As the winter Scottish political news drought enters its 17th week, mainstream and alternative media commentators alike are scratching around desperately for anything to write about, which tends to end up in overlong reflective and/or hectoring essays about how to secure independence, invariably concluding that what we need is for everyone in Scotland to start thinking and acting exactly like the author of the article.
We’re going to aim for something a bit shorter and more practical, at least.
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Category
analysis, europe, scottish politics, uk politics
What you’re missing:
That’s a single year’s profits. For a bit of perspective, it’s about four times the Scottish Government’s entire annual budget. Thank goodness we’ve had Westminster to manage our resources for us all this time, eh?
Category
comment, world
If you’re a person (unemployed or working) subsisting via state welfare in the UK, there can be no more genuinely, blood-runs-cold, terrifying phrase in the English language than a Tory saying they’ve come up with “fresh thinking” on poverty and benefits.
Because – and if you’re only going to trust us on one thing in your life, trust us on this – it never, ever means your life’s about to get better.
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Category
comment, media, scottish politics
…for the relationship between the four “partner” nations of the UK presented itself at the weekend when BBC anchorman John Inverdale asked the Scottish rugby pundit and former international Andy Nicol “what does this do for self-belief from a Scottish perspective, Andy?”
Which was clearly pretty ironic in itself:
But alert readers may recall how that “epitome of Better Together” worked out.
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Category
comment, history, scottish politics, sport
After Scotland’s rugby team sent proud Edward (Jones)’s army homeward with some well-skelped erses from Murrayfield yesterday, it seemed like an opportune moment to reflect on this from just 12 years ago.
The full story is below.
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Tags: from the archives, proudScotbut
Category
comment, history, music, scottish politics
A timely reminder about how much 85% of British people (or to put that another way, English people) really value the rest of the UK.
“Lead us, Scotland, don’t leave us!” is going to be a pretty hard sell next time.
Category
comment, disturbing, europe, scottish politics, uk politics
It’s still thin, thin gruel for Scottish politics in the press – everyone’s desperately trying to pretend income tax is a story again today – so while we do some research it’s back to the vaults for more ironic historical chuckles we go.
Tags: from the archives
Category
history, scottish politics
Last week, just a day after we highlighted the disastrous sales collapse of the Daily Record during almost certainly the most tumultuous and eventful seven-year period in Scotland’s peacetime history, the paper’s editor-in-chief Murray Foote apparently took the Scottish newspaper industry by surprise by suddenly resigning his position.
(We’re sure, incidentally, this is entirely unconnected with the recent advertising of some senior media vacancies in Scottish Labour.)
Rival hacks dutifully issued a series of glowing tweets about what a smashing guy Foote was and how much he’d improved the paper during his 27-year tenure there in various positions, most recently editor-in-chief, group editor and deputy editor.
So even though Foote accused this site of “debasing public life” with “sewage politics, conspiracy theories, hatred and paranoia” when we forced his paper to reluctantly and belatedly correct a massive front-page lie, we thought we’d join in the salutes.
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Tags: from the archives, The Vow
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
Presented without comment, covering a period of THREE major national referendums, EIGHT elections (UK, Scottish, EU, council) and of course the death of Rangers.
What we’re saying is, it’s not like there wasn’t any news.
(Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Tags: ABCs
Category
media, scottish politics
