Getting our teeth into the news
Impressively we’ve managed to sneeze so powerfully and manfully today that we blew a filling out, so while we go off to the dentist to have it nailed back in here are a few of the better pieces from the Scottish political media and blogosphere over the last few days, in case any of them passed you by.
Alex Massie’s been in a fine vein of form recently on the Spectator, and this analysis of Ed Miliband’s comments on Scotland was particularly insightful. We were also pleased to stumble across this archive piece from a year ago echoing almost exactly our own recent question on the same theme, which remains unanswered.
Stephen Noon blogs much less frequently than Mr Massie, but when he does it’s usually a cracker, and this related piece is no exception, while Kate Higgins shows what she can do when she’s not randomly calling people misogynists with this excellent study of the topic. And finally on Murdochgate, Newsnet Scotland makes an interesting and telling observation that went unnoticed by anyone else.
Away from the Murdoch issue, we don’t often find much to commend in the Telegraph – and less still from Fraser Nelson – but we couldn’t fault this look at “tricolour Britain”. And the increasingly impressive A Sair Fecht enlightened us with an illuminating history of Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, founder of the Scottish Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party and the National Party of Scotland, one of the forerunners of the SNP.
That should take you through lunch. We’re off to the bone-driller.
That’s quite the sneeze you’ve managed there. Thanks for the links, and I hope you get yer munchers reddit oot without too much bother.
Here is another one for you Stu – an excellent balanced article from McKie in the Herald.
link to heraldscotland.com
Should be required reading for the Labour Party in Scotland. Maybe they will then stop digging.
Excellent find, Tearlach.
Sorry, but the “Murdochgate” issue is one that the Guardian just cannot let go of!
They’ve just put up an article by Charlotte Higgins in their Culture section smearing Alex Salmond with an “understanding that …” he used his Scottish Governmental influence to provide “corporate entertainment” to Murdoch ie tickets to the theatre to watch a production of Black Watch!
The “understanding that …” comes from a highlighted quote from Phil Miller, the arts correspondent of the Herald.
(Edit: Having just done a Google search on Miller I have seen via his Twitter account that the Herald published an article by him on this same topic on Friday, 27th April. This is where the Guardian took the quote from: link to heraldscotland.com )
Honest to god, the MSM are getting desperate in their attempts to make this Alex Salmond’s ‘Gotcha!’ moment!
Anyway here’s Charlotte Higgins getting “queasy” in her conclusion:
“…Leaving aside the Murdoch-Salmond aspect for a moment, what intrigues me is the relationship between the National Theatre of Scotland and the Scottish Government. The NTS is funded directly by the Scottish Government. And it feels rather as if Salmond were using the production as a kind of advanced version of corporate entertainment – certainly using Black Watch to reflect well on his Government, in a way that’s harder to do (I believe rightly) when the arts are at arm’s length. Too close for comfort? It certainly makes me feel a little queasy.”
link to guardian.co.uk
Mind you, the Black Watch were probably playing the Helmand Hippodrome at the time so maybe tickets were relatively easy to come by.
Well, that was plenty to get my teeth into, thanks for filling me in on these. NNS did do a good job of drilling down into the Murdoch issue, much better than the Alan Cochrane’s usual bumping his gums. I often wonder if his articles are meant to be tongue in cheek.
Anyway, I’ll get my coat now.