Remarkably, it seems some angry Unionists are still trying to dispute the known facts surrounding the Forth Road Bridge closure. We’d like to think this quote from today’s Central Fife Times – from Tony Martin, the man who was convenor of the authority managing the bridge until a few months ago – was unambiguous enough to settle it once and for all.
That’s from the man who ought to know more about it than any human alive, and who as a Lib Dem councillor has no reason to make excuses for the Scottish Government.
This tweet mysteriously vanished from Blair McDougall’s Twitter timeline last night:
We’re not sure why, as we know that Scottish Labour love nothing more than to attack the Scottish Government (no matter how ham-fistedly) over education.
And we’re pretty sure it’s not because McDougall felt guilty about picking out only the negative aspects of what Scotland’s biggest teaching union called a “largely positive picture” of the state of Scottish education – and which the OECD itself said contained “much to be positive about” – because if there’s one thing we know for sure about Blair it’s that his conscience isn’t troubled by misleading people.
Our best guess was that even he was just too embarrassed at having made an attack line out of the fact that 20% of the country’s schools were “only” rated “satisfactory”, thereby implying that “satisfactory” status was actually in some way unsatisfactory.
In doing so, of course, he was echoing the words of his hapless leader Kezia Dugdale, who in September told the Holyrood chamber that “no parent wants a satisfactory education for their child”. Maybe McDougall just realised belatedly that he was reading from the wrong month’s script.
We’ve spoken a number of times before on this site about the “gish gallop” or “swarm of wasps” debating technique, in which a person attempts to bury their opponent under such an overwhelming tsunami of false, misleading or nonsensical claims in a short space of time that they can’t possibly debunk it all.
The Urban Dictionary gives an example of the form:
Faced with such a rushing torrent of drivel, it’s almost impossible for an opponent to know where to start in order to begin to even scratch the surface (if you can scratch a torrent). And that brings us directly to Severin Carrell’s article in today’s Guardian.
Over the last few days, as most of Scotland’s media has focused on hysterical smear stories and outright lies, we’ve been digging around trying to uncover the truth about events around and leading to the closure of the Forth Road Bridge.
The Scottish Mail on Sunday’s shock-horror Forth Road Bridge story today is also accompanied by an editorial leader. And if the main article was a piece of bare-faced deception, it’s got nothing on the opinion piece.
We’ve lost count of how many times we’ve drawn people’s attention to the necessity of sticking with newspaper articles right to the end if you don’t want to be horribly misled by eye-catching headlines. But it never hurts to have another example.
If you only read the start of today’s Scottish Mail On Sunday “bombshell” on the Forth Road Bridge (the left side of the picture above), you might come to a very alarming conclusion. But if you get all the way through it, to the paragraphs we’ve highlighted in red and enlarged on the right-hand side of the image, you’ll discover the truth.
A strange phenomenon we’ve remarked upon a few times since the independence referendum is the inexplicable undying rage of a certain subset of Unionist voters.
Having won the vote, a casual observer might expect them to be happy, but instead they appear to exist in a constant state of fury.
(Our own best guess is that they were expecting to triumph by a crushing margin of two or three to one – some fretted that it might only be a 20-point victory – and then suffered the double blow of a much closer result that kept the Yes movement very much alive coupled with a massive surge in SNP membership and support.)
A demented anti-SNP tactical-voting campaign for this year’s general election – led by, among others, a frothing ultra-Loyalist-nutter-type by the name of Andrew Skinner – recorded one of the most spectacular failures in history as the Nats captured 56 out of 59 Scottish seats, only narrowly missing the other three, and the party’s poll ratings have continued to rise since then.
So this week, Mr Skinner decided to try for a more manageable target.
We’ve been struggling to get a good grip on what’s happening with the Forth Road Bridge this week. It’s a confusing tale full of contradictory financial and engineering detail, being flayed for all it’s worth by the Unionist media and opposition.
Alf Baird on The Fast Track: ““John Swinney … would tell you that he would live in a cave for independence” Aye Fearghas, here we have…” Jun 30, 11:05
David Henry on The Fast Track: “Missing money followed by a list of people all who lied about the missing money while others tried to shut…” Jun 30, 10:48
James Che on The Fast Track: “Hatey McHateface, You left one out at 8:11 am. Your Guff Treaty that is so old no one pays attention…” Jun 30, 09:55
James Che on The Fast Track: “Seeing as no one is scrutinising the SNP and Scotland finances in depth other than Stu, one wonders about the…” Jun 30, 09:48
James Che on The Fast Track: “Law in Scotland, All under one umbrella, [The Scotland Act] Just add water to dilute. Well done Stu, excellent jounalism.” Jun 30, 08:20
Hatey McHateface on The Fast Track: “Not really. To get to the bottom of what’s really going on you need to study the works of Fanon,…” Jun 30, 08:11
Hatey McHateface on Ping-Pong-Fiddle-Aye-No: “It’s surely a bit odd that kids might be permitted to change their first names but not their surnames. Many…” Jun 30, 08:06
Robinov Cybernat on The Fast Track: “Aye, job done for them at that point.” Jun 30, 07:59
Hatey McHateface on Ping-Pong-Fiddle-Aye-No: “Gift it to them as reparations for centuries of Scottish colonialism. And thank our lucky stars we got away lightly.” Jun 30, 07:23
Hatey McHateface on Ping-Pong-Fiddle-Aye-No: “Good to see you offering due respect with your capitalisation of “Royal Audience”. As you say, it’s our history. Remove…” Jun 30, 07:19
DavidT on The Fast Track: “It is all very complicated, but from John Swinney’s comments, I get the impression that the general elections in 2017…” Jun 30, 07:10
Angus on The Fast Track: ““and the fact that only one of the two crimes it concerned has been resolved.” I don’t think it has…” Jun 30, 03:00
Cynicus on Ping-Pong-Fiddle-Aye-No: ““No Morocco, No party!” ======== Fans of Scotland’s erstwhile World Cup group opponents have borrowed the Tartan Army’s signature chant!…” Jun 30, 02:54
Angus on The Fast Track: “Very nice and easily understandable guide on how blatantly obvious crimes can be detected and solved for the dummies calling…” Jun 30, 02:51
Gordon Bain on The Fast Track: “Chill man. Lady J of Tay has this all covered.” Jun 30, 00:33
Young Lochinvar on The Fast Track: “I wonder how long Ned Stark (sorry my bad; King of oop t’ Norf Andy Burnham) will take to annoy…” Jun 30, 00:08
Young Lochinvar on Ping-Pong-Fiddle-Aye-No: “C3PO @ 5.49 Clan Chattan? Well if not then you should make yourself familiar with the September 1396 North Inch…” Jun 29, 23:43
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Fast Track: “Well done Stuart. Case put coherently and succinctly. Geissler was very good too, except near the end (26.40) with his…” Jun 29, 23:42
Mark Beggan on The Fast Track: “I think it was the National Crime Agency that pressed for that.” Jun 29, 23:36
Mark Beggan on The Fast Track: “Well said Rev. The media do have their slippers under the political bed with the Crown office as the pillow.…” Jun 29, 23:28
Frazerio on The Fast Track: “Dear Rev, The more you dig, the more you expose. That the ‘Ringfenced’ investigation led to Murrell’s exposé and the…” Jun 29, 23:24
Dick Wall on The Fast Track: “I do recall some suggestions that the Peter Murrell stuff was rather forced on Police Scotland by a UK organised…” Jun 29, 23:12
Roland Watson on The Fast Track: “Are the Police and Crown Prosecution actually concluding that because Peter Murrell embezzled all the funds before the SNP had…” Jun 29, 22:57
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Fast Track: “WINGS OVER SCOTLAND: WHY I’M NOT DONE WITH THE PETER MURRELL CASE Scotcast, Radio Scotland, 29 Jun 2026, 29 mins…” Jun 29, 22:15
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Ping-Pong-Fiddle-Aye-No: “‘MISGENDERING’ BRANDED SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN US UNI POLICY The University of California (UC) has come under fire for including ‘misgendering’…” Jun 29, 21:43
Hatey McHateface on Ping-Pong-Fiddle-Aye-No: “Naw, Northy, agreeing that anybody who disagrees with you is a fucking moron (FM) who likes being fucked up the…” Jun 29, 21:43
Craig P on The Fast Track: “Wonder if Woman H has been getting private briefings off anyone.” Jun 29, 21:43
Karen on The Fast Track: “Just listened to you on BBC Sounds and agreed with every word, as did lawyer hubby. You thorn in the…” Jun 29, 21:37
Karen on The Fast Track: “It’s on BBC Sounds, and it’s free (like radio).” Jun 29, 21:34
