
Dismayingly, this magnificent piece of virtuoso television interviewing from last night’s Scotland Tonight doesn’t appear to have been recorded in full splendid isolation for posterity anywhere, so it would be a grave failure of duty on our part not to preserve it for those viewers unfortunate enough to have been otherwise engaged.
We had a little Twitter run-in last night with former Scottish Labour deputy leader and current unemployed halfwit Anas Sarwar, when he reported us to Police Scotland for making a joke about bank holiday mail deliveries, “people in England” and “especially” Scottish ones – which of course includes this site’s own editor, that being the gag.
We’d almost forgotten he existed. But the incident brought something back to mind.
To be fair to Mr Sarwar, he was at least partly right.
Here’s a column from Kenny Farquharson in today’s tablet edition of the Times, which hasn’t made it onto the website. We don’t know if it’s in the print version.
To mark the day when Scotland would have become independent had it voted Yes in 2014, the Scottish Conservatives have hired someone who sells dog food (not very successfully) for a living to produce a 37-page dossier about how absolutely dreadful Scotland is and how it would be the most bankrupt country in Europe – poorer than Greece, poorer than Latvia and poorer than Cyprus.
It wasn’t supposed to be released publicly until tomorrow, so that all the papers could splurge their loads on it, but someone found a copy that had been left on a bus and sent it to us. It’s incredibly dull, but if you really want to read it, it’s here.
Even by the low, low normal arithmetical standards of the Scottish media, yesterday’s Scottish Sunday Express humiliated itself with the most stupendously factually wrong articles we’ve seen in a newspaper for some time.
We can hardly contain our joy, gentle readers, that Scottish Labour have brought this magnificent graphic from January back again, tweeting it several times yesterday with all the mindbogglingly fat-headed flaws from two months ago still present.
But we couldn’t help being struck by this new comment about it, by the branch office’s notoriously truth-averse finance spokesclown:
Let’s walk through that one really quickly. People can’t afford to save for a deposit, because rents are so high. So rather than do anything about rents, Labour will double the zero they HAVE managed to save, boosting it all the way up to, er, zero.
sam on When the law breaks the law: “For those of you interested in the health of our nation. Here is a link to a talk on health…” Feb 24, 10:35
Cynicus on When the law breaks the law: ““The bigger and more important question is who else has this crime syndicate of the super wealthy oligarchy captured.” =======…” Feb 24, 10:08
Willie on When the law breaks the law: “I prefer the nomenclature of Randy Andy and Handy Mandy. But as the media now moves on to Handy, rhe…” Feb 24, 09:05
diabloandco on When the law breaks the law: “Don’t do Facebook , could someone put up Sara’s response?” Feb 24, 09:04
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “Jay Depends on your age. Younger, and you probably are (correctly) worried about saying the “wrong thing” that in the…” Feb 24, 01:43
Saffron Robe on When the law breaks the law: “As I’ve said before, it’s unwise to ascribe your own failings to others – in this case, racism disguised as…” Feb 24, 00:39
Jay on When the law breaks the law: “Young Lochinvar: Having only recently become a ‘Wings’ reader (occasionally making comments), there seems to be a substantial degree of…” Feb 24, 00:26
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “« Scots is descended from Northumbrian, while Standard English emerged from the East Midland dialect of Mercia. Although markedly different,…” Feb 23, 23:35
Cynicus on When the law breaks the law: “Mandy in the Jile! But Randy Andy & Dandy Mandy not (yet?) sharing a cell. https://tinyurl.com/54mwctac” Feb 23, 23:30
Confused on When the law breaks the law: “john davidsons outburst at the baftas that so annoyed people – that illustrated perfectly the whole point of the film…” Feb 23, 23:09
Andrew scott on When the law breaks the law: “Anyone see the watermelon party’s PPB? nothing of course of their obsession with trans rights” Feb 23, 22:41
Northcode on When the law breaks the law: “Part of our debate would perhaps be concerned with a definition of ‘colonisation’ A modern definition of colonialism: ” [colonialism]…” Feb 23, 22:00
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “AUTISTIC DETRANSITIONER AWARDED $2m AFTER HER BREASTS WERE REMOVED AT 16 An autistic woman who underwent a double mastectomy at…” Feb 23, 20:27
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “PUBERTY BLOCKER TRIAL HALTED OVER SAFETY CONCERNS Work on NHS England’s planned puberty blocker trial has been paused after the…” Feb 23, 20:00
Garavelli Princip on When the law breaks the law: “Well Young Lochinvar, I know Hatey well. He was my boss: Head of Lavatorial Services. Where do you think he…” Feb 23, 18:30
Willie on When the law breaks the law: “Obviously in not mounting an appeal Durham and Darlington dont have the unlimited resources like the Fife NHS have. Incredible…” Feb 23, 17:56
Willie on When the law breaks the law: “Touted with the great hurrah the reality is that the MV Isle of Islay was delivered one year and three…” Feb 23, 17:41
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “I wonder if host Alan Cummings would have been so fulsomely inclusive and supportive if the tick in question hard…” Feb 23, 17:19
sarah on When the law breaks the law: “Sara’s response has been posted onto Liberation Scotland’s facebook. She shows JK up for what he has become.” Feb 23, 17:04
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “HMcH @2.30 Hay fit, straw fit.. Based on that I very much doubt it. Oi Vey! How does that sit…” Feb 23, 17:01
100%Yes on When the law breaks the law: “James Kelly, is best ignored and forgotten about, he’s a thorn in the Indy movement side. You could write pages…” Feb 23, 16:36
sarah on When the law breaks the law: “@ 100%Yes: I hope you succeed in bringing Alba under the Alliance to Liberate Scotland umbrella. I’ve been dropping the…” Feb 23, 15:07
Cynicus on When the law breaks the law: ““ From the ashes of Culloden and the tragedy of the Highland Clearances to the cliffs of Quebec…” ======== It…” Feb 23, 15:05
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Anybody know if they swore an oath of allegiance to the British Sovereign and his successors? And if they did,…” Feb 23, 14:30
100%Yes on When the law breaks the law: “Both me and my wife have just rejoined the Alba Party to support any new leaders and to stick two…” Feb 23, 14:26
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “GROUSE BEATER: ‘ALBA PARTY NEWS’ « […] Four senior ALBA members have offered to take over the party to ensure…” Feb 23, 14:03
sam on When the law breaks the law: “Frae BBC “A health trust spent more than £600,000 on an employment tribunal which found it harassed a group of…” Feb 23, 13:56
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “HOW SCOTTISH REGIMENTS FORGED BRITAIN’S EMPIRE Intro text on YouTube site – « When you picture the British Empire, you…” Feb 23, 13:50
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Scotland all over the MSM today, as the waves of synthetic outrage swell into a tsunami sweeping all of yesterday’s…” Feb 23, 13:45
