Redaction is a tricky business, and comes with numerous pitfalls even if you’re being careful, which not everyone is. If you’re involved in creating a document you know will have to be redacted, there are a variety of safeguarding approaches you can adopt.
When I worked on a videogames magazine called Amiga Power in the 1990s, we ran a fun comedy feature about censorship. But because the company that published the magazine had had some unfortunate mishaps in the field, we took extra care by typing all the “offensive” words as random-length strings of Xs when we wrote the article.
And it was lucky that we did, because as you can see in the feature’s strapline, the art department misaligned the red redaction bar on some of them, and if there’d been a sweary in there it would have been easily identified.
Wherever you find giants, you also find parasites, bottom-feeders and carrion. When a mighty lion dies in the jungle, tiny creeping crawling maggots and insects and bacteria feast gleefully on its corpse for many days.
Which naturally brings us to the Scottish media.
The above paragraphs of cowardly innuendo and baseless speculative smearing were penned by Severin Carrell and Libby Brooks in the Guardian on Monday. (They’re not from the ironically-headed “Appreciation” that the same two hacks wrote for Sunday’s Observer, in which they audaciously claimed that Salmond’s success was down to Nicola Sturgeon).
They sneakily imply that Salmond was guilty not only of the sexual assaults of which he was cleared in court, but also of an unspecified number of unnamed others, and make assertions of “disturbing evidence about his personal conduct” without specifying what that evidence or conduct might have been.
Everyone even remotely connected to Scottish politics has known for months that the below is the case. It’s an open secret.
But what’s playing out right now is something much bigger than the fate of one or two or three individuals. It’s the entire future of the credibility of Scotland’s justice system.
Just a quick bit of housekeeping here with regard to the new Wings comments section, which offers far more functionality but has also attracted a few complaints because it’s no longer a straight chronology of oldest-to-newest tweets.
(We could actually change that back, but the cost would be losing the ability to reply directly to individual comments, which is a big loss, so we’re leaving it as it is for now.)
To those beefing because that means you can’t now immediately tell which comments are new, a couple of helpful pointers. The easiest way to fix the problem is a simple one: keep the tab open.
If you keep the most recent page open in a tab on your browser, the Comment Bubble (visible at the bottom left of that pic) will keep track of all new comments – it refreshes every 30 seconds – and highlight them for you in yellow until you’ve read them.
(The little orange circle should take you to the first unread one if you click it.)
Sadly the Bubble stops working if you close the tab or navigate to a new page from it, but since most people have scores of tabs open at a time that shouldn’t be a problem. So there you go.
When times are quiet in Scottish politics, as they currently are, our favourite genre of story is “mainstream press belatedly catches up with Wings Over Scotland”. And so to this morning’s front page splash in the Sunday Mail.
The rumour mill has been grinding about Operation Branchform developments again in the last few days, although we’ve seen too many false dawns now to get overly excited about that. But the Mail’s story sounded awfully familiar.
While we get on with some tinkering behind the scenes in the absence of any Scottish political news – we have an exciting new comment system and the Contact form finally works again! – readers may wish to enjoy the full marathon three-and-a-quarter hours of last month’s fun indyref anniversary event at the Glasgow Science Centre.
Campbell Clansman on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Uh, “Musclebrain,” Tamworth is in England. Not Scotland. You moonhowlers really make it too easy to laugh at you.” Nov 27, 02:15
Jim F. McIntosh on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Stuff the political parties , we need more independent candidates for independence with sole mandate of immediate independence if they…” Nov 27, 00:38
Mark Beggan on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Nightmare Images. Number 14. Kezia eating her cornflakes.” Nov 26, 23:55
Young Lochinvar on A Personal Best For Kezia: “So having enjoyed reading all the comments to date (ok most) I take it the consensus is that midwitch cuckoo…” Nov 26, 23:40
Campbell Clansman on A Personal Best For Kezia: “See, for example, how Scots will be worse off under Indy, at: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19059435.people-2-800-year-worse-off-independent-scotland-claims-new-research/ I include more links making this point,…” Nov 26, 23:30
Campbell Clansman on A Personal Best For Kezia: “For more on how Scotland is better off in the UK, see https://www.economicsobservatory.com/an-independent-scotland-what-would-be-the-options-for-economic-success Or see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/why-scotland-is-better-off-as-part-of-the-uk Or this https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1231&context=sigma Of…” Nov 26, 23:23
Garavelli Princip on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Agreed. Most- maybe all – of the posters on here who show negative (red) numbers are Yoon trolls – given…” Nov 26, 22:59
Campbell Clansman on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Glad to see you can’t (and won’t) dispute that 1% Alba is dying in the water. Perhaps you’d also want…” Nov 26, 22:38
Mia on A Personal Best For Kezia: ““If it’s all about control of U’s vast mineral resources, why are you so keen for R to get that…” Nov 26, 22:32
Hatey McHateface on A Personal Best For Kezia: “That’ll be the Cuban missile crisis of 62 years ago. Bordering on the Ancient Guff in other words. James works…” Nov 26, 22:31
Hatey McHateface on A Personal Best For Kezia: “FFS, how many times? Any Scot can enjoy the priceless benefit of going to live in Bath. So that’s one…” Nov 26, 22:18
James on A Personal Best For Kezia: “As expected. He/she/it doesn’t have an answer. (because obviously there are no benefits for Scotland in the ‘union’).” Nov 26, 22:10
James on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Oh, and the Americans, for their part were ready to push the button because….a foreign power dared to site nukes…” Nov 26, 22:02
James on A Personal Best For Kezia: “He resisted the submarine commander. But keep it through the looking glass, that’s how you like it.” Nov 26, 21:59
Oneliner on A Personal Best For Kezia: “That’s part of his training. Don’t engage with the enemy when you know you’ll take a pounding.” Nov 26, 21:47
Hatey McHateface on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Shant! Mia’s shattered ma shaky self-esteem and shoogly self-confidence. Oh, all right then. First rule of courtesy for dealing with…” Nov 26, 21:26
znovak on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Um, submariner Arkhipov saved the world by resisting his superiors, who wanted to release the nukes. So he saved the…” Nov 26, 21:23
Alf Baird on A Personal Best For Kezia: ““North Britain” is rather like saying ‘North America’, or ‘North Asia’; it might be a geographic area but it is…” Nov 26, 21:10
Michael Laing on A Personal Best For Kezia: “It’s your beloved United Kingdom that’s circling the plug-hole. And no wonder. No matter how often you’re asked to do…” Nov 26, 21:04
Hatey McHateface on A Personal Best For Kezia: “//https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/BOTcharmer/ public class WingsBTLContainer { public static void WhereIsIt() { System.Console.WriteLine(“As long as you never leave scotland, Ros, you’ll be…” Nov 26, 21:03
Shug on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Labour in scotland would not and will not be allowed to have a coalition with the snp. Conservatives yes, green…” Nov 26, 21:02
Michael Laing on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Come on then, Faceache, we’re all ears! Tell us how being in the UK benefits Scotland. Don’t tell me you’ve…” Nov 26, 20:59
Hatey McHateface on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Insult your intelligence? Think about it. How could I make a start on doing that? If it’s all about control…” Nov 26, 20:53
Mia on A Personal Best For Kezia: “I have come across this interesting article in internet:”The Pedantic Critic: New study looks at the motive behind nitpicking other…” Nov 26, 20:47
Robert Matthews on A Personal Best For Kezia: “scotland(North Britain) is in the UK, so yes, calls go to a UK call centre.” Nov 26, 20:38
Muscleguy on A Personal Best For Kezia: “John Hannah of ISP gained 8.75% of the vote coming 4th in the Tamworth by election a few months ago.…” Nov 26, 20:34
Michael Laing on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Howsabout you explain to us how Scotland benefits from being in the UK instead of making pathetic comments about other…” Nov 26, 19:59
Sven on A Personal Best For Kezia: “Police Scotland Call Service Centres are listed as being in Glasgow, Motherwell & Edinburgh.” Nov 26, 19:53
Campbell Clansman on A Personal Best For Kezia: “There’s 4 more council by-elections in Scotland this year. Alba (the “true Indy Party” according to some here) can’t find…” Nov 26, 19:48
