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.
Mark Beggan on Steadying The Ship: “The Dance of the Cuckoos is the tune you’re looking for. What about ‘The Band Played On’ would be more…” May 15, 17:20
Effijy on Steadying The Ship: “Yes, no one in sight has the skills of Alex Salmond but do we wish Swinney to be replaced by…” May 15, 17:11
Colin Alexander on Steadying The Ship: “The Dance Of The Cuckoos is Laurel and Hardy’s theme tune.” May 15, 17:11
Dan on Steadying The Ship: “FFS, are you enjoying a holiday in the Southern Hemisphere or doing a headstand? Because that’s about the only way…” May 15, 17:00
agentx on Steadying The Ship: “But there has just been an election where the SNP lost seats and had fewer votes!” May 15, 17:00
Izzie on Steadying The Ship: “Two by-elections next month should perhaps show whether the SNP is, as I suspect, on the up.” May 15, 16:33
100%Yes on Steadying The Ship: “I don’t know about anyone else but can you imagine JS running a country what a freighting thought, thank god…” May 15, 16:21
Hatey McHateface on Steadying The Ship: “The band should start rehearsing. Does the Laurel & Hardy theme have a name, other than the “Laurel & Hardy…” May 15, 16:14
Mark Beggan on Steadying The Ship: “‘Nearer my God to me’. Was the tune the the band played as the Titanic was sinking.” May 15, 16:00
Mark Beggan on Steadying The Ship: “The Captain always goes down with the ship.” May 15, 15:56
Mark Beggan on The Broken Rainbow: “Satisfying because it’s the Last Waltz for radical lunatics. Time to pay the Tillerman.” May 15, 15:48
Knuckle_heid on Steadying The Ship: “Swinney definitely isn’t Salmond! With a collapsing vote like that, they should exit stage left at the next HR election…” May 15, 15:37
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: “Not seeing that at all, Lorncal. Scotland is just as much a group of regions as England is. The Borders,…” May 15, 15:05
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: “It’s not the miners being consigned to the scrapheap this time – it’s the oil and gas workers. It’s not…” May 15, 14:58
Aidan on The Broken Rainbow: ““ A study that involved two Universities, accepted by the electoral commission, Lord Ashcroft polling & the Scottish Referendum study…” May 15, 14:35
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: “@ Northcode says: 15 May, 2026 at 11:36 am “I’m calling it, Geri” Crivens, Northy. I do hope that comma…” May 15, 14:27
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: “Fine, Alf. I asked you to clarify a fairly straightforwards situation. You decided to evade the question, as per usual.…” May 15, 14:20
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: “Here you go, Geri: “Instead of futilely repeating the pointless point scoring of the past 5 years, you really should…” May 15, 14:11
Geri on The Broken Rainbow: “Scots voted Yes in 2014, dip shit. A study that involved two Universities, accepted by the electoral commission, Lord Ashcroft…” May 15, 13:38
Young Lochinvar on The Broken Rainbow: “Andy Burnham; King orf ooop Norf, future former failed PM to give him his full title.” May 15, 12:35
Ross on The Broken Rainbow: “Link to the latest poll,campebll? The latest I see is from the Sunday Times and os a Yes majority?” May 15, 12:35
Mark Beggan on The Broken Rainbow: “Deja vu! It’s the 1970’s all over again. Dirty Filthy Labour meltdown and the Death Cult in the East cutting…” May 15, 12:34
Alf Baird on The Broken Rainbow: “Even Churchill warned that the west including imperial England would ultimately abandon the Z******s if they continued with their N*z*…” May 15, 12:25
Alf Baird on The Broken Rainbow: “Fowk canna ser twa maisters, like some o oor MSP’s mak-believe, Hatey. Fowk canna plicht lealtie tae twa soveranes. For…” May 15, 12:14
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: ““Public feeling was known to be overwhelmingly against the Union” Indeed. I guess that in 1707 Scottish public feeling was…” May 15, 11:41
Northcode on The Broken Rainbow: “I’m calling it, Geri. It’s not even noon and us liberty-seeking Scots in this place have already won the day…” May 15, 11:36
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: “His online site hoaching BTL with antisemitism and “river and sea” jihadists may or may not assist with that aim,…” May 15, 11:27
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: ““Absolutely ANYTHING AT ALL that doesn’t involve the English” My, Northy, so there will be no English spoken. Shame you…” May 15, 11:16
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: “Sure, Northy, and that’s why everybody on here is posting and responding in Scots.” May 15, 11:08
Hatey McHateface on The Broken Rainbow: “Nice use of apostrophes, Geri. Still not taking lessons from you, though. Not after your call for portable gas chambers…” May 15, 11:06
