The power grab 230
Posted on
July 15, 2017 by
Chris Cairns
Glass house heavily stoned 117
Posted on
July 14, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
And no, we’re not talking about Ruth Davidson living it up at Fingers Piano Bar. Kezia Dugdale tweeted this today:
Which would be a little bit like us gloating that Andy Murray was rubbish at tennis on the grounds that he was knocked out of Wimbledon this week.
Mundell’s Law 75
Posted on
July 14, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We already knew what David Mundell’s guarantees were worth, of course. So it’s not like we can exactly feign surprise at this.
The best we can say is that at least this time it took four months for the Secretary Of State’s promise to completely and utterly collapse, not 48 hours.
Good news is no news 97
Posted on
July 13, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
In a month of positive statistics for Scotland – including unexpectedly high economic growth figures, continuing to lead the UK and hitting its own tough targets for hospital waiting times (which drew an incredibly petty and insulting response from Scottish Labour), and huge progress in rail punctuality (now also the best anywhere in the country) – perhaps the most welcome of all was the release yesterday of the lowest unemployment figures for quarter of a century.
(Again the best in the UK, and in fact the best in Scotland of all time, since separate Scottish records only started to be kept in 1992.)
The Scotsman commendably gave the glad tidings top billing on its front page.
But despite it being slow news season, the rest of the media was a little less excited.
To last throughout the years 319
Posted on
July 12, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re not often genuinely shocked, readers.
But then we switched on BBC1 Northern Ireland today.
Towers of hate 159
Posted on
July 12, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It’s a sleepy Wednesday in July, so let’s celebrate some proud British culture!
The problem of memory 135
Posted on
July 11, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
So this is a thing that happened yesterday:
Because, as ever, Scottish Labour are absolutely certain that voters are morons.
Lies spring eternal 502
Posted on
July 08, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
“Colonel” Ruth Davidson took time out from her holidays yesterday to unleash an extraordinary (and unusually defensive) 35-part Twitter tirade about the reaction to her appointment as an honorary military commander. So barren is the summer political news desert that two newspapers put it on their front page today, giving the BBC an excuse to deem it the day’s biggest story.
But that wasn’t the bit that caught our eye.
Fake news: a case study 112
Posted on
July 07, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The term “fake news” has become somewhat devalued from overuse recently, and often translates simply to “news I disagree with or don’t like”. But this, from today’s Scottish Daily Mail, is a bona fide sighting:
Let’s just break that down.
The evolution of truth 87
Posted on
July 07, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Hanzala Malik has been a Glasgow Labour politician for 22 years without anyone noticing. His Wikipedia entry sums up his contribution to Scottish politics over that time in a single 25-word sentence amounting to “served on some committees”.
But he got noticed yesterday.
Because so committed was Malik to the core ideological principle of Scottish Labour – namely that absolutely everything bad that happens anywhere is the SNP’s fault – that he somewhat overstretched himself and blamed them for the closure of six Jobcentres in Glasgow, despite the startlingly obvious facts that responsibility for the decision lies solely with the UK government and the closures have been opposed consistently by every SNP MP in the city, two things Malik can’t possibly have not known.
After an outcry on social media when an alert Wings reader spotted the falsehood, Malik quietly amended the Facebook post twice, first from an attack on “the SNP” to the rather ambiguous “Government” and then finally to the accurate “UK government”. But “SNP BAD” will always be Labour’s instinctive default reaction.
Feeling the pain 162
Posted on
July 06, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
From today’s Scotsman, you can almost physically taste the tormented anguish of the three Unionist party spokesmen that Scotland’s economy isn’t in recession, and has in fact just posted its best growth figures since before the oil-price crash.
Spare them a thought today, won’t you?
