Wings Over Scotland

“Heroes and villains of Westminster” then it turns out to be about Farage/UKIP (no MPs), visiting Scotland about a Holyrood by-election.  Those Sun journalists are top notch.

I listened to the interview on Radio Scotland this morning, the interviewer did an excellent job and remained impartial throughout.  I’ve got a growing respect for the reporters on Good Morning Scotland, the anchor folk are always impartial and always dig regardless of who they are interviewing be they brit nat, scot nat or midgie nat . . .

. . . Farage came off like a spoilt brat particularly the way he ended the interview.

The Sun is just playing to it’s audience, whatever ‘we’ might think of the paper, that’s one thing it does particularly well.

 
Simply more “Jock Bashing” by the London media. 
 
If it wasn’t this story they would invent something else, like deaths threats against minor celebrities and what not. Not that I want to give them any ideas mind.

Farage is a symptom of a greater problem within the British political system. Essentially he is a lone voice, with a high profile, saying something different from the usual script that comes out of Westminster. He has also wrapped himself in the flag (Union or St George depending on circumstance) and played the “Johnny Foreigner” card. The Press love this. It’s easy to sell this story. Who wants to bore the readership with the real reasons for the economic and social problems that plague the UK? Not the tabloids. So he’s the new John Bull hero, come to rescue us from the dreaded enemy across the channel and shame, shame on those who dare to rain on his parade. 
Of course, the press and the Westminster political class could do the descent thing and promote the wholesale reform and renewal of the jaded and corrupt system that is UK PLC, but then that wouldn’t chime with various narrow agendas. So Johhny Foreigner bashing by John Bull it’s going to be!

“A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind”

Daniel DeFoe describing the reaction of the Scottish public to the Acts of Union.
—
“He was a spy among us, but not known as such, otherwise the Mob of Edinburgh would pull him to pieces.”

John Clerk of Penicuik, a leading Scots Unionist, describing Daniel DeFoe.
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Just a wee bit of historical perspective there, not really relevant, but amusing anyway.  Of course, we have moved on since those times.  Farage is nowhere near as smart and funny as DeFoe was, and he’s only a tuppenny shill for corporate interests, big oil, and the Heartland Institute, not an actual spy for the Crown or anything like that.

Sticking with the historical stuff, Lord Bute, the First Scottish Prime Minister after the Union, received much worse treatment from the London mob (and more sustainedly) than anything the Parcel o’ Rogues had to suffer in Edinburgh.

But like I say, we have all moved on from those times:

link to dailymail.co.uk

No it does not appear in print edition.

Yesterday when reporting the Amazon’s UK tax payment they decided to nail on a statement in regard to funding that this same company had received from the Scottish Government via Scottish Enterprise. To me there was no direct link here
 
To be fair, most UK news programs compared the amount of tax Amazon paid to the amount it had received in grants from the UK government, which are more directly linked. The funding from the Scottish government was just a Scottish angle on that story. The indirect link, of course, is that the money from the Scottish government came from the UK government. It was just a general point about how much tax-payers money Amazon was receiving versus how much tax it was paying, with the Scottish element highlighted for a Scottish audience.

So The Sun doesn’t recognise the right for people to protest against xenophobia and bigotry! Even by just 20 people who were outnumbered by the press 2:1! No arrests or warnings were issued by the police during Nige’s visit but The Sun doesn’t report that. They were all just vicious, violent scum to them, typical Kelvin McKenzie approach of one-sided ‘journalism’.

@BillyBigbaws
 
Cool link.  Brown must have been possessed of great fortitude to withstand such withering barbs as “You’re a very bad man!”
 

 
Training Day says:
17 May, 2013 at 3:29 pm

David Miller’s recent record on GMS is impeccable
 
I must have missed that what did he say about Gary McKay Stevens ?

 
BillyBigbaws:

 
“A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind”
 
Daniel DeFoe describing the reaction of the Scottish public to the Acts of Union.
 
That reminded how lightly Farage got off compared to the what the political class could expect back then.
 
Farage was lucky to be merely heckled. Back then, if the people of Edinburgh disapproved of their actions, the political class were peebled (stoned) in the streets by the mob. Irreverence for politicians is an old Scottish trait.

Argh – you’ve put me on the spot now! I was in my barbers this morning, a lovely little place in Gorgie Road, Edinburgh run by two grand Italian lads Sam and Alphonse (Sam cut my hair a few days before I was married in 1975 – good heavens is it that long or even, was it) and in the reading material was a copy of the Scottish Sun. I had a scan of the stuff about Farage but it was nothing like the stuff quoted above. I even had a discussion with the guys about it and they thought Mr Farage was a bit of a joker and was more to be laughed at.  Interestingly, both the guys are pro Scotland doing it’s own thing and ask “why not”? Sadly the conversation then deteriorated into a discussion about what next for the Hearts – oh well.
PS They used to have the Hootsmoan in the reading material but it was the Scottish (sic) Daily Express and Sun today – must ask them the next time I’m in about what happened to the Hootsmoan.
 
PPS Mr Frange, Sam and Alphonse are great guys but were emigrants once, will they be booted out of the UK if you get near power; them, their wife’s and families, my daughter-in-law and grand-daughter of African decent? Mmmm? Or as that old fakir Charlton Heston put it…. “from my cold, dead hand ” will you prise that which I hold dear to the diversity of Scotland. So, “so long and thanks for all the fish” as Douglas Adam’s put it.

“Britain’s long democratic tradition demands that Mr Farage has the right to be heard.”
That’s an astonishing, and ignorant, statement. Freedom of speech is one thing. The ‘right to be heard’ is quite another. Does the press give the people it has traduced the right to be heard?  Does Britain’s long democratic tradition? Certainly not. Throughout my (longish) lifetime,and for centuries before, all sorts of people of various political colours or causes, have been heckled off the stage. Others have been physically prevented from speaking, and (rightly) the media has condemned this. But the two things are completely different. If Farage can’t handle a hostile demo, that’s his look-out; but to bleat about a ‘right to be heard’ is an entirely spurious invention.

i find it extremely worrying this is getting more MSM attention than the privitisation of nhs in england did!

@kininvie-
 
re ‘Rights’
 
If you haven’t already seen it, you may enjoy this – George Carlin, in his last show:
 

There’s some unbelievable pearl-clutching going on in the Telegraph comments around all this.  Some of it’s coming from unionist Scots. 

You’d think that Nigel Farage was the Queen Mother from their reactions – or that he’d been held down and beheaded in the street by Robbie the Pict.

“I am ashamed of the behaviour of my fellow Scots involved in this insulting and thuggish attack.  It is the very antithesis of the Scottish character.
 
We can be ferocious warriors when in battle but this is just naked street violence at best and organised political dictatorship at worst.

I cannot tell you how angry I am at this damage to our reputation from those who should know better.  

We used to be great but now we’re just bait dangling on the line of ignorance that mirrors gangsterism.”

Who would’ve guessed the far right were such sensitive souls?  All this outrage over a minor event happening around a minor politician, with not a punch thrown nor a kick aimed at anyone.

To quote the late, great Frankie Miller: “Ach, naeb’dy goat plunged.”
 
How is the media going to react if anything actually happens? It’s worrying.

Sorry about lack of paragraphs in the first section – tried to edit but hey ho!