We’ll be honest, readers – if this doesn’t make you want to leave the UK all by itself, it may be that there’s nothing that ever will and we should just give up.
(Alternative titles considered for this piece included Live And Please Let Die, Doctor Oh God No, The Barely-Living Daylights and Quantum Of Bollocks.)
Yesterday’s Daily Record (which would increasingly be an accurate three-word name for the paper) ran an innocuous piece of page-filler fluff rubbish, and for once we’re not talking about a David Torrance column.
It featured the “psychic” predictions of a man who, the Record told us – no fewer than FIVE times in the opening few lines – previously predicted Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, and who had a track record of “incredible accuracy”.
Sounds pretty spooky. Maybe he’s got the gift.
Yesterday we noted the remarkable lack of coverage in the Scottish press about the workforce at BAE Systems in Govan being stabbed in the back yet again over UK government warship orders, with five Type 31 frigates promised to the yard (to replace five more expensive Type 26s) now going to Merseyside instead.
We claimed that newspapers including the Record had completely ignored the story in their print editions (and in most cases online as well), but an alert reader pointed out that it fact the Record HAD featured it, and we’re happy to correct our error.
Here it is, on page 14:
Did you spot it?
With the matter of the UK government’s orders for warships to be built on the Clyde having been such a vexed and contentious one over the last few years, you’d think that any significant developments in the story would be big news in Scotland.
So yesterday, when it was revealed that BAE systems definitely wouldn’t be building the five cheaper Type 31 frigates – which had replaced the originally-promised Type 26s – in Scotland, in a move which the shipbuilding unions described as a “betrayal”, we sat back and waited for the Scottish media’s outraged blanket coverage.
We didn’t really, of course. We’re not idiots.
Amid the horror of events in Catalonia yesterday, the Prime Minister of the UK – quite unintentionally – said something during an interview on the Andrew Marr Show which was highly pertinent not only to the Catalan referendum but to British domestic politics too. We thought it needed saving for the record.
Labour will start their autumn conference in Brighton properly today, but the comrades have already been at the seaside over the weekend. We thought we’d see how the UK’s official alternative to the Tories was getting along.
We’re sure it’s a well-oiled machine.
This weekend’s Scottish Mail On Sunday carries a column from UK Cabinet Office minister Damian Green which, if anyone was still in any doubt, rings just about every warning bell imaginable in terms of the Tories’ plan to use Brexit to cripple devolution both in principle and in practice.
It’s tucked away on page 27 and doesn’t appear on the Mail’s website, but you can read the whole thing by clicking the pic above. And below, we’ve pulled out the key sentences that should have the blood of devolution-loving No voters running cold.
A story from the Financial Times this week revealed the UK government’s latest act of sabotage against the Scottish renewable energy industry. It’s just one more in a long line stretching back to just after the independence referendum, when a string of “Better Together” promises were broken almost the minute the No vote was secured.
It was a particularly weak argument in the first place – if there’s a market in the rUK for Scottish energy, it’ll be there whether Scotland is independent or not. But it unravelled faster than most as soon as it had done its job.
The Scottish Tories came under fire yesterday for a crass attempt by Scotland’s least-elected MSP (2,062-vote Annie Wells) to hijack World Suicide Prevention Day with a blog complaining that more people were being prescribed anti-depressants, which for many are an effective and life-saving solution.
Scottish Labour duly joined in by attacking mental health provision in Scotland despite it having significantly more NHS consultant psychiatrists per head than anywhere else in the UK. (One for every 10,000 people in Scotland, compared to 1 for every 12,500 in England and one for every 17,000 in Wales and Northern Ireland.)
But is there any explanation for why more people are suffering mental health issues?
So once again, Unionist politicians are bitterly castigating the Scottish Government for problems caused by UK government policy. It’s enough to drive you mad.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
