You might want to wrap some bandaging around your jaw before listening to this BBC News interview with UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom this morning, to keep it off the floor.
It gets more and more mindboggling as it goes on. But it’s not the chilling thing.
You might find this an interesting read.
(No, we have no idea why his face is so shiny.)
One of the benefits, if that’s the right word, of the Daily Record’s shambolic new iPad app is that the 30-day trial period means we got to see a print copy of the Sunday Mail today for the first time in years. It was largely like a parochial edition of Heat magazine (“FAT LASS DATES THIN BLOKE” got a spread), but buried 40-odd pages in was a “special report” that doesn’t seem to have made it onto the paper’s website.
The Mail accompanies the report with an editorial entitled “We must not abandon our Geordie pals”, which is very carefully worded in order to give the impression that a Yes vote would be to do just that, without actually saying so. But the actual content of the report is curiously at odds with the headlines.
Last year’s argument over the referendum franchise saw the Scottish Government’s view win the day – that the matter should be decided according to a civic definition of nationality, rather than along the ethnic lines proposed by some in the No camp.
But what of the people of non-Scottish ethnic origin who’ve been thus enfranchised and entrusted with the future of the nation they’ve chosen to make their home?
It’s been an interesting week for the Scottish media. First the Sun’s website vanished behind the clouds of a paywall, and today the Daily Record unveiled a new version of its tablet app which no longer gives readers the weekday paper for free.
(Both papers, naturally, presented these new restrictions as enhancements.)
Some of the more cynical independence supporters among our readership may today be asking themselves “What is it that Labour are trying to bury today with all this ludicrously farcical ‘Labour For Independence’ business?”
Allow us to suggest a few possibilities.
For some reason which escapes our understanding, the operator of the misleadingly-named “Scottish Labour” Twitter account chose to tweet this message this afternoon.
We know the answer, but we’re jiggered if we get the point.
It’s very rare, viewers, that we get so angry in the course of writing a post that we have to stop.
But when we ran a picture last night of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander MP, opening a foodbank with a cretinous smile on his face as if being a member of the government of a modern industrial nation in need of foodbanks was something to be happy about, a reader suggested making a gallery of similar images.
This is as many as we could bear.
The internet’s been enjoying itself since last night knocking up satirical versions of The Sun’s wraparound cover today. For no immediately apparent reason (except perhaps that it’s a slow time for news) the paper has suddenly decided to give a “State Of The Union”-type address explicitly setting out its beliefs on a variety of subjects.
We thought that it might pass a few idle moments to compare the UK and Scottish editions, and see how closely those beliefs matched up on either side of the border.
Some people in Britain can’t afford to eat and are having to go to foodbanks to survive.
So open your heart (and wallet) for this hungry little ginger fella. There’s only so far an expense account will stretch when you’re on a tightly-controlled public sector salary.
Wings Over Scotland went to London last weekend, for no particular reason other than a change of scenery. After a trip to the faux-bohemian Camden Market – in which about six different stalls are now repeated over and over in a sad, gentrified mockery of its previous more anarchic life, yet while still maintaining much of the vibrant feel – we set off in no particular direction and found ourselves in Trafalgar Square.
Despite having been to the capital dozens of times, I’d never visited the home of Nelson’s Column, which is far bigger in real life than it looks in pictures, managing to dominate what is a very large plaza with no shortage of other imposing monuments and decorations. (Including the vast National Gallery and, at the moment, an incongruous enormous bright blue cockerel.)
Suitably inspired, we elected to take a stroll to the Embankment, past the London Eye, and from there on a walking tour of the heart of the British establishment. Searching for exploitable weaknesses, obviously.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
