Those are the words of David Cameron as he launched the Scottish Tories’ manifesto in front of a heavily-vetted invited audience in Glasgow yesterday. They make the pages of a couple of other papers, including the Guardian (which hides them even further down the page than the Sun does), but it’s only the Herald that picks up on their significance, leading its article with the unequivocal lines:
Last night’s juxtaposition of somewhat contradictory front covers on the Herald and Scottish Daily Mail was modestly amusing, but nothing new. We pointed out weeks ago that papers on both the left and the right were – often on the same days – painting the SNP as hand-in-glove allies of either Labour or the Tories according to whatever suited their own agendas, and nothing’s changed in that respect.
But it’s interesting to take a look behind the headlines of the respective stories and see the degree to which the truth can be bent, exaggerated or in some cases simply made up from thin air.
But the most remarkable thing happened at the end.
That, readers, is quite the admission. That’s a party which has utterly dominated UK politics in Scotland for six decades openly acknowledging that its entire campaign in the last three weeks will be based on railing against a complete fantasy.
The Daily Record gets up high on its outrage horse this morning with a front-page story titled “Double-crossed on devo”, echoing Jim Murphy’s claim of yesterday that the Tories’ manifesto pledge on “English votes for English laws” is a “betrayal” of the “Vow” signed by the three UK party leaders before the independence referendum.
Unsurprisingly, the Record gives rather less prominence to the news that the Vow isn’t worth the fake parchment it wasn’t written on than it did to repeatedly hyping it up and then proclaiming that it had already been delivered.
Last week we listened to a Radio Scotland phone-in debate on Trident, hosted very deftly by John Beattie, who managed to steer callers away from political points and keep the discussion on the merits or otherwise of the weapons system itself.
Sadly that didn’t dissuade the usual coterie of nutters/local councillors phoning in insisting that (a) North Korea would invade/blast Scotland off the face of the Earth the moment we let our guard down, and (b) Helensburgh would immediately revert to the Stone Age at the loss of jobs were the few hundred Trident sailors who spend about a week every year in the town to be reassigned to other posts in the navy.
We didn’t have time to ring in ourselves, but we did manage to think of a much better idea that solved both of those problems without lumbering Scotland with a gigantic nuclear white elephant, and one that would also free up an awful lot of valuable police time and resources that are currently spent arresting a bunch of hippies.
We try to avoid openly editorialising on this site, readers. While unashamedly partisan in our leanings, as a rule we prefer to present the facts and let people come to their own conclusions from the evidence.
But we’re not sure we’ve ever seen anything more craven and pathetic than this.
We’ve been quiet today because we’ve been wading through the 80-odd painfully-dry pages of the Labour 2015 election manifesto, folks. It’s a deeply tedious read – screeds and screeds of waffly text about how nice things are nice and good things are good but bad things are bad. A couple of things did jump out, though. Here’s one.
Alert readers will of course recall that the party’s solemn pledge in Scotland is to provide 1000 more nurses (hastily revised from the comical “1000 more than whatever the SNP say”) from the proceeds of the Mansion Tax, even though NHS Scotland is devolved and no Westminster government can in fact hire a single Scottish nurse.
But hang on. Something’s not right about those numbers.
A super-alert reader pointed out something about today’s Sunday Politics that we hadn’t noticed. Before the galaxy-class trainwreck that was the Scottish leaders’ debate, the networked section of the show had a piece on Scottish polling, and our eagle-eyed viewer spotted that the chart of projected seats wasn’t in proportion.
So we measured, and this is what it should have looked like.
With there only having been three hours of the Scottish political party leaders (and Jim Murphy) debating on TV so far this week, and four days to wait for another one, BBC Scotland thought they might need another 40 minutes on this afternoon’s Sunday Politics Scotland to discuss the issues around the forthcoming general election.
It went well, but for busy readers in a hurry we’ve edited the show down to a compact nine-minute cut, which still gets across everything the full version did.
A great example of adult discourse, expertly set. Well done, everyone.
There’s very little actual political news today, so the papers have largely been forced to either basically not have any at all (the Sunday Post and Scottish Sun On Sunday) or make up totally mad stuff for laughs to fill the space.
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “Aw, dinna be like that, James. I’ve yet to run this past Northy, but I’m verra confident he’ll agree to…” Nov 7, 21:52
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: ““Does this ring a bell” Sure. Reminds me of some of the posts on here within the past 24 hours.…” Nov 7, 21:40
James on Vibecoding A Better World: “And you, ‘maestro’, are the visible proof of this. All day, every day, sadly.” Nov 7, 20:41
James on Vibecoding A Better World: “Pretty obvious now that the ‘name’ previously masquerading as a Scotsman and independence supporter [“Northcode”] was in fact the “Site…” Nov 7, 20:37
James Che on Vibecoding A Better World: “Hatey, Shutting down the questioner, shutting down the discorse, shutting down the narrative. This was planned reactions of the CIA…” Nov 7, 20:20
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: ““We explicitly refuse to accept content or articles written or generated in full or in part by AI or LLMs”…” Nov 7, 20:20
James Che on Vibecoding A Better World: “Feargas MacFhionnlaigh, Do you know the reasons that the Banks funded The Womens Liberation Movement? 1: Because the Banks realised…” Nov 7, 20:06
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Vibecoding A Better World: “Bella Caledonia Statement on Artificial Intelligence « As a publisher and a space for creativity, we should be clear that…” Nov 7, 19:41
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “Last words on the McAlpine – Baird debate. 1. It was a debate between two people holding to different views.…” Nov 7, 19:31
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: ““Prof. Baird came over as a gentleman,Robin as a cunt” Looks like we have another definition from the Snowflake’s Pretendy…” Nov 7, 19:17
Minceheid on Vibecoding A Better World: “There was an article of McAlpine’s a few months ago which really didn’t sit right with me. I forget the…” Nov 7, 19:05
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “@Alf Baird says: 7 November, 2026 at 9:50 am “oppression” As it happens, Alf, you can read about some real…” Nov 7, 18:11
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Vibecoding A Better World: “PARENTS REPORTED TO SOCIAL SERVICES FOR NOT ‘AFFIRMING’ GENDER-CONFUSED CHILDREN Parents have warned that they are being reported to the…” Nov 7, 18:07
CatalogueTrewsers on Vibecoding A Better World: “I’ve been reading Robin McAlpine on and off for over a decade. Feel as if I saw his true colours.…” Nov 7, 18:02
Aidan on Vibecoding A Better World: “Unfortunately a lot of the stations in Scotland are unbarriered. I also sense that unlike “James” who is likely to…” Nov 7, 16:57
Captain Caveman on Vibecoding A Better World: “@Alf In that case, why don’t you actually “seek the remedy” (in any meaningful, pragmatic, instructive and substantive sense) instead…” Nov 7, 11:00
Captain Caveman on Vibecoding A Better World: “Take heart, Aidan. There’s no way Confused would make it past the station barriers. I realise public transportation isn’t what…” Nov 7, 10:32
Alf Baird on Vibecoding A Better World: “Only once ‘a people’ truly understand their oppression will they urgently seek the only remedy: https://salvo.scot/scotlands-colonial-status/” Nov 7, 09:50
James Che on Vibecoding A Better World: “The Treaty of union between Scotland and England parliaments never concluded to its end date, the progression being halted by…” Nov 7, 09:43
James Che on Vibecoding A Better World: “The parliament of England did not cease to exist, it was transferred in its last session into the new brand,…” Nov 7, 09:32
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “Again, Northy, you’re missing a key piece of the jigsaw. For £150 billion PA, Brussels will take all these petty…” Nov 7, 09:31
Northcode on Vibecoding A Better World: ““What’s your plan for governing Scotland after independence, Alf?” “£150 billion per year.” “Right… but what about trade, international relations,…” Nov 7, 09:10
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “@Northy I don’t think that’s a complete summary. You must also channel your inner Theresa May: Decolonisation means Decolonisation. And…” Nov 7, 08:58
Northcode on Vibecoding A Better World: ““What’s your plan for achieving independence, Alf?” “Liberation.” “Right… and how do you deliver liberation?” “Decolonisation.” “Okay, and what does…” Nov 7, 08:29
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “Before you self-identify, MH, impress upon her that nay means nay. Maybe try ketamine a few times too. I hear…” Nov 7, 08:27
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “Thanks for the link, Fearghas. At least we can now listen to it for ourselves. Up to now, all we’ve…” Nov 7, 08:11
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “An unfortunate side effect of pre-booked, pre-allocated seating. In the old days, regular travellers developed a “sixth sense” that helped…” Nov 7, 07:59
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “Busy week, Confused? The evidence of this post suggests you’ve defo had something on your mind the entire time. If…” Nov 7, 07:50
Hatey McHateface on Vibecoding A Better World: “Well then, that’s something, Connie. There’s few on here ever graduated from the primary school playground. Take the comment above…” Nov 7, 07:36
Minceheid on Vibecoding A Better World: “Hatey McHateface says: 6 November, 2026 at 12:49 pm I’d be a bit more specific than “horse” if I were…” Nov 7, 07:33
