Millionaire-funded diehard loyalist forelock-tugging faction Scotland In Union published an extraordinary blog post yesterday.
Its 606 words comprised a sort of Caledonian Cringe Greatest Hits, allegedly penned by someone called Fiona Annesley (of whom we’re told nothing else, and who has no detectable online presence), but the line that particularly caught people’s eye was this:
The complete series so far. 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.
I went to “Dunkirk” at the cinema today. If you want to know what it’s like, just watch this trailer 40 times in a row and save yourself the £12.
It’s a poor movie, disjointed and aimless and curiously lacking in tension or narrative given the real-life subject matter. (It’s remarkably short on dialogue, which is lucky because you can barely make out any of what little script or story there is from behind the endlessly howling one-note airhorn of the soundtrack. It’s a bit like someone filmed an IKEA assembly manual in live action during a Formula 1 race.)
But I couldn’t help thinking that part of the reason it was so unengaging was because it felt akin to watching a boxing match between two fighters you don’t like. If Mike Tyson took on Tyson Fury, would you cheer for the rapist or the anti-Semitic homophobe?
Today’s Daily Record covers the story we mentioned yesterday about a report from a Scottish Labour campaign group making the pretty factually-uncontestable point that the branch office’s dismal strategy in last month’s election held the UK party back.
We’ll be honest with you here, readers – even though it’s only July, when it comes to sheer ham-fisted, tin-eared, clown-shoed, foot-shooting idiocy we didn’t think anything in Scottish politics in 2017 could possibly top the SNP’s decision that the surefire way to win back voters after a poor election result was literally mutilating puppies.
After all, that’s the sort of thing you say as a self-evidently ludicrous and hyperbolic joke: “Ha ha, the SNP are so dominant in Scotland these days that the only way they could lose an election would be if Nicola Sturgeon went on telly and started hacking the tails off week-old puppy-dogs without anaesthetic! LOL!!!!!”
It couldn’t even be defended as a grotesque but cynically cunning attempt to win votes from the rural hunting-and-fishing lobby – they did it right AFTER the election, when all those people had just gone out and voted Tory anyway.
But bless their hearts, Scottish Labour never once saw a low bar that they didn’t try to slither under, and today they pulled off the seemingly impossible.
Broadly speaking, the psychological phenomenon known as the Pollyanna Principle is a tendency to neurotically see the most positive possible view of a situation. It’s not generally widely found in newspapers – for whom bad news as a rule sells much better than good news – but for some reason the Scottish press makes a uniform exception when it comes to military shipbuilding.
This, for example, is today’s Herald:
Now, in itself that headline is – unusually – true, so far as it goes. But it only takes until the first sentence of the article text before things start to fall apart.
Deep in the summer news desert, the papers today are struggling for material again. The Sunday Herald has a shock-horror front-page exposé about some photos from an Orange Lodge party that turn out to be from 2010 and 2013, while the Scottish Mail On Sunday reaches all the way back to 1940 to fill a couple of pages.
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Looking up at the stars: “PEERS VOTE TO GO BEYOND GOVT’S PLEDGE TO END NON-CRIME HATE INCIDENTS The House of Lords has voted to strengthen…” Mar 12, 19:26
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “Northcode, Three hundred years and more of conditioning has to have had an effect on the people of Scotland, Goodness…” Mar 12, 19:06
Sven on Looking up at the stars: “Diabloandco @ 15.55. He did indeed, D & Co, in the (very) late 1700s. His statue stands outside the establishment,…” Mar 12, 19:00
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “Factchecker, You are right of course, the Scottish people have to attain the will to wake up first, prior to…” Mar 12, 18:48
James on Looking up at the stars: “Apologies, Geri, but I’ve got to correct you there; it’s not “rubbish” the site Prick babbles 24/7, but pure, unadulterated…” Mar 12, 18:46
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “Mark Beggan, The age of aquarius is supposed to be the age of enlightenment, so its said, when truths are…” Mar 12, 18:32
Young Lochinvar on Looking up at the stars: “James Rumour is that Hatey likes Dickens, just not on the first date! Allegedly..” Mar 12, 18:31
Northcode on Looking up at the stars: ““Scotland , its country and its people have been independent since 1707” Maybe so, James, but the Scots, as a…” Mar 12, 18:30
James on Looking up at the stars: “Oh no….you’ve pumped and followed through again, haven’t you?” Mar 12, 18:28
Young Lochinvar on Looking up at the stars: “Geri If a God of light and love ever existed then he is long gone. Someone, some thing now sits…” Mar 12, 18:26
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “Alf Baird, I do remember how the long term effect of Colonialism dances with and on the reality of the…” Mar 12, 18:19
Sven on Looking up at the stars: ““When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of…” Mar 12, 18:11
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “Geri, You are missing the point, You did not have to vote for your independence or ask permission to be…” Mar 12, 17:54
Aidan on Looking up at the stars: “@CC I think a large part is sadly BTL has become a symposium for the bored and the mad. The…” Mar 12, 17:35
Alf Baird on Looking up at the stars: ““It is not only the Scots kirk that has little interest in the liberation of the Scots people, it is…” Mar 12, 16:27
Mark Beggan on Looking up at the stars: “In the last two thousand years we have seen western orthodox religion rise and fall. We now see the fall…” Mar 12, 16:05
Geri on Looking up at the stars: ““It is not only the Scots kirk that has little interest in the liberation of the Scots people, it is…” Mar 12, 15:59
diabloandco on Looking up at the stars: “Did he not attend Aberdeen Grammar School? As did my brothers – obviously not at the same time as Lord…” Mar 12, 15:55
Geri on Looking up at the stars: “According to online sleuths it’s secret societies/Freemasons/Transhumanists/Znsts who are directing Trump & who have also infiltrated all levels of government…” Mar 12, 15:47
factchecker on Looking up at the stars: ““It is not only the Scots kirk that has little interest in the liberation of the Scots people, it is…” Mar 12, 15:35
Captain Caveman on Looking up at the stars: ““More alert readers can but muse on why the Indy movement clings to such fuckwits, fantasists and congenital liars.” To…” Mar 12, 15:24
Northcode on Looking up at the stars: ““The “goitrous academics” reference is from Cesaire, not Fanon.” Ha! Only an ignorant uneducated simpleton would confuse Fanon with Cesaire,…” Mar 12, 15:20
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “Alf Baird, It is not only the Scots kirk that has little interest in the liberation of the Scots people,…” Mar 12, 15:18
Northcode on Looking up at the stars: “Oh, no! I missed an ‘O’… in ‘glorius’ what should be ‘glorious’ in that strange Inglis tongue of inglorious England.” Mar 12, 15:14
Northcode on Looking up at the stars: “Colonialism can be understood as the practice of one country acquiring partial or full control over another country and exploiting…” Mar 12, 15:09
Alf Baird on Looking up at the stars: “I’ve long since given up expecting invitations to “soirées” from colonial institutions or functionaries. “Anti-colonial literature is never welcome in…” Mar 12, 15:00
James Che on Looking up at the stars: ““Dickens wrote the real evil of the world is ignorance” Hatey, no truer word was spoken when it refers to…” Mar 12, 14:57
Alf Baird on Looking up at the stars: “It certainly appears as if the Scots Kirk is less than interested in the Scottish peoples oppression or liberation, whilst…” Mar 12, 14:40
Hatey McHateface on Looking up at the stars: “If anybody has any free sock puppets, explain 24/7 to the New Hereditary King’s most vocal handmaiden. Haha, hand “something”,…” Mar 12, 14:38
Hatey McHateface on Looking up at the stars: “Far more important, CC, to those who care, Geri is an embarrassment to Scotland and to decent Scots. That obviously…” Mar 12, 14:33
