Wings Over Scotland

Archive for the ‘scottish politics’

Be sure the truth will find you out 257

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

This morning’s Daily Record has a rather panicky-sounding editorial complaining that Yes supporters, from the First Minister down, are refusing to “move on” from the referendum result and are complaining about “betrayal”, especially in the light of yesterday’s joke of a Commons debate. The Record calls for unity and also talks, hilariously, of the “settled will of the Scottish people”.

(What is it, exactly, that the will of the Scottish people is meant to have settled on, given that they had and still have no idea which powers a No vote would bring?)

It rather smacks of the accused in a murder trial saying “Look, sure, I killed and butchered your wife and children, but that was MONTHS ago, let’s just forget about it and get back to normal”, but it’s not actually the point.

Because it’s not the referendum result that most people feel betrayed by. It’s not even the behaviour of the Unionist parties since the vote.

The entity in the dock here is the Daily Record itself – which still claims to be the most-read newspaper in Scotland, although the Scottish Sun sells more copies – and it’s charged with the serious crime of knowingly and deliberately lying to the people of Scotland, while proclaiming itself to be their “Champion”.

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Tags: flat-out lies misinformation The Vow
Category comment, media, scottish politics

In poker we call this a rubdown 147

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

The much-awaited and hastily-extended Westminster debate on Scottish devolution is just about to start in the House of Commons. We’ll be watching it on the Parliament website rather than the BBC, for the obvious reasons.

Category comment, media, scottish politics, uk politics

By ourselves, then 233

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

The dust of the independence referendum is showing a distinct unwillingness to settle. Almost a month from the vote, alien observers would be hard pushed to identify Yes as the beaten side. SNP membership has more than tripled, and that of the Scottish Greens and SSP (much) more than doubled, in three weeks. The moribund Labour Party in Scotland has slumped in both Holyrood and Westminster polls. Newspaper sales figures continue to fall after not a single daily or national newspaper in the country backed the choice of almost half of the population.

Unionist politicians unnerved by the closeness of the result have advocated making independence actually illegal, and the Secretary of State for Portsmouth has issued a series of panicky warnings that the “nationalists” must not seek the best possible outcome from the figleaf Smith Commission (or, presumably, he’ll tell his mum).

Increasingly, the “once in a lifetime” referendum looks like only the opening skirmish.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics

Club membership increases 1,173

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Chris Cairns

Tags: cartoons Chris Cairns
Category scottish politics, uk politics

By way of example 698

Posted on October 08, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

With reference to our post from earlier today, we couldn’t help but notice Scottish Labour whining loudly this morning about the award of the ScotRail franchise to Dutch state-owned railway company Abellio. (On what sound like very good terms.)

We asked the party’s infrastructure spokesman James Kelly what Labour would have done instead had they been in power, and got no reply. So we went and had a look, and it turned out there was a clear and simple answer.

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Tags: hypocrisy
Category analysis, comment, scottish politics, uk politics