Mainstream and social media alike are now well into their second day of an absolutely epic meltdown at the news that Alex Salmond is to broadcast a chat show on RT, the Russian equivalent of the BBC.
It really is almost impossible to overstate the magnitude of the shrieking fit the decision has produced. Addled old Lords with criminal convictions for violently and drunkenly assaulting Her Majesty’s police have with an audacious lack of self-awareness decried the immorality of one of HM’s advisors going on TV to talk about stuff, and one Lib Dem MSP has even gone so far as to raise a Holyrood motion demanding that the state interferes with the lawful employment choices of a private citizen.
We imagine that RT will be beside itself with joy at the avalanche of publicity the UK press and political sphere is giving it. We’d be amazed if the hysterical brouhaha didn’t double or treble the audience figures that Salmond could otherwise have expected.
We’re not a Catalonian-politics website and we don’t even have an opinion on whether Catalonia should be independent, but sometimes it’s easier to understand the workings and failings of the media if you watch how it behaves on a subject you’re not directly and closely involved with. Last week was one of those weeks.
He was brought on to give voice to what has become the universal UK-media spin on events in Catalonia – that both sides are to blame, that the Catalan government was provocative and irresponsible to call an “illegal” referendum, and that the only way for the area to achieve independence is through the 1978 Spanish constitution, despite it expressly forbidding any such action and its cornerstone of existence (also known as the “Preliminary Title”) being “based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation”.
So in the striking absence of any useful information in the press, we thought we’d do a little digging and see how that might work.
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.
Investigative site The Ferret this afternoon published a report into the Scottish Futures Trust, the SNP’s replacement for Labour’s cripplingly costly PFI projects.
The report was undertaken by Jim and Margaret Cuthbert, a pair of economists well regarded in nationalist circles, and makes some interesting if vague comments about downsides that MIGHT, in theory, exist in the SFT now or in the future.
The headline claims are all full of highly-qualified language (“may not deliver value for money”; “profits may be unduly high”; “could restrict growth”; “potentially has adverse implications”; “impossible to tell whether“), and it’s a long way down the page until you get to anything approaching a hard fact, or indeed the revelation that the report seems to have been paid for by Scottish Labour.
Readers, we’d like you to meet Steven MacGregor. He’s the chap on the right of this pic, taken last Monday while campaigning for the Tories in Ochil & South Perthshire with party leader Ruth Davidson, just a foot or so away from him.
Apologies in advance about this, folks, but it’s driving us mad. We got into a Twitter argument with some Tory balloon last night and this morning, and to cut a long story short it got us looking at the 1951 UK general election result.
History records it as a Tory majority, securing just over half of the Parliamentary seats (321 of 625) and forming the government under Winston Churchill despite narrowly losing the popular vote to Labour (48% to 48.8%).
But if you examine the result in the House Of Commons Library the numbers don’t add up, and we can’t figure out why.
We hadn’t been planning to talk any more about the curious case of Claire Austin, the suddenly publicity-shy Edinburgh nurse who – how can we put this? – seemed a rather ill-chosen figurehead for the good cause of getting more pay for a group of people who are rightly well-regarded by the public.
But yesterday, the release of a letter from Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale re-opened political hostilities after last week’s hiatus for the Manchester terror attack by shoving the now-reticent Ms Austin right back into the spotlight.
We’re not going to join in the attacks on a nurse who criticised Nicola Sturgeon during last night’s BBC election debate. While her lifestyle seems at a glance to be wildly at odds with her claim that she relied on foodbanks to survive, there are – genuinely – possible explanations for at least most of it.
Owning a convertible car isn’t proof that someone’s wealthy – I have one myself that’s worth less than £1000, and I also have a relative who has very little money but who nevertheless owns a horse just like Claire Austin’s daughter seemingly does. (It’s also possible to be quite poor but still own things you bought when you were less poor.)
It ill befits Yes supporters – who are happy to deploy the existence and growing use of foodbanks to justifiably attack the UK government – to complain if someone who calls the First Minister “wee Jimmy Krankie” adopts the same tactic. More to the point, we entirely agree with Ms Austin’s core view that nurses should be paid more in general, as we suspect most people do.
(And in Scotland, of course, they ARE paid more than in the rest of the UK, and under the SNP have always been given the full pay rises recommended by the independent pay board, which hasn’t been the case in England.)
But that still leaves some things hanging disquietingly in the air.
More than a quarter of its Scottish candidates for the forthcoming UK general election actually already hold elected office – nine of them as councillors, four as MSPs, one as an MEP and of course the sole defending member, David Mundell.
(Several of the councillors have only been in their jobs for a matter of a few days and are already looking to scurry off to London for new ones.)
As for the rest, though – and following the discovery that at least two of its council candidates earlier this month had no idea that they were standing – the party’s clearly been doing some more hasty press-ganging.
To be honest we didn’t pay it a lot of heed, assuming that “Scottish fishing industry leaders” just meant Bertie Armstrong again – a longstanding ultra-staunch Unionist and Leave supporter with a track record as a reliable anti-independence rentaquote – and nothing in the coverage led us to believe otherwise.
But then we saw a picture:
Mr Armstrong is the white-haired and bearded chap standing immediately to the right of Davidson in the photo, with his hand on the top corner of her pledge. But who’s the fellow immediately to the left of her?
Unionists were barely able to hide their excitement last month at the thought of some dead pensioners. This was former Labour MSP Dr Richard Simpson, for example:
(Simpson later went on to embellish the claim by saying that it had in fact reversed.)
The story was serious enough to be the Sunday Times Scotland front page lead.
Xaracen on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “@Stuart; “The Treaty was entered into without limitation of time and some articles express quite plainly that they were intended…” Jul 24, 22:27
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “For general info, here is a link to PROF ROBERT BLACK KC’s presentation about the UNION: Professor Robert Black KC…” Jul 24, 19:33
Stuart on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Xaracen. 2:14 How wrong can one man be? Well in your case very. Your argument (feeble though it is) re…” Jul 24, 18:43
Northcode on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “When their buttons and switches and knobs – and they have many – are pushed or flicked or twiddled… they…” Jul 24, 18:40
twathater on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “@ Lorn you said “I believe implicitly, that those men who transgress the rules of normal, decent behaviour have a…” Jul 24, 18:14
Dan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “@ Lorn at 4:15 pm It’s definitely okay to blame the Scots for the prevailing Union, and jist ignore things…” Jul 24, 18:02
Aidan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “@Dan – I mean the cost per MwH quoted as £150, Hinckley Point see originally struck at c.£85. Yeah I…” Jul 24, 17:59
twathater on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Oh there’s Bastard TAX MOAN back from his holidays in Is rahel, has he been updated on the plans to…” Jul 24, 17:56
Dan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Hmm… but when did pretty much anything built in the UK ever come in on proposed cost? HS2, a couple…” Jul 24, 17:30
Mark Beggan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “It’s been a busy week for the Eton rifles. “What a catalyst you turned out to be. Crashed your van…” Jul 24, 17:03
Mark Beggan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “The favourite rant from the Parasite Class; ” It’s good for the economy!” Who’s economy?” Jul 24, 16:55
Chas on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Rather than the readers ‘chipping in’ Andy, you could gift him some of yours!” Jul 24, 16:35
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “LABOUR MP CALLS GENDER-CRITICS ‘SWIVEL-EYED FANATICS’ A Labour MP has revealed his contempt for those who believe in the reality…” Jul 24, 16:32
Chas on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Alfie Boy can’t lose. Either we accept we are living in a colony. Or, if we don’t, it is proof…” Jul 24, 16:22
Lorn on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “I think that it is less that we are colonized than that we have allowed ourselves to be treated as…” Jul 24, 16:15
Lorn on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Young Lochinvar: no, decent men did not barge into female spaces in the past, and any who were indecent enough…” Jul 24, 16:06
Stuart on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Name checking your own homework does not count Professor Baird. Your narrative (feeble though it is) is inaccurate and clutching…” Jul 24, 16:06
Aidan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Who is “Scotland”, every single person in Scotland who has been polled on the subject, or a tiny bunch of…” Jul 24, 14:49
James on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: ““Aidan”; “I think we’ve all just got to face up to that fact…” Who’s “we”?” Jul 24, 14:32
James on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Good old “Aidan”, the true BritNat defender on every subject. Scotland doesn’t need (or want) nuclear, but hey, when did…” Jul 24, 14:15
Xaracen on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “@Stuart; We are talking of a union of two sovereign kingdoms, neither of which in 1706 owed any obeisance to…” Jul 24, 14:14
James on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Can you elucidate what these “fish” might be? England has been meddling in Scotland’s affairs for nigh on 1,000 years…” Jul 24, 14:01
Rob on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “The simple fact is that Scottish politicians have shown over the last 10 years that they are simply so incompetent…” Jul 24, 13:54
Aidan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “It’s a case against nuclear power, I don’t know where she got the numbers from re costs, they seem around…” Jul 24, 13:08
sarah on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Further to my comment at 11.18 a.m., coincidentally Gareth Wardell, Grouse Beater, has retweeted today the speech that he would…” Jul 24, 12:59
Mark Beggan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Put your colonial feet up on the colonial stool. Make some colonial tea and have some Corbyn and Sultana cake.” Jul 24, 12:40