Ruth Davidson led on numeracy (or as Tories call it, “numberacy”) at FMQs today.
And we can see why she’s concerned.
On Saturday, for the second year in a row, there was a huge and joyous independence march through the centre of Glasgow, which passed off with no incidents, arrests or disturbances despite attempted provocation from a small handful of abusive Unionist bigots led by a Holocaust denier.
Most of the Sunday papers carried largely neutral and factual reports of the event, of varying quality and size, with only a comical piece of hysteria in the extremist Scottish Daily Express standing out as objectionable for its ridiculous headline (and even then the actual copy barely mentioned the march at all).
But also for the second year in a row, one paper – or to be more specific, one man – took a rather more negative slant.
This was the Secretary of State for Scotland on the BBC’s coverage of the Scottish Conservative conference earlier today.
The broadcaster’s political editor Brian Taylor gets uncharacteristically indignant with Mundell’s response, and well he might.
Alert readers may recall our ongoing enquiry with the Scottish Conservatives and the Information Commissioner’s Office about what may or may not constitute a lawful and legitimate “petition”, if one is conducted over a period of several years (during which signatories may changes their opinions, or die) and is never delivered to its supposed recipient, but merely used as a data-harvesting device.
And excitingly there’s been a new twist.
Poor old Gary Smith and the rest of the super-unionist GMB. We wonder how many times the UK government has to kick them up the arse before they stop bending over.
We’re pretty sure we’ll need to take our shoes and socks off to count, though.
We should have known all along, really.
The woman who said she didn’t want to be leader but did, then said she wouldn’t quit as leader but did, then said she had no intention of quitting politics altogether, just did.
Or did she?
The BBC came in for a spot of criticism this week when its new BBC Scotland channel opted to show some snooker instead of Nicola Sturgeon’s major speech about a new independence referendum. But then things started to get weird.
An alert Wings reader noted that they hadn’t been able to locate any coverage by the state broadcaster of the SNP’s annual conference this weekend either, even though they send live cameras to just about any other party’s gatherings even if they amount to three people in a phone box (hi, Scottish Lib Dems).
The plot swiftly thickened.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
