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A song we’ve heard before 205

Posted on May 04, 2014 by

Respectable author Allan Massie (father of Spectator columnist Alex) rather shames himself in today’s Scottish Mail On Sunday, with a particularly grim piece of what we assume is supposed to be comical crystal ball-gazing, painting a melodramatic picture of an apocalyptic post-independence Scotland as seen by Project Fear.

btglasgowfire

Over 2500 words long, it ticks all the boxes – no currency union, a mass exodus of business, Spain vetoing Scotland’s EU membership, economic Armageddon forcing the return of tuition fees and prescription charges, Trident staying on the Clyde permanently, Orkney and Shetland voting to stay with the UK and somehow taking the oil with them in direct contravention of all international law, and so on.

Which would all be a super piece of knockabout fun, were it not for the fact that we’ve already almost lost count of the number of times the right-wing English media, and in particular the Mail itself, has already trotted out this same dystopian drivel.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics

Keep fishing 87

Posted on May 04, 2014 by

Despite the strikingly unequivocal nature of David Trimble’s clarification yesterday of his comments about the independence referendum’s potential impact on Northern Irish politics, remarkably the media are today still trying to spin them into a dire warning about a Yes vote causing renewed violence in the province.

The picture below is a page from this morning’s Sunday Times.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics, uk politics

An easy mistake to make 76

Posted on May 03, 2014 by

BBC Northern Ireland website, 2 May 2014:

“Former NI First Minister Lord Trimble has said the biggest threat to peace in Northern Ireland would be if Scotland were to vote for independence.”

Lord Trimble on “Good Morning Scotland”, 3 May 2014 (31m 30s):

“I want to correct what you said… [the website] reported me as saying that would threaten the peace process. I did not say that, that is not my view.

Actually, a Yes vote in Scotland would reinforce the argument against violence, because it’s a demonstration of how you can achieve major change through the political democratic process.”

Whoops, eh? Oddly, while the original story is still on the BBC NI website, we can’t seem to find one reporting the correction anywhere, even though Lord Trimble spoke to GMS more than eight hours ago. We’re sure it’ll be along any minute now.

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Category audio, media, scottish politics, uk politics, video

Watch closely, students 222

Posted on May 02, 2014 by

Because this is how a state broadcaster does balanced, impartial reporting.

Now some revision notes to help you.

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Category analysis, media, scottish politics, video

Take my breath away 143

Posted on May 02, 2014 by

Just magnificent work from the Daily Mail today.

mailputin

Really only a couple of tiny quibbles.

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Category analysis, media, scottish politics, stats

Little lies 107

Posted on April 30, 2014 by

The Scottish independence debate is characterised by so many gigantic lies from the No camp and the media (no pound, international outcast, bankrupt, cataclysm, etc etc) that there’s rarely time to pick up on all the small, casual, offhand ones that also litter the news-stands and the airwaves and poison any hope of intelligent discourse.

joarmstrong

So let’s make an effort with one, just by way of example.

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Category analysis, media, scottish politics

More crowdfunding required 87

Posted on April 30, 2014 by

Can we please buy the Telegraph a new picture to depict “Scottish people”?

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Category media, pictures, scottish politics

The headline ferret 120

Posted on April 29, 2014 by

Alert readers will be familiar with a phenomenon we often like to highlight in these pages – that of the dramatic newspaper headline which rapidly turns into something completely different by the time you read the text of the story.

fiscaus

There’s an especially fine example in today’s Telegraph.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics

This, that and the other 329

Posted on April 26, 2014 by

We don’t exactly have high expectations when it comes to the Daily Mail.

weirsmear

But a piece in today’s edition is despicable even for them.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics, scum

This is how dumb 126

Posted on April 22, 2014 by

… they think you are.

expresses1

(UK edition on the left, Scottish edition on the right.)

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Category comment, media, scottish politics

An embarrassment to journalism 136

Posted on April 17, 2014 by

The Scottish media displays such a remarkable uniformity of thought when it comes to the independence debate that you’d think it’d be the easiest thing in the world for them to at least all get their story straight when they launch a smear campaign against a prominent Yes figure.

peterkinbagpipes

That, however, would presuppose that they weren’t also incompetent.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics

Votes of No confidence 119

Posted on April 16, 2014 by

“Sod it”, we thought, “let’s compile a list after all“.

taxiformrmcdougall

Clearly we’re not impartial judges of how the No campaign is being conducted. To assess its performance with any degree of fairness, we must instead take the widest possible sample of opinion from those on its own side. Here goes, then.

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Category comment, media, reference, scottish politics

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