Below is a letter from the editor of the Daily Record sent to a Wings reader yesterday (and, we presume, to many others). We thought you might find it interesting.
It seems the Daily Record has taken something of a sulk at our post of earlier today. This evening the paper’s editor Murray Foote issued this statement on its Facebook page in response to one of a number of readers who’d posted links to the story:
It’s a telling reaction.
Owen Jones in the Guardian today:
You know where we’re going with this one, right?
On the left the Observer yesterday, on the right the Guardian this morning.
Imagine the UK’s great newspaper of the liberal left repeatedly confusing Theresa May with Esther McVey, or Harriet Harman with Dianne Abbott. Feel the comradely love.
It’s been a very slow news day today and it’s chucking it down outside, so we found ourselves stuck for entertainment. Earlier this afternoon alert readers will have noticed us tweeting about breaking through 35,000 Twitter followers, and while we were comparing that to various other entities for our own amusement (eg it’s over 10,000 more followers than Scottish Labour, the Scottish Conservatives and the Scottish Lib Dems put together), we stumbled across this feature from 16 months ago.
And because – as readers of our Panelbase polling features will know – there’s nothing we like more than the occasional wallow in some stats, we got to work.
From today’s Media Guardian:
BBC Radio Scotland was down 2% on the year and 8.9% on the previous three months.
It’s worth taking just a few lines to examine those stats more closely.
Today’s Herald carries a report from the initial meeting of the Smith Commission on “enhanced devolution” for the Scottish Parliament. The paper quotes from what seems to be a press release issued by the Commission, in which it explains that it thinks the people of Scotland are idiotic, drooling simpletons who’ll swallow anything.
The Labour-friendly elements of the press made much play yesterday of an Ipsos MORI poll which showed an unusually high level of support in the UK for remaining in the EU (while ignoring one by YouGov that showed a majority in favour of leaving).
But a piece in today’s Times throws the reality into sharp relief, and illustrates why the Yes movement hasn’t simply lain down and died after losing the referendum.
The Scotsman’s lead story last night on the left, and the same page today:
Scottish journalism, there.
Margaret Curran on last night’s Scotland 2014:
Well, we don’t think anyone can say she didn’t give a full and comprehensive answer on the subject of Scottish Labour’s membership figures there.
Mark Steel in the Independent, 16 October 2014:
Craig Murray said something quite similar recently from the other side, as it were, and at the moment we’re finding it quite tough to disagree with either of them.
We didn’t notice this piece in Scotland on Sunday three weekends ago, because we were on holiday and, well, it was in Scotland on Sunday. But it seems odd that nobody (including SoS) has picked up on its ramifications at the time or since, because if it’s true then it would officially and conclusively mark the complete abandonment of the “vow” all three Westminster party leaders made to Scottish voters prior to the referendum, just 10 days after Scots voted to believe that vow.
And you’d think that’d be bigger news.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
