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.
Some manner of strange, alien vortex swallowed the very concept of arithmetic as we know it earlier this evening. The answer to the question “what is 431 minus 425?” was variously reported by the media as -7, -14, +31 and -30, with nowhere that we could find offering the seemingly obvious answer of “6”. But that was only the beginning.
Because language wasn’t immune from the sudden redefinitions either. The Tories, who finished 155 seats behind the SNP, nevertheless proclaimed themselves not only the winners of the election, but the sole winners.
Young Lochinvar on The Broken Rainbow: “HMcH Jeyes fluid? Hmmmm.. I am guessing that is an in-joke in your homosexual circles? What you types get up…” May 15, 23:08
Geri on Steadying The Ship: “To be honest, Salmond was the only good thing about the SNP. Margo & Jim too. If I remember correctly…” May 15, 22:17
Northcode on The Broken Rainbow: ““A Voluntary Union? Not only was it not voluntary, it was unconstitutional and unlawful, and so was the Treaty since…” May 15, 21:43
Geri on The Broken Rainbow: “AI Dan Then why continue to phap yersel intae a frenzy over it? Unless they’ve written to you directly stating…” May 15, 21:05
Geri on Steadying The Ship: “? You’re government is run by paedophiles….? I don’t think I’ll ever tire of that tune…” May 15, 20:59
Lorncal on Steadying The Ship: “Personally speaking, both Swinney and Starmer’s voices send me spiralling into a coma out of which I have to be…” May 15, 20:48
Northcode on Steadying The Ship: “If all the years on the chart from the latest WoS post (bar 1999) are added together we arrive at…” May 15, 20:24
Bilbo on Steadying The Ship: “There has been article upon article about a £5 billion deficit over the course of next Holyrood parliament. There is…” May 15, 20:01
Mark Beggan on Steadying The Ship: “Joke Time! When is a resignation Not a resignation? When it’s a Wessignation!” May 15, 19:18
Aidan on The Broken Rainbow: ““ The UK is an English criminal enterprise run by the English establishment for the English establishment. That is the…” May 15, 19:18
Mark Beggan on Steadying The Ship: “You can take oor freedom but you’ll never take oor benefits!!” May 15, 19:12
Xaracen on The Broken Rainbow: “Nothing in your response to me is relevant, Hatey. As ever, you carefully ignored the point. You changed the subject…” May 15, 18:54
Blackhack on Steadying The Ship: “Probably better with the Benny Hill tune” May 15, 18:22
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
