A lot of people this week quoted a line supposedly from the former Labour cabinet minister Roy Jenkins, which runs “a statement is only interesting if a sane man could say the opposite”. We haven’t been able to verify if he ever really said that or not, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s true either way.
So where that leaves this mess is anyone’s guess.
Is the Scottish NHS protected by devolution, or is it in mortal danger?
We’re expecting that answer any minute now, honestly.
With apologies to Jason Donovan, we felt we should probably have a look at the latest election leaflet Scottish Labour are putting through people’s doors.
We wouldn’t want voters to have too many broken hearts.
We’ve only just recently begun checking out the English edition of the Sun to see what appears in it that’s mysteriously excised from the Scottish one, readers.
Perhaps we should have started sooner.
The Daily Record is currently faithfully blaring out Labour’s anti-SNP “NHS in crisis” message, as part of the embattled party’s bizarre strategy of fighting a Westminster election solely on policies that are devolved to Holyrood, like health and education.
But an article on its website today dredges new depths even for the Record.
Perhaps we’re just being over-sensitive, readers, but we think the Daily Record might be a little bit upset with us.
That’s the editor of the semi-popular Scottish Labour fanzine, Murray Foote, pictured above this afternoon apparently issuing his own very special honours list, but it’s not the crankiest thing the Record’s published in the last 24 hours.
Sometimes a picture can say a lot more than a thousand words. Below, to the left of the vertical red line on our graphic, you can see the prominence that the Daily Record gave to their lies about “The Vow” and the Smith Commission report, which were found to be false by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.
On the right of the line, at the same scale, is the prominence they gave to the truth.
The comical furore about The Nurse Who Definitely Isn’t An Actress shows no signs of making sense any time soon.
24 hours and several demented pages of hysterical tabloid shrieking later, we’re still not sure whether a No activist and Labour supporter from Clackmannanshire is called Suzanne Duncan (as “Better Together” called her until at least June last year) or “Suzanne Hunter” (as the Daily Record calls her), though a bit of Facebook detective work suggests the latter.
We do at least seem to have cleared up her employment history, as the Daily Record has now very quietly and subtly changed its article of last night, which claimed she’d worked for eight years at a hospital that’s only been open for five.
But a whole bundle of other questions remain unanswered.
You can never accuse the Scottish media of being knowingly underhysterical.
Tonight the Daily Record snuck out its semi-apology for telling the Scottish people the biggest lie we’ve seen on the front page of a newspaper since its parent the Mirror published fake pictures of soldiers urinating on Iraqi prisoners.
You can tell they’re not awfully pleased we forced them to make that “correction” by reporting the lie to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, because they even reference it in the editorial above.
Speaking of which – well, heck, where do we even start?
Before we start, let’s make this plain: we will NOT be submitting any sort of complaint to any healthcare body regarding what we’re about to discuss, and we ask readers not to either. When push comes to shove, we don’t want nurses losing their jobs.
We just wish Scottish Labour felt the same way.
On the left below is part of a Scottish Labour election leaflet that’s currently being put through Scottish letterboxes, featuring an alleged quote from an alleged NHS Scotland nurse identified as “Suzanne” from Clackmannanshire.
On the right is the CastingNow profile of an actress named only as “Suzanne” from Clackmannanshire, who describes herself by saying: “I’m very good at making people believe things which aren’t true hence why I’ve always been told to pursue acting.”
While they have very similarly-shaped faces and features, we have no idea whether the two Suzannes are the same person or if it’s just a strange and potentially amusing coincidence. But the point is, there’s no way of finding out.
The election of Jim Murphy as branch office leader has so far failed to produce a shift in the party’s catastrophic polling figures north of the border, with most projections still suggesting that Labour’s Scottish seats will be reduced to single figures in May.
Last night we catalogued a series of its howlers since Murphy took over, culminating in a humiliating climbdown over some false claims about cancelled operations in the Scottish NHS. The party’s Scottish health spokeswoman Jenny Marra turned up on today’s Good Morning Scotland to discuss the subject, and in doing so demonstrated exactly why Scottish voters are deserting it in hundreds of thousands.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
