The announcement that the Scottish Government would seek the uncontested legal right to hold a second independence referendum met with an outpouring of rage and ignorance from the massed ranks of the UK media that was in one sense entirely predictable yet still startling in its fury and ferocity.
Most prominent was the assertion, stated as fact by every pundit and broadcaster – including those required by law to be fair and impartial – that a second referendum would be conducted in the environment of a significantly worse economic case.
And that’s a remarkable claim, because the indisputable fact is that nobody has the slightest clue what the economic case for No will be.
Judging by the first 24 hours, we’re in for a two-year festival of utter horror from the UK and Scottish media. Yesterday saw a never-ending parade of metrosplaining idiots dragged willingly in front of cameras and microphones to pontificate their clueless and mind-numbingly ignorant drivel about Scotland.
It wasn’t possible to keep track of it all, because it was frequently happening on five channels at once, and it was harder still to watch it for any extended period of time without hurling a brick through the screen in frustration at the offensive stupidity of it.
Feeding into that was a stream of Scottish politicians who actually did know better, but who are too catastrophically dim to adapt to changing circumstances and had no strategy other than to endlessly repeat the same cretinous soundbites over and over.
(Adam Tomkins in particular was ubiquitous, spending what felt like several hours on various airwaves reciting the same brainless 10-second schtick forever.)
The constitutional politics of the UK and Scotland are in flux, and many aspects of the situation are complicated. But quite a lot of them aren’t, and if we’re all going to make it through the next two years without stabbing each other in the throat, it’d be a lot better if everyone accepted the things that are definite, empirical, indisputable facts.
Alert readers will of course be aware that one of this site’s most frequently-recurring themes is “phantom news”, whereby events or unpleasant opinions that newspapers or broadcasters really want to have happened are conveniently brought to life, either by some random nobody on the internet, or an unnamed “source” or “insider”.
So when Nicola Sturgeon did something today that nearly everyone in the Northern Hemisphere knew she was going to do sometime soon, but wasn’t expecting just yet, there wasn’t time to prepare actual real people with the required quotes.
In the modern media world, though, that isn’t a problem.
We haven’t said much about the huge furore whipped up by the Guardian in recent days around spurious allegations of racism/online abuse by supporters of Scottish independence, made first by Sadiq Khan and then by a deranged “Better Together” activist who also thinks all vegans are racist (or something).
Partly that’s because we covered the initial speech by Khan and the fallout from it pretty extensively, and partly because we didn’t want to feed the Guardian’s clickbait.
However, when the activist who was allegedly “hounded off Twitter” in fear for her life – fear caused by supposed comments that nobody has actually seen – miraculously recovered her bravery less than a week later (coincidentally just in time for the launch of her book), we thought it was probably time someone started keeping some records.
We were very pleased to hear Gary Robertson challenge Kezia Dugdale on the curious matter of Scottish Labour’s membership and income figures on today’s Good Morning Scotland. Dugdale flapped and dodged and waffled for as long as she could before diverting the topic onto federalism, and eventually managed to wriggle away from the subject without any sort of proper answer (through no fault of Robertson’s).
Almost a year ago we ran a short piece mocking a Scotsman headline which claimed that “THOUSANDS” of people had signed a Tory anti-referendum petition, when the actual number was a strictly-accurate-but-pathetic TWO thousand.
We didn’t think that could ever be beaten for technically-true hyperbolic exaggeration, but we’d reckoned without the bold boundary-pushing ingenuity of the Daily Express.
Hundreds of thousands? How many hundreds, exactly?
Today seems a good day to bring up the latest snippet of data from our poll.
Less than a third of Scots of all parties and persuasions think BBC Scotland provides “balanced” political coverage. Even among Unionists, twice as many feel it’s biased in their favour as the frankly unhinged group who think it’s pro-independence.
Remarkably, more Tory voters think the Beeb is biased in favour of independence than think it leans towards the Union, which is quite some feat of self-delusion. Among Labour and Lib Dem voters it’s three-to-one the other way, and more than 17-to-1 among SNP supporters.
Meanwhile, 5% of respondents claimed to have “never heard of” the state broadcaster, which just goes to prove what Panelbase regularly tell us about how you can get 5% to 10% of people to vote for ANY answer you put in a poll, up to and including “Would you like us to come round right now and shoot you in the face?”
The Scottish media has today leapt all over the front-page lead story from yesterday’s Sunday Times, in which “top economist” Douglas McWilliams of right-wing thinktank the Centre for Economics and Business Research made an apocalyptic prediction of a huge deficit turning an independent Scotland into “a Third World country”.
The Express’ customarily restrained coverage is pretty typical.
We wondered if Mr McWilliams used to have a more optimistic view.
There’s a truly abominable piece of hatemongering in today’s Times. A grotesequely dishonest Nat-bashing smear job based on stupendously misrepresented fragments of quotes, it’s penned by Patrick Harkness, someone who the paper identifies as “a past co-chairman of the RSE [Royal Society of Edinburgh] Young Academy of Scotland”.
For some reason it’s chosen to leave a few lines off his CV.
Alert readers will of course be aware that a recurring theme on this site is looking for the alleged abusive behaviour by supporters of independence which gets regularly reported in outraged terms by newspapers but is mysteriously almost never supported by any actual evidence of the supposed abuse.
In every case the papers and/or alleged recipients of all these dreadful separatist haranguings screamed “VILE ABUSE!”, swooning at the horror of it all, then suddenly turned deaf and dumb when asked to provide any examples.
So we were quite surprised yesterday when a previous complainant – brutal stickering victim and lonely Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray – actually came up with the proof.
sarah on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Thank you for these facts, Robert Mellish. It is appalling that the Scottish Civil Service is officially present – not…” Jul 20, 16:16
Mark Beggan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Come on Rev when we getting the low down. I’m starting to argue with James…” Jul 20, 15:43
Mark Beggan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Fair point. How many Scots fill the Westminster corridors.” Jul 20, 15:35
Alf Baird on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Yes James, this is of course the reality in a colonial society which is run by external interests/values, as pointed…” Jul 20, 15:34
Lorn on The Pillars Of Sanity: “dearieme: accused ‘witches’ were nearly all women (albeit both men and children were also accused) but they were blameless of…” Jul 20, 14:59
Lorn on The Pillars Of Sanity: ““The transcripts of NHS Fife’s Kate Searle in particular bring into sharp focus how the NHS became a partisan lynch…” Jul 20, 14:44
James Cheyne on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Most of the Scottish government executors, advisors and Civil Servants are not born and bred backgrounds, I have just spent…” Jul 20, 14:31
Mark Beggan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “That’s exactly what is not being said but everyone is thinking. Thanks for that sane, refreshing summary of this evil…” Jul 20, 14:09
Mark Beggan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “You started so well and descended into ‘ how can I blame the British government for every disaster, crime, theft,…” Jul 20, 14:05
Mark Beggan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “NHS Fife is digging the biggest of all holes in front of the whole World and the Health secretary plays…” Jul 20, 13:32
Captain Caveman on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Revstu On behalf of my wife, daughters and granddaughters, heartfelt thanks and gratitude to you and those other brave souls…” Jul 20, 13:13
James Cheyne on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Rev Stu, Thank you for all you’re constant and hard work that you put in on this issue, and to…” Jul 20, 12:33
C MacKay on The Pillars Of Sanity: “There’s a multi-coloured bus going round Glasgow with Pride markings all over it. They forget Pride’s a sin. Brilliant in-depth…” Jul 20, 11:00
C MacKay on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Great stuff- there’s a multi-coloured bus going round Glasgow with Pride markings all over it. They forget Pride’s a sin” Jul 20, 10:59
sarah on The Pillars Of Sanity: “That is excellent, Lorn. Please send to the best newspapers for wider viewing. It makes the topic so clear and…” Jul 20, 10:52
Grace Green on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Dearieme, Dearieme, you’ve got that all wrong! Witches were neither bad, mad, nor deluded. They were practitioners of natural medicine,…” Jul 20, 10:20
Willie on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Excellent article Mr Campbell. Summarises very well how the wheels have now been taken off the insanity bandwagon. The transcripts…” Jul 20, 08:50
stuckdoonhame on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Massive kudos to you, Lorn, not only for your ever sensible analysis of this nonsense but for your correct use…” Jul 20, 02:20
stuckdoonhame on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Massive kudos to you, Lorn, not only for your ever sensible analysis of this nonsense but for your correct use…” Jul 20, 02:13
Rob on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Its perfectly obvious that NHS Fife are trying to find something, anything, to blacken Peggies character t try and salvage…” Jul 20, 00:26
Lorn on The Pillars Of Sanity: “The National is a disgrace as a national newspaper. Its pages are in vested with ‘trans’ dogma and its support…” Jul 19, 23:23
dearieme on The Pillars Of Sanity: “James VI decided, later in life, that he’d been wrong about witches. They weren’t bad, they were mad. He supported…” Jul 19, 22:43
Alf Baird on The Pillars Of Sanity: “UKSC, Court of Session and ScotGov and other state institutions all serve the English (as British) Crown, i.e. they do…” Jul 19, 20:25
agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@ Kelpie If they withdraw their defence then it becomes a default judgment and every point raised by the clamant…” Jul 19, 20:03
agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Notice also that Upton is described as “she” despite having a cock and bollocks.” Jul 19, 19:34
Aidan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Kelpie – you are exactly right, that is definitely what they are planning to do” Jul 19, 19:22
Aidan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Alf – how does that relate specifically to the comments raised?” Jul 19, 19:20
Kelpie on The Pillars Of Sanity: “There are plenty of legal types on X saying that NHS Fife can totally end this right now by basically…” Jul 19, 19:15
agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “The National barely mentions the Sandie Peggie case but yesterday published: “Sandie Peggie denies making racist comment as new allegation…” Jul 19, 19:09
Alf Baird on The Pillars Of Sanity: “In the colonial situation there is only colonial governance: which implies “a government and a judicial system fed and renewed…” Jul 19, 19:04
