Outside the triangle 167
We figured you’d probably want to see this.
(Skip to 3.00 to get past the pointless title frame. Text of speech here.)
We figured you’d probably want to see this.
(Skip to 3.00 to get past the pointless title frame. Text of speech here.)
It’s somehow fitting that the lead article on Labour Hame today is headed by a lie before it even starts – an offer to join the party for £1 that takes you to a page where it actually costs five times as much.
(We’d noticed days ago that the much-hyped £1 offer had been quietly dumped after just a month, but it appears that nobody in the Scottish branch office thought to keep poor hapless Labour Hame in the loop.)
The article below, though, is remarkably even more dishonest.
The Telegraph, 13 September 2014:
We can only assume something pretty amazing must have happened since then.
A number of readers last night sent us copies of the response to complaints they’d made to the Independent Press Standards Organisation about the Daily Record’s infamous “The Vow” front cover. We attach the full judgement at the bottom of this article, and as far as we’re concerned it’s fair and accurate. The Vow was a deliberate deception, but it didn’t break any rules – it merely relied on readers misinterpreting it.
The bit we’re still interested in is the paragraph above.
We know we were all traumatised at the time, but how on Earth did we miss this?
It gets clearer with every passing day that Scottish Labour’s chief election strategy is to assume that Scottish voters are goldfish. There’s no other explanation for a piece in yesterday’s Courier on the SNP’s Jamie Hepburn’s call for the implementation of a 2009 report into which sporting events should be protected from pay-TV broadcasters.
The article concluded with some comments from Labour.
Which is, y’know, bold.
Still confused about the difference between an “oil fund” and a “resilience fund”, folks?
So were we, but no longer. We’ve had a breakthrough.
Posted this morning, after a week in which it was so comprehensively proven to be a complete lie that even Torcuil Crichton of the Daily Record was forced to concede it.
You almost have to grudgingly admire the sheer bull-headed tenacity of their dogged determination to prove once and for all to the people of Scotland that Labour think they’re dribbling gullible morons.
A quick rhetorical question, readers: if, as Labour endlessly claim, the Tories want the SNP to win seats in Scotland in order to stop Ed Miliband being PM, why are most of the Scottish columnists in the right-wing press calling on Scots to vote Labour?
One of the most interesting things about the recent Ashcroft polls is the flurry of articles they’ve provoked in the media, as London-based political commentators try to outdo each other in displaying their complete ignorance of Scottish politics.
It’s eerily reminiscent of the sudden surge of activity when the gaps in referendum polls reached margin-of-error levels, and metropolitan journalists suddenly realised that Scotland was taking the referendum far more seriously than they were.
Two of the most revealing have been in the Spectator, with James Forsyth saying the Unionist collaborations in the No campaign “marked a recognition that Great Britain is far bigger, and far more important, than party politics”, and Fraser Nelson becoming Scottish Labour’s most unlikely cheerleader, saying “Finally, a confession. I’d like the Tories to win the next election, but not as much as I want Jim Murphy to do well”.
But amid all the outpourings of grief and befuddlement, it’s startling how little analysis there really is into why the UK is in the situation it currently is. And it’s odd because the answer isn’t the least bit complicated.
The letter below is extraordinary, readers. See if it fits with what you remember.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.