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Partial freedom 147

Posted on December 03, 2013 by

We had to give the BBC a nudge before it replied to the last of our three Freedom Of Information requests, but at least this time we didn’t just get the standard fob-off.

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The talent pool 64

Posted on December 03, 2013 by

Well done to everyone who correctly guessed that our Mystery Guest last night was indeed Ruth Davidson. If you’d like to listen to Ruth’s 2009 demo reel for voiceover work which accompanied the letter, click the image below.

soundwave2

From that to the leader of a major Scottish political party in just two years. Hats off.

Who am I? 149

Posted on December 02, 2013 by

An alert reader sends in this letter received by their company in 2009:

“Hello,

[identifying paragraph removed]

I’ve now taken the plunge to set myself up as a freelancer and am looking for voiceover work in commercials, documentaries and corporate films as well as scripting and media training.

I’m [redacted] years old with a warm, rich voice which has both light and shade. A long history of factual programming means I can convey information with authority, combined with an openness and accessibility which encourages interest; the unexpected world of live broadcasting means I’ve learned to be equally adept at putting across humour. My accent is a neutral blend of central Scotland tones.

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One way of putting it 52

Posted on December 02, 2013 by

If we’re being honest, Irish Times, it’s not the phrase we’d have chosen:

charmoffensive

Quoted for truth #37 93

Posted on December 02, 2013 by

Professor James Mitchell of Edinburgh University, 2 December 2013:

“Under what circumstances would a UK Government (or Scottish for that matter) incline towards cooperation or conflict in its relations with its neighbour? The key is motivations.

Nobody should expect either Government to be motivated by good will. London will owe Scotland nothing and Edinburgh will owe London nothing.  Self-interest will dictate behaviour. Neither Government will act against its own self-interest but neither will act spitefully unless it wants to inflict harm on itself long-term.”

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Juxtaposed with EU 52

Posted on December 02, 2013 by

Two stories from the Express today.

euexpress1

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The most interesting election in history 179

Posted on December 01, 2013 by

Today’s Sunday Herald has a rather low-key piece (it’s just the 7th-placed story in their “Referendum News” section) on the ramifications for a Yes vote of the 2015 UK general election. It comes the day after several papers carried vitriolic attacks from Unionist politicians on the SNP’s Angus Robertson for suggesting that the UK government ought to consider delaying the vote for a year to enable independence negotiations to be completed.

ard

“This is yet another brazen stunt by the SNP to drive a wedge with Westminster”, raged the Scottish Conservatives’ Jackson Carlaw. “It is highly presumptuous of Angus Robertson, a man with clear delusions of grandeur, to be talking about postponing the next general election”, he continued, while Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran bleated about an extra year of Tories.

But it’s rationally almost impossible to make any other argument.

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The Captain’s Abyss 190

Posted on November 30, 2013 by

The realisation that the No camp’s reaction to the independence White Paper has been based on a massive, scarcely-believable misunderstanding/misrepresentation of reality has thrown a new light on all sorts of things from the past week.

bhole12

The most recent “BLACK HOLE!” story is a case in point.

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We made a mistake 69

Posted on November 30, 2013 by

This morning we’ve been double- and triple-checking our story from last night, because we were so sure we must have missed something. Even given the low esteem in which we hold the integrity of the hapless “Better Together” campaign, we felt that they surely couldn’t have made such an idiotic and fundamental error, and that instead we must have misinterpreted a word or a sentence somewhere along the way.

btfbsf

But no. We were wrong in that assumption. They really ARE that dim.

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The Red Face Gang 93

Posted on November 29, 2013 by

We saw this graphic on the “Better Together” website yesterday, but we dismissed it as uninteresting even by their playground-propaganda standards, amounting as it does to nothing more than some startlingly feeble carping along the lines of “These are their forecasts, but we’ve made different forecasts so theirs must be wrong!”

checkmaths

But an alert reader observed that it was MUCH stupider than that. Can you spot why?

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For use as required 69

Posted on November 29, 2013 by

With our compliments and best wishes.

djletter

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Free subbing service available 135

Posted on November 29, 2013 by

Alert commuters using Scotland’s railway stations may this week have received a “newspaper” from the official No campaign containing a splendid crossword and a recipe for raspberry brownies, amongst some political rubbish.

10lies

We haven’t tried it ourselves, but we hope the recipe was a bit less inaccurate than the political sections, or a lot of people might die of food poisoning.

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    • twathater on Pick Your Poison: “Grousbeaters quote “I look for individuals (not parties or titles), who are experts in their field, folk who are reliable,…May 8, 18:24
    • Bilbo on Pick Your Poison: “The Long march through the institutions and the end result is Lorna Slater getting elected 🙂May 8, 18:12
    • Bilbo on Pick Your Poison: “The only consolation about yesterdays election is that Labour is fecked in both Scotland, England and Wales.May 8, 18:06
    • Captain Caveman on Pick Your Poison: “At least 50 more than I thought he’d get tbh.May 8, 17:56
    • Bilbo on Pick Your Poison: “Firstly, nobody on this forum said that SNP wasn’t going to win the most seats. Secondly, your comment about SNP…May 8, 17:53
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    • robertkknight on Pick Your Poison: “I’d suggest any criteria be based upon that which would be used to confer Scottish Citizenship upon an individual. For…May 8, 15:40
    • Bobbyp on Pick Your Poison: “‘Until the scots wake up and start demanding their liberation from imperial english oppression’ Sadly never going to happen, the…May 8, 15:32
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    • Chas on Pick Your Poison: “If there is one thing you are clearly an expert in it is stupidity. You demonstrate it umpteen times every…May 8, 15:00
    • sarah on Pick Your Poison: “7.00 p.m. tonight, per Election Maps UK, but I think the Rev said it might be Saturday.May 8, 14:28
    • sam on Pick Your Poison: “Alf, Which of these is likely to support the Scottish petition? https://www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/en/c24/membersMay 8, 14:19
    • Northcode on Pick Your Poison: “What really, really, really pisses me off more than anything else in all of God’s creation is stupidity, followed closely…May 8, 14:12
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