The very strange man who is David Leask, chief reporter at the Herald, has been hard at work with a shovel ever since we ran a couple of stories on Monday.
Leask’s argument, at least in so far as we can make any sense of it at all, is that even deliberately and knowingly made-up lies printed in mainstream newspapers are not, and can never be, “fake news”.
That’s a term which he insists only applies to spoof sites pretending to be real news outlets, which we’d presume – although it’s by no means clear – means the likes of The Onion or the Daily Mash.
This is an interesting one. Almost 40 years on from the event, Scottish politics is still plagued by micro-brained Labour types insisting that the SNP “ushered in” Margaret Thatcher after the devolution referendum of 1979 was sabotaged by a Labour MP.
SNP supporters counter that this is complete bollocks, largely because it’s complete bollocks. James Callaghan, the Labour PM at the time, blamed 34 of his own MPs for bringing his government down, by supporting an amendment from Islington South and Finsbury Labour MP George Cunningham which blocked the creation of a Scottish Assembly even though it won the referendum by a narrow margin.
(Cunningham resigned from Labour two years later and subsequently joined the SDP, but in 2012 the Daily Express dragged him out to demand that the same “40% rule” be applied to the indyref.)
History, though, has forgotten someone else who was apparently the true architect of the fix, to the extent that we’d never heard about it until now.
We thought it might be worth going through this in a bit more detail.
The phrase “out of control” is in quote marks in the Herald’s front-page headline, leading readers to believe someone has said it, but who? Let’s investigate.
We’ve got a shock result for the inaugural winner of this exciting new award, readers. Remarkably it’s NOT David Torrance – who wrote an arch review of a chapter of a book about Donald Trump that didn’t actually exist. Good effort, Davey, but no cigar.
No, the first ever Wings Absolute Fanny Of The Week is… Anas Sarwar!
In common with half of Scottish Labour, Sarwar has been raging at Paisley MP Mhairi Black for her “silence” over the closure of a 16-bed children’s ward in the town, which has been replaced by an entire new state-of-the-art 256-bed children’s hospital 10 minutes down the road, right next to the sparkly new Southern General.
But only Sarwar did it by enclosing a picture of the local paper’s front-page splash on the story. In which there was one teeny-weeny slight problem for him.
Remarkably, the notoriously unreliable and yet somehow omnipresent Scottish political commentator and reality-disputer David “Davey” Torrance was still digging last night in the wake of this story from three days ago.
Previous episodes in the series are here. If you’ve got a story like this to tell, or you know anyone who does, Phantom Power want to hear from you – drop them a line.
Late last night in the House Of Commons saw one of the most significant votes in the history of UK constitutional politics. A group of Scottish Tory MPs voted to oppose an amendment which would have protected the central building block of Scottish (and Welsh) devolution – the principle that any powers not explicitly reserved are devolved – from the UK government’s attempted huge power grab under the cover of Brexit.
Last night they could have fixed it by supporting the amendment (backed by every other Scottish MP right across party lines), which would have tipped the arithmetic and ensured its success. Instead they betrayed every voter in Scotland – including their own – by waving the bill through unamended and passing the buck to the unelected House Of Lords, which has no representatives from Scotland’s most popular party.
This morning, BBC Scotland led on the fact that it snowed a bit in Scotland in January.
It also saw the return of ubiquitous Scottish politics scribe David Torrance from a trip to San Francisco, the details of which he shared at stultifying length with the unfortunate readers of The Scottish Review.
Or at least, what he SAID were the details of where he SAID he’d been.
We’ve commented quite a few times in recent months about the Scottish media’s habit of running statistical stories rendered meaningless by the absence of any context.
The reasons for this aren’t necessarily sinister – sometimes journalists are just lazy or the full stats are hard to establish because like-for-like figures aren’t published – but usually it’s just a way to get an SNP BAD story out of isolated numbers which, if the full picture was presented, would render that impossible.
The above story from STV News today contains no furious rentaquotes from Labour or the Tories (at least not yet), so we should place it in the former category. Nevertheless, we do feel it’s our duty in a general sense to provide readers with the information that the Scottish media can’t be bothered to, so let’s do that.
Breastplate on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Alan, you may think you’re a Unionist but there is no Union, just a parasitic England sacking the lifeblood from…” Mar 25, 00:02
Cynicus on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “No idea who this guy is – or what you’re talking about. Are you sure you are posting in the…” Mar 24, 23:53
Dan on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “@alan scott “When are you unionists going to” demand the implementation of devolution for The Kingdom of England, and stop…” Mar 24, 22:46
Cherrybank on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Sarah @ 8.15pm Jim Sillars published his final book on November 2025 titled ‘The New Case for Optimism ‘ costing…” Mar 24, 22:33
sarah on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Ask a French person when they will give up their nationhood. Or a German. Or the c. 200 other countries…” Mar 24, 22:22
agentx on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: ““When are you Nationalists going to say enough is enough and demand the abolition of Holyrood and the end to…” Mar 24, 22:18
Iain More on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I am told that the UK owns c £700 Billion of Yankee NAZI Debt. We are ruled by Brit/Sassanach FUCKWITS…” Mar 24, 21:57
alan scott on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I’m a Unionist who thinks Holyrood should be abolished. The cost of one election is peanuts compared to the cost…” Mar 24, 21:53
Alf Baird on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: ““the Scot heads to oblivion in his own land” This is indeed what postcolonial theory tells us, that a colonized…” Mar 24, 21:24
sarah on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Nae Need, can we take some comfort from Jim Sillars’ speech at Oran Mor recently? Jim said it had been…” Mar 24, 20:15
Northcode on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “On the bright side – once Scotland has been coloniZed to the maximum extent and her people and their culture…” Mar 24, 19:53
Nae Need! on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I’ve spent ages writing a post on here and then editing and then deleting it. Tongue tied, all fingers and…” Mar 24, 19:04
Young Lochinvar on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “NC 7 reported “new towns” in Merry ol’ Engerlund is where the money will go..” Mar 24, 17:55
Willie on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “The Scots Parliament has turned out to be exactly what Westminster wanted of it. Westminster never intended to be anything…” Mar 24, 17:24
Andy Storrie on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “The professionally superior spectre of wee Jim Kelly looms larger and larger over this site with every passing day, Campbell.…” Mar 24, 17:10
Cherrybank on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I think Craig Houston the You Tuber representing the SDP will be a surprise winner of a seat on the…” Mar 24, 15:42
Rob on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “The de Hondt system is skewed to stop having a majority but essentially if enough folk wanted the SNP out…” Mar 24, 15:29
100%Yes on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I’d say John Swinney couldn’t turn a car around never mind the Country. The man is so unappealing I wish…” Mar 24, 14:58
100%Yes on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “New poll predicts a 18 Pro-Indy majority lead for May’s election, so what? The parliament has had a Pro-Indy majority…” Mar 24, 14:46
Northcode on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: ““So what will we get for this £53m?” A cheap, and not very entertaining, second-rate circus laid on by Westminster…” Mar 24, 14:42
James Che on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Lets call the whole thing off is a good idea, This is meant to be a Scottish election, not parties…” Mar 24, 14:30
Cynicus on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “This was always on the cards- after Craig Murrays’s (latest) defection.” Mar 24, 14:00
Mark Beggan on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Alright everybody. The electron’s here. Beautiful Scotland. Great people. Run by lunatics and morons. Ok. Everybody knows this. You have…” Mar 24, 13:53
sarah on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Well, this poll proves, yet again, that pollsters ask people who have no idea of what is really going on…” Mar 24, 13:36
diabloandco on Irony you can’t buy: “Speaking of irony , apparently the Minister for War in the US of A said ,”The problem with Iran is…” Mar 24, 11:10
