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 referenced this a few days ago because we definitely remembered it happening, but we’d been unable to actually locate the evidence, and at Wings Over Scotland that sort of thing bothers us. After a very considerable amount of effort we’ve now tracked it down, so we’re bunging it up here to preserve it for the record.
(At that point host Frank Skinner gave up and moved on.)
It’s from one month after the indyref, and the interesting thing is that Robinson is twice given the opportunity to respond to Skinner’s question about whether he thought that the pro-Yes supporters had any sort of fair point about his alleged bias, and both times – rather than, say, just dismissing it with a quick “Of course not” – he ducks it.
Readers can, as always, make their own judgements.
As readers who were once children will probably recall, papier-mache is a substance in which incredibly flimsy material – such as tissue paper or newspaper – is turned into something rather more hard and durable by dint of combining multiple layers of it with a simple flour-and-water solution.
What’s less well-known is that the process also happens IN newspapers.
For a case study, let’s look at this article in today’s Times.
The Scottish Daily Mail almost explodes with fury over new crime statistics today:
Which is weird. Because there’s less crime in Scotland than there’s ever been at any time in modern history. How do we know that? Because the Mail tells us so.
20 years ago today, Scotland voted to have a Parliament for the first time in almost three centuries, by an overwhelming margin (although with modest enthusiasm – less than 10% more people actually voted for devolution than voted for independence in 2014, at 1.78m and 1.62m respectively).
Just 20 months after the vote the Parliament came into being, and Scotland’s media has been complaining about how useless it is ever since.
Today’s newspapers commemorate the anniversary by unleashing the full pontificating weight of the punditariat – most of whom have been opining wearily on Holyrood’s failings for the entire period – to bleat with their customary single voice about what a disappointment it’s all been.
The weird thing is that after all that time, none of them can actually explain why.
This week’s publication of party accounts by the Electoral Commission, along with a string of recent stories about election expenses, served as a reminder to anyone who might have forgotten that the SNP are still, despite 10 years in power, the massive underdogs in Scottish politics.
Labour and the Tories, in particular, can always rely on handouts from their UK parent parties, who are in turn funded by massive donations from trade unions and big business respectively. In 2016 Labour trousered almost £15m from donors (over and above their membership revenues of £14m), while the Tories pocketed almost £19m in donations from their rich pals.
The Nats, meanwhile, have to gather most of their money from membership fees, but have been able to stay competitive in the campaign-heavy climate of the 2010s (since the turn of the decade the SNP have had to fight three expensive UK general elections, two Holyrood elections, two council elections, a European election and two referendums – that’s ten major votes in seven and a half years) thanks largely to extra help from lottery winners Colin and Chris Weir.
And the fact that Scottish politics can be something like an even remotely fair fight still leaves Unionists raging furiously at the burning injustice of it all.
We’ll only be making a very brief comment on the story in Tuesday’s Herald, for hopefully obvious reasons. The piece by Tom Gordon has been written for maximum innuendo to allow the wildest speculations on social media – which are of course duly taking place – but the alleged events relate entirely to some tweets from our Twitter account, none of which have been deleted and all of which are still publicly visible.
Nothing more sinister or serious than some tweets has occurred, or been alleged to have occurred. None of the tweets involved are in ANY way threatening, not even in a joking sense. That’s all we’ll be saying on the subject at this time.
Geri on The Envious Heart: “WTF? LOL!! Piss off, ya rocket. For your information, not that I ever need to justify my clocking in &…” Aug 15, 16:01
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Envious Heart: “My source for the anti-independence million pound donation was GROUSE BEATER: « I put the snub aside and kept in…” Aug 15, 15:59
Dan on The Envious Heart: “@ Alf There is also the reap what you sow irony that JKR made her fortune by saturating both old…” Aug 15, 15:53
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Envious Heart: “@ Alf Baird, 15 Aug, 1.10 pm. « Ms Rowling maintains that Sturgeon was “consumed by a single, overriding ambition.…” Aug 15, 15:41
TURABDIN on The Envious Heart: “As Mac Whirter writes SHE WAS NEVER A NATIONALIST. How many active in the SNP actually are? Did Alex Salmond…” Aug 15, 15:07
James on The Envious Heart: “Stop rabbiting on then, Mark.” Aug 15, 14:07
TURABDIN on The Envious Heart: “BRIT.GOV considers these American owned mega facilities «critical national infrastructure». https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyr9nx0jrzo They will need the highly visible 275m tall wind…” Aug 15, 13:55
Mark Beggan on The Envious Heart: “Another weapon of the colonialist masters is to get a dithering old fool to rabbit on endlessly.” Aug 15, 13:49
SilentMajority on The Envious Heart: “…if anyone felt like adding a comment online about a particular book… “Amazon has noticed unusual reviewing activity on this…” Aug 15, 13:31
James on The Envious Heart: “GM; seconded. Well said.” Aug 15, 13:28
Alf Baird on The Envious Heart: “Ms Rowling maintains that Sturgeon was “… consumed by a single, overriding ambition. In Nicola’s case, it’s independence for Scotland.…” Aug 15, 13:10
Lorn on The Envious Heart: “He is right, I think. I don’t believe she ever was, either. As a youngster – 13 years old -…” Aug 15, 12:57
Andy Wiltshire on The Envious Heart: “J K Rowling has published her review of ‘Frankly’ (on jkrowling.com). Well worth a read. I would pay good money…” Aug 15, 12:48
Lorn on The Envious Heart: “Hatey: the drug situation is dire, and yes, I do believe part of it, at least, is down to economic…” Aug 15, 12:39
GM on The Envious Heart: “Aye right and Rule Brittania ya feckin troll.” Aug 15, 12:26
Willie on The Envious Heart: “Great idea. Alex Salmond speaking from the grave. Now that could enlighten a few folks. Folks would love to hear…” Aug 15, 11:58
James Barr Gardner on The Envious Heart: “You’ve hit the nail on the head.” Aug 15, 11:28
Andy Wiltshire on The Envious Heart: “Clearly not a party member.” Aug 15, 11:26
Jock McDonnell on The Envious Heart: “There is definitely an opportunity for somebody with the talent to produce a fringe play on Nicola Sturgeon- The Real…” Aug 15, 09:21
C MacKay on The Envious Heart: “I couldn’t agree with you more” Aug 15, 08:38
Dan on The Envious Heart: “Sigh, link in previous post caught the pesky word moderation filter. So here’s a link to Eva’s page. https://oneleggedwomanspeaks.uk/2025/08/14/frankly/ She…” Aug 15, 08:35
Aidan on The Envious Heart: “Interesting that this “Geri” account is back posting again. It seemed to go offline at a time that suspiciously coincided…” Aug 15, 07:10
Hatey McHateface on The Envious Heart: “Got to hand ( 🙂 ) it to you, James. You’re the master something or other of the one-handed reply.…” Aug 15, 06:56
Hatey McHateface on The Envious Heart: ““What they don’t know they’ll fill in themselves to make their wee shit life sound more interesting” Further comment superfluous.” Aug 15, 06:51
Hatey McHateface on The Envious Heart: “We’ve missed this post, Geri. It is the same post you used to do almost nightly. The same made up…” Aug 15, 06:48
Geri on The Envious Heart: “She didn’t even have the Baby Box. That was Salmonds idea & sent someone out to research it (sorry I…” Aug 15, 04:25
Bilbo on The Envious Heart: “At last Nicola Sturgeon has common ground with JK Rowling. Both writes books of fiction.” Aug 15, 03:55
Geri on The Envious Heart: ““Some Scots appear to care more about foreign wars” It’s far more revealing that’s why & it’s all relative. Far…” Aug 15, 03:27
James Barr Gardner on The Envious Heart: “FRANKly dun it an’ shut the feckin door efter himsel….” Aug 15, 01:22