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Looking forwards 229

Posted on September 22, 2017 by

We’re not saying it’s been a slow news week in Scottish politics, but this is what the Scotsman’s going with today:

We might go for a walk.

Making your own news 315

Posted on September 12, 2017 by

Today’s papers all report, with varying degrees of prominence and glee, this “story”:

But which internationally-regarded rankings are these, exactly?

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Sour grapes and bad wine 244

Posted on September 11, 2017 by

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.

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Mining the playing field 214

Posted on September 03, 2017 by

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.

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The fine art of omission 584

Posted on August 21, 2017 by

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.

The two types of oil 306

Posted on August 20, 2017 by

With this year’s GERS figures imminent, there are two stories about North Sea oil in today’s papers which are markedly different in both tone and honesty.

This, for example, is the front page of the Sunday Herald:

It’s basically a reprise of a Wings story from almost a year ago, noting that despite producing broadly similar amounts of oil to Scotland from the North Sea, Norway has generated tens of billions in pounds in government revenue from it – even during the price slump of recent years – while Scotland has actually LOST money.

The Sunday Times, though, has a rather different take.

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The grand sacrifice 251

Posted on August 12, 2017 by

The mainstream media is now, by our count, up to at least 13 sizeable articles on the Great Yes-Movement Schism Of 2017 – a minor online spat between a tiny handful of people who’ve never liked each other and most of whom the general public has never heard of – and shows no signs of tiring of gleefully revelling in the subject.

There’s nothing particularly surprising or even diabolical about that. As any reality-TV show viewer will tell you, viewers absolutely love to watch people fighting, and doubly so if it’s the summer silly season and there’s no real news. Most of the stories have attracted large responses and therefore lots of juicy and profitable clicks for tired hacks who long ago stopped having anything of any interest to say but still have to honk out 1000 words a week in order to get paid.

But the more sinister aspect of them is the way they’ve been weaponised to (further) demonise and silence the Yes movement. If someone attacks other Yes figures with a provocative, offensive and dishonest piece, the extra bonus for the media is that any legitimately angry response to it can be used as yet more proof of The Vileness Of The Cybernats: “Look! They even turn on their own if they dare disagree!”

For the Unionist press, that’s a win-win every way up, and there are some on the Yes side who seem only too willing to co-operate with the narrative.

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More Bad News 96

Posted on August 12, 2017 by

The Vanishings 133

Posted on August 09, 2017 by

The Scottish media this week has started to rather resemble Argentina under General Galtieri’s military junta – everywhere you look are the ghosts of the disappeared.

We’ve already documented at length the sudden non-existence of the Herald’s madly inaccurate front-page lead story from Monday (along with the corresponding piece in the Evening Times). And today two more things joined the missing list.

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Forever bad 103

Posted on August 09, 2017 by

Here’s Daniel Sanderson in the Times in January this year, complaining that too few university students come from poor backgrounds and therefore the SNP are bad:

So he’d be chuffed if that situation improved, right?

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The King Of Irony World 261

Posted on August 08, 2017 by

In case you don’t know, Alan Roden is the former Scottish Daily Mail politics editor who’s now Scottish Labour’s director of communications. We haven’t edited this pic in any way, those genuinely are two consecutive tweets he posted yesterday.

So this is almost too beautiful.

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A series of coincidences 106

Posted on August 07, 2017 by

Earlier today we reported on the mysterious failure of the Herald to notice that its front page lead story about supposedly poor ScotRail punctuality figures made a number of serious errors with regard to the facts, most notably confusing the excellent figures for last month with a 12-month rolling average which was significantly worse.

But as we read the rest of the papers, we noticed the oddest thing.

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    Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)

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    • Geri on The more you change nothing: “Charles & Michael Thanks for the reply. I haven’t used Facebook since indyref really. Only a few times as my…Apr 11, 21:53
    • Hatey McHateface on The more you change nothing: “It’s “its” foreign dominions, YLS. If you can’t handle written English, maybe post in Scots. I guarantee 99% of the…Apr 11, 21:30
    • Hatey McHateface on The more you change nothing: “So good you posted it twice, eh TH? Or maybe the DTs were kicking in. Hopefully you will have necked…Apr 11, 21:21
    • Young Lochinvar on The more you change nothing: “You mean like Engerlund treated those “uppity” ones in “it’s” foreign dominions? I reckon a psychiatrist would have a field…Apr 11, 20:54
    • Young Lochinvar on The more you change nothing: “The tragic diary of a blow-in..Apr 11, 20:46
    • Dan on The more you change nothing: “Archived link to Independent article mentioned re. kids and “un”social media. https://archive.is/0K3LC Ahh to be young again and have the…Apr 11, 20:26
    • PacMan on The more you change nothing: “@ Michael Laing 1:41 One of Robin McAlpine’s recent blog posts includes a link to a report in the Independent…Apr 11, 19:46
    • PacMan on The more you change nothing: “@ Michael Laing 1:41 One of Robin McAlpine’s recent blog posts includes a link to a report in the Independent…Apr 11, 19:24
    • Yoon Scum on The more you change nothing: “Seeing the Un is going to end the union any day now Do you think that the scottish government should…Apr 11, 18:42
    • twathater on The more you change nothing: “@ Michael Laing 3.28pm he along with his fellow yoonionists are just attention seekers desperately trying to undermine independence support…Apr 11, 18:21
    • twathater on The more you change nothing: “@ Michael Laing 3.28pm he along with his fellow yoonionists are just attention seekers desperately trying to undermine independence support…Apr 11, 18:19
    • Yoon Scum on The more you change nothing: “I so love being on the wrong side of history I’m not on the side encouraging people to kill themselvesApr 11, 17:55
    • GeoffC on The more you change nothing: “17 of them, so one for each year in “power” at Holyrood – but what do they do to further…Apr 11, 16:05
    • Michael Laing on The more you change nothing: “@ Yoon Scum: Please hurry up, then. I, and I’m sure many others, will be very happy to see the…Apr 11, 15:28
    • Yoon Scum on The more you change nothing: “Quick question Apart from calling me an English scumbag and marching ALOT Any ideas on showing that Holyrood is more…Apr 11, 15:23
    • Yoon Scum on The more you change nothing: “Why Bother? The UN are sending in troops to free us next week no way can they ignore a petition…Apr 11, 15:22
    • Yoon Scum on The more you change nothing: “I’m going to slightly disagree with you Grangemouth is closing not because it suits Westminster but because it has been…Apr 11, 15:20
    • sarah on The more you change nothing: “www.barrheadboy.comApr 11, 15:18
    • sarah on The more you change nothing: “Thanks, Michael. It seems that the grassroots are sprouting this spring! There is a Yes Brechin meeting of 5 parties,…Apr 11, 15:07
    • sarah on The more you change nothing: “HURRAH! An umbrella group of independence parties for 2026 Holyrood election IS happening. See Barrhead Boy’s blog today.Apr 11, 15:02
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    • Yoon Scum on The more you change nothing: “GM I live in scotland Should I be locked up after the UN free’s Scotland to stop me holding the…Apr 11, 14:11
    • GM on The more you change nothing: “Absolute waste of his old mans efforts that cunt. Hope his bairns dinnae get tae ken what he does for…Apr 11, 14:01
    • Michael Laing on The more you change nothing: “Apologies if others have already posted the following information, but here is a link to a flyer for the Scottish…Apr 11, 13:48
    • Michael Laing on The more you change nothing: “@ Dan: I’ve just been reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, which includes a chapter on the toxicity of Facebook…Apr 11, 13:41
    • Young Lochinvar on The more you change nothing: “Hmmm.. What a transcendent form of uber b0ll0cks. Suppose you had to get it off yer chest..Apr 11, 13:40
    • Jay on The more you change nothing: “Viv O’B, you did not reply to my enquiry relating to your comment on the matter of a lost M88…Apr 11, 12:03
    • bobo bunny on The more you change nothing: “Fair comment. If we’d got independence when Salmond was in charge, who knows where we would be. But with this…Apr 11, 11:37
    • Lorn on The more you change nothing: “Nope. They’re actually doubling down on everything. It is going to take a couple of generations to eliminate their rotten-to-the-core…Apr 11, 11:36
    • Jay on Mad caps: “Saarah: thank you for acknowledgement and good luck. Those rhizomes are troublesome, go anywhere.Apr 11, 11:28
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