An article by Nick Cohen in the Spectator last night fairly had social media ablaze with a heady brew of anger and mockery.
It’s the most extraordinary outpouring of deranged, spittle-flecked arsewash we’ve seen outside of a Daily Express comment thread in a very considerable time, and it merits attention solely because we think it might have broken a world record for the number of empirical falsehoods contained in an article in a respectable media outlet.
Get your clickers out, readers. You’re going to need a fast trigger finger.
The Daily Telegraph just released a video called “100 Reasons Why Brexit Was A Good Thing”. It listed them to a soundtrack of “Jerusalem”, the same song that closed the Labour Party conference earlier this week with its stirring ode to just one of the four nations of the United Kingdom.
We’ve saved a few of the highlights below, just in case the Telegraph should delete the video in a fit of sanity. We’ve also added one fake one. See if you can spot it.
You can see the full unedited Kezia Dugdale interview with Gordon Brewer on today’s Sunday Politics Scotland at this link, so you can verify that the shortened edit below isn’t misrepresenting anything. But if you don’t have time or attention span for the full 20 minutes, this’ll give you the gist without all the desperate waffling.
We think readers will agree that there can no longer be so much as a scintilla of doubt over whether Kezia believes Jeremy Corbyn can lead Labour to victory.
The press and social media today are frothing with excitement about a new Ipsos Mori poll for STV which shows (for the second poll in succession) Ruth Davidson scoring marginally higher approval ratings than Nicola Sturgeon.
But the problem is that that wasn’t what people were actually asked.
As several alert readers have already spotted, our Twitter account was suspended at some point in the early hours of this morning. We’ve had no email from Twitter offering any sort of explanation, but it seems most likely to have been at the behest of a Daily Express hack called Siobhan McFadyen who’s been huffily bleating to the company’s executives over the weekend about this tweet:
The reason we tweeted that comment is detailed here and here. But apparently it’s an opinion that you’re no longer allowed to have.
More or less since the morning of 19 September 2014, the Unionist parties in Scotland have kept up an unceasing chorus of “You lost! Accept it!” directed at the entire Yes movement, but primarily the SNP (despite the SNP having never to date disputed the result or called for a re-run of the referendum).
Readers may not be entirely astonished to discover this morning that at least as far as Scottish Labour are concerned, that principle only applies to other people.
Because we’re pretty sure there’s already a name for when political parties set out an “alternative programme of government”.
This is the demented, McCarthyite state of madness the Labour Party has reached:
This is a party now openly rejecting anyone as a member who has ever supported any other party. We’d take a minute to try to explain to them how the arithmetic of that one works out, but they’re a long, long way beyond the grasp of reason now.
The Scottish media has worked itself into an indignant froth over the last few days about the appearance of Sputnik News – an Edinburgh-based arm of a publicly-owned, state-run Russian news agency, fronted by (among others) former Dateline Scotland and NewsShaft stars Jack Foster and Carolyn Scott.
(Any resemblance to publicly-owned, state-run national news agencies of questionable impartiality in other countries is of course entirely coincidental and totally different.)
The Sunday Herald ran a bizarre smear piece yesterday on the pair’s past fundraising initiatives for their two previous projects (which were obviously completely unrelated to Sputnik), and today’s Times has an even weirder column by Melanie Reid in which Foster and Scott are directly and startlingly compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis:
We tried, for the purposes of satire, to think of another country that played host to nuclear missiles that were controversially imposed on it by an external government, but unfortunately we couldn’t come up with anything. Sorry about that.
Annie Wells and Brian Whittle are two new Conservative MSPs. Look how happy and excited they are today at Labour winning a council by-election from the SNP.
The UK is currently a non-functioning democracy. The Prime Minister has handed in his notice and has no nominated successor. The leader of the Opposition has just been served with a vote of no confidence by 80% of his own MPs. Parliamentarians are openly discussing overturning the result of a democratic referendum. People are pretending that Angela Eagle is a credible future Prime Minister.
James Cheyne on Strike One: “The NHS is a public Body and cannot overrule Private Rights of the subjects Scotland and neither can judges, Civil…” Dec 12, 10:26
desimond on Strike One: “Is this outside the remit of our Justice Minister?” Dec 12, 10:22
PC Foster on Strike One: “Let em talk- they will fade into the background when they realise you are not paying attention.” Dec 12, 10:13
James Cheyne on Strike One: “It also fails to relate any mention/wording of supreme judgements being capable of overruling it outside the subjects of Scotland,…” Dec 12, 10:12
PC Foster on Strike One: “But the Scottish judges are knobled- so that’s not going to be of any use!!” Dec 12, 10:09
James Cheyne on Strike One: “Corrections to judgement? First of all the right to private rights and private family life which has been amended or…” Dec 12, 09:46
Weary on Strike One: “I was at the Vic A@E the night before the Christmas Eve encounter. (I was held overnight and discharged Christmas…” Dec 12, 09:40
PC Foster on Strike One: “The SG are now using money that was earmarked to support the health of the good people of Fife to…” Dec 12, 09:39
Northcode on Strike One: “Hooray! It looks like I didn’t write my last comment out loud after all! Either that or it has been…” Dec 12, 09:33
PC Foster on Strike One: “The Scottish Government and the Unions are in cahoots about this and have conspired with the Scottish Judicial system to…” Dec 12, 09:25
Marie on Strike One: “I have no trust in the law” Dec 12, 09:15
Northcode on Strike One: “Oops! Sorry, folks. I didn’t realise I’d written my last comment out loud. It’s the voices you see – the…” Dec 12, 09:12
Geoff Anderson on Strike One: “Times https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G77U_GXWgAAFps9?format=jpg&name=small” Dec 12, 08:56
The Flying Iron of Doom on The ginger stepchild: “I am reminded of that Green party wifie Rachel Millward, she being the one who declared that she wanted Wales…” Dec 12, 08:38
Geoff Anderson on Strike One: “A good question https://x.com/blablafishcakes/status/1998747889703477313?s=20” Dec 12, 08:37
Hatey McHateface on The ginger stepchild: “Looks like you’ll have another 5 years of saying it then. Just think how good your cut-and-paste technique will be…” Dec 12, 07:40
Hatey McHateface on The ginger stepchild: “Say what you like about the Covid Spreaders, but they know how to stamp out tranny behaviour. Check out the…” Dec 12, 07:38
Hatey McHateface on The ginger stepchild: “Vast increase in the crime you write of, Willie. Vast increase in the boat people, too, Vast increase in low…” Dec 12, 07:25
Bilbo on The ginger stepchild: “Upon reading a comment in this thread that mentioned PayPal Kavanagh’s site, I made the mistake of having a lurk…” Dec 12, 07:20
Hatey McHateface on The ginger stepchild: “Ah, c’moan noo, Alf. It’s quite incredible that you sit on a claim like this one, that Scotland would be…” Dec 12, 07:15
Angus on Strike One: “The judge who made this judgement has zero integrity and credibility and must be sacked.” Dec 12, 05:41
Peter McAvoy on The ginger stepchild: “It looks like the SNP support for Independence is Not Proven and will soon disappear like the legal safeguard they…” Dec 12, 02:09
Steve a on Strike One: “Poor poor judge keep. I’m reminded of something I read recently. The more eggs you put in your one basket……” Dec 12, 00:34
KITTYBEE on Spoiler Alert: “Well this judge holds the Supreme Court in Contempt. He has to go!!” Dec 12, 00:00
Sarah Walker on The Valley Of The Dolls: “Brilliant work: thank you. Interesting that paragraph 879 implies Upton has a protected belief that he’s a woman. Gender critical…” Dec 11, 23:42
PC Foster on Strike One: “Twathater- you could not be more right. lets ensure that Sandie Peggie can take this all the way up to…” Dec 11, 23:16
robertkknight on The ginger stepchild: “Frankly my dear, not a shit will be given either way. The SNP are charlatans in tartan suits selling snake…” Dec 11, 22:19
BLMac on Strike One: “This sort of judgement is reminiscent of what happened in Queensland a few decades ago. As it turned out the…” Dec 11, 22:13
Tommo on Strike One: “This is truly an amazing piece of forensic dissection (by the Editor and a few others) of a piece of…” Dec 11, 22:05
willie on The ginger stepchild: “Sixth on the list is crime. But what is crime and what is the perception of what crime actually is.…” Dec 11, 22:04
