Below is an article taken from the UK media today about the Scotland Bill.
Give it a read through, and pay attention. There’ll be a very short quiz at the end.
We saw this tweet from Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson yesterday:
And we were quite confused.
We noticed this on Twitter earlier this evening:
And we thought, “Well, that sounds bad”.
Alert readers will probably already be familiar with the philosophical proposition of Schrödinger’s cat. (The less alert can click the link for a short and easy primer.) The hypothetical experiment posited by 20th-century Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger has entered into popular culture. But increasingly and disturbingly, it’s also becoming the guiding principle of mainstream media journalism.
Certain viewers should steel themselves at this point, because we’re about to briefly talk about football before moving on to other things later in the article. You can consider that your trigger warning. We’ll let you know when it’s over.
The lines above were issued to the press yesterday by The Rangers International Football Club plc, a football club (the clue’s in the name) formed in 2012, yet which lays claim to the history and achievements of a previous club of a similar name which was liquidated for bankruptcy the same year, having been formed in 1872.
And eagle-eyed logic fans may have spotted something of a contradiction.
Some of you may not have seen this from last night, and it needs to be seen.
Dear Wings Over Scotland,
It’s been brought to my attention that you recently shared a quote attributed to the TV presenter and Westminster political commentator Andrew Neil, and that in response Mr Neil has strongly denied making the statement in the quote, namely:
“Devolution, the Calman Commission, the Scotland Bill, the Edinburgh Agreement – all of this and more you have is because Westminster parties are scared of the SNP. If you vote ‘No’ you massively change the balance of power and they will not only give you nothing, but will probably take powers away from the Scottish Parliament”.
I find it very strange that he denies making that statement.
There’s an extraordinary article in the Daily Record today. Here’s a bit of it:
Alert readers might feel that a few lines have gone missing somewhere between paragraphs four and five. And the fact that they have has nothing to do with dead football clubs, and everything to do with the dying Scottish media.
Alert readers who follow our Twitter account, like all sensible people do, may have noticed we’ve had a few exchanges with the BBC presenter Andrew Neil since we published a couple of articles about his interview with the SNP’s Angus Robertson on The Sunday Politics last week.
The debate centred around a claim Neil put to Robertson:
“You go on and on, your party, about ‘austerity, austerity’ – how much has the Scottish Government budget been cut in the past five or six years? […] In real terms there’s been no cut.“
It seems fair to say the matter’s been in some dispute since then.
We don’t follow many Unionists on social media, because you end up wasting your day arguing pointlessly with a lot of people who are never going to change their minds and getting in a bad mood. But we’re told they were all very excited about an article in yesterday’s Daily Record.
Penned by the paper’s political editor Davie Clegg, it’s a long diatribe about how the fall in oil revenues has created a black hole which now means Scotland is – stand by for a surprise! – too wee and too poor to be independent.
So far so meh – it’s not like it’s the first time we’ve heard that record played, after all. But as you can see from the image above, there’s also quite an interesting challenge printed in giant capitals at the foot of the page. We’re not in the Scottish Government, but it’s a rainy Saturday so we thought we might have a go.
In that order, we presume.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
