A unique opportunity to escape 76
Posted on
March 15, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
No 8: Elizabeth, from Bonnybridge.
Some things are simple 428
Posted on
March 14, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Judging by the first 24 hours, we’re in for a two-year festival of utter horror from the UK and Scottish media. Yesterday saw a never-ending parade of metrosplaining idiots dragged willingly in front of cameras and microphones to pontificate their clueless and mind-numbingly ignorant drivel about Scotland.
It wasn’t possible to keep track of it all, because it was frequently happening on five channels at once, and it was harder still to watch it for any extended period of time without hurling a brick through the screen in frustration at the offensive stupidity of it.
Feeding into that was a stream of Scottish politicians who actually did know better, but who are too catastrophically dim to adapt to changing circumstances and had no strategy other than to endlessly repeat the same cretinous soundbites over and over.
(Adam Tomkins in particular was ubiquitous, spending what felt like several hours on various airwaves reciting the same brainless 10-second schtick forever.)
The constitutional politics of the UK and Scotland are in flux, and many aspects of the situation are complicated. But quite a lot of them aren’t, and if we’re all going to make it through the next two years without stabbing each other in the throat, it’d be a lot better if everyone accepted the things that are definite, empirical, indisputable facts.
Fury Of The Phantoms 349
Posted on
March 13, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Alert readers will of course be aware that one of this site’s most frequently-recurring themes is “phantom news”, whereby events or unpleasant opinions that newspapers or broadcasters really want to have happened are conveniently brought to life, either by some random nobody on the internet, or an unnamed “source” or “insider”.
(Or in a real emergency, simply asserted with no evidence at all.)
So when Nicola Sturgeon did something today that nearly everyone in the Northern Hemisphere knew she was going to do sometime soon, but wasn’t expecting just yet, there wasn’t time to prepare actual real people with the required quotes.
In the modern media world, though, that isn’t a problem.
Great news, Mrs Hudson 325
Posted on
March 13, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re going to need to print more books.
How elections work, with the Lib Dems 240
Posted on
March 12, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Scottish leader Willie Rennie on today’s Sunday Politics Scotland:
The incredible persistence of stupidity 88
Posted on
March 12, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We saw this exchange on Twitter this morning, involving left-wing Labour activist Eoin Clarke, a reader, and Scottish Labour list MSP Elaine Smith.
Smith professed to find it “unbelievable” and “scary” that the reader thought he’d had Tory governments for most of his lifetime. (We asked him how old he was and he said 34, which means he’s had Tory governments for 62% of his life, so that checks out.)
But it’s a standard Scottish Labour line that there’s no real difference between Scottish and English voters in terms of favouring left-wing politics, so we thought we’d just quickly check the arithmetic on that. The results are unlikely to shock you.
If you thought Willie Rennie was funny 182
Posted on
March 11, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
…on Good Morning Scotland yesterday, then we suspect you’re going to love the Lib Dems’ heroically glaikit MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton on the same show today.
(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 11 March 2017)
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Our favourite line is probably “the SNP didn’t win an election”, although it’s run quite close by “If you listen to Christine Jardine”.
That’s that one sorted, then 192
Posted on
March 10, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We joke, of course. The Spanish government has made this position abundantly plain several times over a number of years, and it still doesn’t stop idiot Yoons (and media pundits who should know better) from spouting it.
But this time, in the flesh, it’s really quite hard to spin a way out of.
When one plus one is one 186
Posted on
March 10, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We don’t want to fall into the trap of portraying the Liberal Democrats as a party of any political relevance or consequence in Scotland, but for the sheer comedy value alone Willie Rennie’s interview with Gary Robertson on today’s Good Morning Scotland is worth a couple of minutes of your time.
(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 10 March 2017)
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So, are we all clear?
A great form of empowerment 94
Posted on
March 09, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
No.7: Erin, 15, from Gullane.
More than numbers 208
Posted on
March 09, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
First Minister’s Questions today (featuring stand-in FM John Swinney in a theatrical mood) was one long howl of “TOO WEE AND TOO POOR!”, with both Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale using all of their questions to hark back to oil revenue forecasts from 2013 and insist that an independent Scotland would face economic apocalypse.
It was a dispiriting spectacle, and we found ourselves experiencing (not for the first time) pangs of sympathy for the remaining tiny rump of Scottish Labour voters, who must surely watch in broken despair at the antics of the hapless pack of squawking diddies representing their views in the Parliament.
But on the day that a new Ipsos MORI poll for STV found support for independence leaping to fractionally over 50%, we wondered how big a deal the economy really was for voters. And fortunately, we already knew the answer.
