Ladies and gentlemen, it gives us great pleasure today to present to you the most unnecessary words ever printed in the history of Scottish political journalism.
On current polling, it won’t be long before Ms Curran emulates her script.
The Daily Record, 27 November 2014:
So, IS the Scottish Government budget going to “nearly double”?
…of the Press & Journal.
There’s a curious column in today’s Scottish Sun on the subject of the Smith Commission. We’re going to have to quote quite a large chunk of it to make our point.
…are closer than they appear, runs a (slightly depressing) inscription that must by law be engraved on the door mirror of cars in the USA.
Objects in the Telegraph, though, follow different rules. (Thanks, we’re here all week.)
As the Unionist press and parties indulge in orgasmic paroxysms this week about how “The Vow” has allegedly been delivered and exceeded, it rings even stranger that absolutely nobody wants to claim the credit for authoring the historic document that saved the UK. Our investigations continue.
We’re going to hold off full scrutiny and analysis of the Smith Commission report on devolution until it’s actually released and we’ve read it, rather than going on pure speculation like most Scottish newspapers this morning.
But what we CAN talk about is this.
Today we’ve become quite obsessed with Jim Murphy’s pathological avoidance of a straight answer to the question of whether income tax should be fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament or not. The BBC now has a report on his much-trailed speech in Glasgow, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First it’s worth having a listen to this.
It’s an interview taken from the “Pienaar’s Politics” podcast on Radio 5 Live earlier this month. And it makes for an intriguing study of the art of evasion.
It is, in fairness, a fairly slow time for politics news at the moment. But it’s striking all the same to open this morning’s papers and see almost all of them running what’s not only basically the exact same story, but also the exact same groundless spin on it.
THE SCOTSMAN: “Jim Murphy tells Scots Labour to back tax powers”
DAILY RECORD: “Labour leadership frontrunner Jim Murphy set to back full income tax-raising powers for Holyrood”
THE HERALD: “Murphy to support handing full income tax powers to Holyrood”
THE TIMES: “Murphy calls for full income tax devolution”
STV NEWS: “Labour candidate Murphy calls for ‘full devolution of income tax'”
EVENING TIMES: “Murphy in call for full devolution of income tax”
There’s only one thing conspicuously missing from all of the stories – a quote from Jim Murphy saying he backs the devolution of full income tax powers to Holyrood.
Peeking at the Twitter accounts of the country’s more prominent Unionists has been an especially entertaining pastime today, as self-awareness has been cast aside even more vigorously than usual in a concerted attempt to attack new pro-independence daily The National as being an uncritical mouthpiece of the SNP akin to the infamous Russian propaganda newspaper Pravda (mostly despite those concerned admitting to not having read the first issue).
It’s surely a tribute to the pedigree and potential of the new paper that the prospect of Unionists only having 97% of the Scottish media on their side has them hoiking toys from prams with such squealing abandon, and it’s both curious and hilarious that 35 newspapers in favour of the Union was a perfectly acceptable manifestation of the freedom of the press but a single one in favour turns Scotland into the Soviet Union.
But more to the point, there’s a far better candidate for the “McPravda” sobriquet.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
