More than a quarter of its Scottish candidates for the forthcoming UK general election actually already hold elected office – nine of them as councillors, four as MSPs, one as an MEP and of course the sole defending member, David Mundell.
(Several of the councillors have only been in their jobs for a matter of a few days and are already looking to scurry off to London for new ones.)
As for the rest, though – and following the discovery that at least two of its council candidates earlier this month had no idea that they were standing – the party’s clearly been doing some more hasty press-ganging.
To be honest we didn’t pay it a lot of heed, assuming that “Scottish fishing industry leaders” just meant Bertie Armstrong again – a longstanding ultra-staunch Unionist and Leave supporter with a track record as a reliable anti-independence rentaquote – and nothing in the coverage led us to believe otherwise.
But then we saw a picture:
Mr Armstrong is the white-haired and bearded chap standing immediately to the right of Davidson in the photo, with his hand on the top corner of her pledge. But who’s the fellow immediately to the left of her?
She’s currently contesting Edinburgh West, which the party has some credible hopes of winning, having held the seat for almost 20 years prior to 2015. And it seems that her former employer has decided to try to give her a helping hand.
And, y’know, they’re really not allowed to do that.
Something really quite strange happened yesterday. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was caught red-handed in the act of telling a bare-faced, unarguable lie in the middle of a general election campaign, and nobody cared.
Reacting to the Crown Prosecution Service decision not to prosecute dozens of Tory MPs who’d broken the law in getting elected in 2015, the PM offered up a quote, which was reported in most of the newspapers:
Nice wee bit of snark on “all the major parties, and the Scottish nationalists” there. But there’s a slight problem with the statement, which is that it’s an absolute lie.
In the last few days we’ve been talking a lot about the bizarre perversion of arithmetic that now seems to dominate political campaigning in the UK, and which has the media so tied in knots that the poor Telegraph now thinks nothing of saying the SNP gained council seats, lost them and gained them again in the space of four paragraphs.
But numbers are confusing and we’re very hungry at the moment after some major dental surgery made eating difficult, so we weren’t really paying attention until Ruth Davidson started talking about pies.
Most of the papers today are full of stories screaming hysterically about a (real, but somewhat exaggerated) decline in Scottish educational standards. But if the contents of those papers are anything to go by, Scotland’s schools have been disgorging idiots into the general population for a lot longer than the last 10 years.
He’d very kindly sent us a copy of the same article he’d sent the Beeb. We attach it below. We’ve highlighted in bold the only bits that didn’t make it into the BBC piece.
When our dear old pal the Scottish Labour super-goon Duncan Hothersall tweeted this earlier today, we just couldn’t resist a wee fact-check. We love to see people take the moral high ground, but numbers are fluid these days and you can’t be too careful.
Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: “@Aidan Relax. They’d deploy the F16s. They’d never get aff the groond!” Apr 27, 16:31
James on Push The Button: “The comments section on Wings is poor with the repetive, accumulated shite from the likes of Chas, Adrian, Wilma Flintstone…” Apr 27, 16:28
James Che on Push The Button: “Now we know that the UN is not independent as it claims to be, and it will never be allowed…” Apr 27, 16:23
James Che on Push The Button: “Not a rational thinker I note, having difficulties achieving thinking links that join a to b and b to c,…” Apr 27, 16:03
Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: ““There’s no objective evidence that being alive is better than being dead” I believe the Romans had a saying that…” Apr 27, 16:00
Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: “Occam’s Razor says it’s because Independence is but a matter of weeks or months away at most. 7th May. That’s…” Apr 27, 15:53
Athanasius on Push The Button: “You accept it as a foundational assumption. There’s no objective evidence that being alive is better than being dead, but…” Apr 27, 15:20
Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: ““Socialist Norway is one of the richest countries in Europe and regularly voted one of the best countries in the…” Apr 27, 15:19
Chas on Push The Button: “The comments section on Wings is poor with the repetive, accumulated shite from the likes of Northclown, Baird, Confusused etc…” Apr 27, 15:15
Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: ““This is not a black and white dilemma” No, it’s a red and blue dilemma. That means there’s a great…” Apr 27, 14:22
Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: “There are more Scots with their hands out grifting than there are with their hands dirty, grafting. But then you…” Apr 27, 14:12
James Che on Push The Button: “North code, There are an awful lot of leaders and politicians of all ilks in Scotland that never mention this…” Apr 27, 14:02
Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: ““reality is that a people brutally oppressed by an invading alien power are forced to live under the illusion that…” Apr 27, 13:52
Lorncal on Push The Button: “Agreed, Southern. Primo Levi (Italian Jew and author, etc.) experienced just this situation in the camps of WW II. He…” Apr 27, 13:52
James Che on Push The Button: “North code, At which point do you ask the question of the questioner which pill did you take prior to…” Apr 27, 13:41
Lorncal on Push The Button: “It’s called ‘suicidal empathy’ and is not at all like normal empathy, Calum, and it plagues the West right now.…” Apr 27, 13:39
Northcode on Push The Button: “Are the Scots living in a movie? Arnold Schwarzenegger did it first back in 1990. It would take another nine…” Apr 27, 11:55
Alf Baird on Push The Button: ““an absolutely callous vicious and utter hatred for the natives” Of course, being colonised, us Scots are already subject to…” Apr 27, 11:17
Cynicus on Push The Button: “I am kinder than our host who does not mess around eviscerating you with probabilistic logic. I am open to…” Apr 27, 11:00
James Che on Push The Button: “First option-Red or blue button. Third option suicide by sticking a name tag on yourself and country. Forth option,- accepting…” Apr 27, 10:53
James Che on Push The Button: “The two red and blue button options are wether the populations want supposed governing bodies to do it for them…” Apr 27, 10:11
James Che on Push The Button: “Lornical explained Scotlands situation and its people very well on the 25th of April with remarks on subject of rational…” Apr 27, 09:27
Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: “Well, well. I read the question through twice, to ensure I understood it, then I chose Blue. Seemed bloody obvious…” Apr 27, 08:51
Chas on Push The Button: “What a load of shite…………. as usual.” Apr 27, 08:44
Captain Caveman on Push The Button: “*(Sorry, lots of annoying autocorrect gibberish there, but you get the gist)” Apr 27, 08:27
Captain Caveman on Push The Button: “I totally see your logic, but as human beings the situation is surely more nuanced? Speaking for myself, I simply…” Apr 27, 08:15
Angus on Push The Button: “Being a Rev., I am surprised it does not bother your conscience to vote red, given that a red majority…” Apr 27, 03:09
Rev. Stuart Campbell on Push The Button: “Man, these comments are a real disappointment.” Apr 27, 02:02
Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Narcissism Of No Differences: “You know I edited all those front pages satirically, right?” Apr 27, 01:57
Rev. Stuart Campbell on Push The Button: “So, yes, stupid. Willing to risk death to appear “social” rather than actually think about what they’re doing.” Apr 27, 01:54
