Something deep in the gut 347
Posted on
March 06, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
No.6: Christopher, from Stirling, biker.
Archive for the ‘scottish politics’
A flock of albatrosses 270
Posted on
March 06, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Last year, as we’ve done a number of times in the past, we wrote about the dangers of handcuffing the independence movement to a particular narrow political agenda. Conflating a Yes vote with a number of hardline ideological positions which are more or less unquestioned within the liberal commentariat and the radical left, but actually highly unpopular with the general public, is self-evidently a huge strategic mistake.
Many of those positions are ones which this site supports in their own right, such as abolition of the monarchy and the abandonment of nuclear weapons, but our stance has always been that those arguments – like membership of the EU and NATO – are ones which ought properly to be conducted among the people and elected politicians of an independent Scotland in their own good time, not imposed without debate as part of the package of independence.
This weekend the notionally pro-independence Sunday Herald newspaper – as well as taking part in a media-wide Unionist smear campaign against this site and defending a “Better Together” activist who’d written a deeply offensive clickbait Guardian article claiming that Scottish nationalism was racist – carried a front cover and inside spread on the heated topic of mandatory gender quotas, which the paper supports.
As it happened we’d asked about the subject in our Panelbase poll last month.
Tory resurgence continues 283
Posted on
March 03, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A trivial omission 265
Posted on
February 27, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Our attention was drawn today to hardcore shrieky Loyalist nutter collective Scotland In Union releasing “new research” on an independent Scotland’s finances, which in fact came out last year but which for unknown reasons they’re touting again now.
Commissioned by the loongroup from a London-based thinktank that we’d never heard of by the name of “Europe Economics”, it predictably produces a doom-and-gloom conclusion that independence would have cost over £10bn in the first year.
There are so many gaping chasms in the logic we could hardly stop laughing for long enough to type, but one in particular was worth wiping the tears from our eyes for.
The morality of nationalism 118
Posted on
February 26, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
No.5: Tom Morton, former BBC broadcaster and No campaigner.
The Weasel 139
Posted on
February 26, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It’s important to note, firstly, that the version of Sadiq Khan’s speech to the Scottish Labour conference he tweeted on Saturday morning simply flat-out said that Scottish nationalists were the same as racists and sectarian bigots. Its meaning was as clear as crystal to the Daily Record, a newspaper which is hardly hostile to Khan’s party.
“No difference” is a stark and unambiguous phrase. The speech did not contain the hastily-added qualifiers about “in this respect” and “of course I’m not saying the SNP are racist” which suddenly appeared when he read it out onstage that afternoon.
But which version did he really mean?
The pound-shop Ruth Davidson 107
Posted on
February 26, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Yesterday afternoon, Scottish Labour tweeted some comments from Kezia Dugdale’s keynote speech to the party conference that might be the most self-evidently idiotic thing ever said by a Scottish politician.
Now, whether you support independence or not it’s a plain, measurable, empirical fact that it IS all of those things. Saying it’s not “an alternative”, in particular, is roughly on a par with asserting that the Earth doesn’t revolve around the Sun.
We were about to go on a rant about the jaw-dropping stupidity of the claim when it struck us that it might be a bit more interesting to see how the speech, and indeed the conference, had gone down with its intended audience – Scottish Labour delegates.
And as it happened, we had some data on that.
For Sadiq Khan 216
Posted on
February 25, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
What does racism and separatism actually look like? How would we know it if we saw it? What are its defining characteristics? Who are its advocates?
Let’s see if we can find out.
Liars K to B 100
Posted on
February 24, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is a story in the Herald today.
Thing is, we know it’s a lie. Who says so? Kezia Dugdale does.
A completely different situation 57
Posted on
February 24, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
No.4: file under “Hell actually froze over”.
