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?
High on their own supply 241
Posted on
July 05, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Here’s the doom-and-gloom front-page headline of the Herald today:
It refers to a new report from the Nuffield Trust called “Learning From NHS Scotland”. Its 61 pages contain precisely one mention of independence. Let’s see what it said.
Weak foundations 352
Posted on
July 02, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re always loath to criticise political journalists for feeble stories published during the summer season, when parliaments are in recess and there’s nothing much happening to fill space with. But the Sunday Post has started pretty early this year.
Let’s see if we can put a number on the degree of “dilution” here, shall we?
The Warships Of Damocles 108
Posted on
July 02, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Of all the tropes of the 2014 independence referendum, few were fought over more repeatedly and bitterly, or more dishonestly by the No campaign, than the saga of the Type 26 frigates. The UK government promised Clyde shipbuilders hit hard by years of neglect and job losses that it would build 13 of the state-of-the-art vessels at BAE’s Scotstoun yard, but only if Scots voted No.
Once that vote was secured the number very swiftly dropped to eight, accompanied by a whirlwind of misinformation insisting that there had in fact been no reduction. (As keen social media users will know, this brazen lie was pushed particularly hard by the militarist website UK Defence Journal.)
So we were interested to see a story in today’s Scotland On Sunday which showed how desperate the Unionist side is to cling on to the ships as a future blackmail tool.
The paper has chosen to present the news with a super-positive spin, as you can see from the headline. But the text of the article tells a very different story.
Bonfire Of The Sanities 180
Posted on
July 01, 2017 by
Lorna Miller
The next five years of UK politics:
