More or less since the morning of 19 September 2014, the Unionist parties in Scotland have kept up an unceasing chorus of “You lost! Accept it!” directed at the entire Yes movement, but primarily the SNP (despite the SNP having never to date disputed the result or called for a re-run of the referendum).
Readers may not be entirely astonished to discover this morning that at least as far as Scottish Labour are concerned, that principle only applies to other people.
Because we’re pretty sure there’s already a name for when political parties set out an “alternative programme of government”.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz gave an interesting interview to Good Morning Scotland just after 8am today, in which he expressed a number of careful, measured and qualified views on a variety of subjects including currency.
But obviously Scottish people are much too stupid to understand stuff like that, so the BBC quickly dumbed it down for them.
The problem is that there’s a difference between simplifying and falsifying.
The Scottish Mail On Sunday felt obliged this weekend to devote newsprint in what’s technically an actual newspaper to a piece of snark that might just be a new all-time low in the highly competitive barrel-scraping field of “SNP BAD”:
Half a page was given up to a bunch of sour complaints that the First Minister had built in FIVE MINUTES on her itinerary on a school visit (aimed at encouraging girls to take up traditionally male careers) for people to get selfies with her.
Dismayingly often, the thing that irritates us the most about the Unionist press lying to its readers isn’t the fact that they’re doing it, but the fact that they do it so insultingly badly. As an illustrative case in point, here’s the Sunday Times’ reliably dull-witted Scottish columnist Gillian Bowditch today:
Now, let’s be generous and ignore the honkingly stupid first paragraph, which paints a couple of exceptional bad years as a permanent status, and focus on the second one.
This is the demented, McCarthyite state of madness the Labour Party has reached:
This is a party now openly rejecting anyone as a member who has ever supported any other party. We’d take a minute to try to explain to them how the arithmetic of that one works out, but they’re a long, long way beyond the grasp of reason now.
Scottish Labour won a council by-election in Fife last night, held after the long-serving Communist Party/independent councillor Willie Clarke (who can be seen on the last page of our Charlie Hebdo feature here) stepped down due to ill health.
The successful candidate Mary Lockhart was understandably jubilant, but there were a couple of what seemed like pertinent facts missing from the local paper’s report.
One thing you can always guarantee on GERS Day is that the latest set of figures for Scotland’s devolved economy inside the UK will trigger another uncontrolled spurt of “SNP HONEYMOON OVER” articles from the nation’s dogged commentariat.
Today we’ve seen already examples (links below) from two ex-Scotsman editors, Iain Martin and Magnus Linklater, the latter popping up in the Times by way of a rather crass and unpleasant analogy involving Oswald Mosley and the Blackshirts.
And since we’d rather watch “Suicide Squad” again than spend any more time going over the arguments about GERS (and trust us, readers, we don’t say that lightly), we thought it’d be more fun if we finally got round to compiling a semi-definitive list of all the times the collective wisdom of Scotland’s media and opposition has confidently predicted the SNP’s imminent demise.
We originally wrote this article in March, in response to the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (better known as GERS) figures for 2014-15. We’ve updated it to take account of events since that time, of which there’s been one rather major one.
Today saw the publication (just five months after the 2014-15 GERS) of the 2015-16 stats, which are again triggering a convulsive orgy of “BLACK HOLE!” articles across the media, as every Unionist in the land falls over themselves to portray their own country as a useless scrounging subsidy junkie without actually using the exact words “too wee, too poor, too stupid”.
And once again, everywhere you look there’s a “Proud Scot” screaming about how the figures – showing an essentially unchanged “deficit” despite an almost £2bn fall in oil revenue – destroy a case for independence that those same people have spent most of the last four years stridently insisting never existed in the first place.
Willie on When the law breaks the law: “I prefer the nomenclature of Randy Andy and Handy Mandy. But as the media now moves on to Handy, rhe…” Feb 24, 09:05
diabloandco on When the law breaks the law: “Don’t do Facebook , could someone put up Sara’s response?” Feb 24, 09:04
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “Jay Depends on your age. Younger, and you probably are (correctly) worried about saying the “wrong thing” that in the…” Feb 24, 01:43
Saffron Robe on When the law breaks the law: “As I’ve said before, it’s unwise to ascribe your own failings to others – in this case, racism disguised as…” Feb 24, 00:39
Jay on When the law breaks the law: “Young Lochinvar: Having only recently become a ‘Wings’ reader (occasionally making comments), there seems to be a substantial degree of…” Feb 24, 00:26
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “« Scots is descended from Northumbrian, while Standard English emerged from the East Midland dialect of Mercia. Although markedly different,…” Feb 23, 23:35
Cynicus on When the law breaks the law: “Mandy in the Jile! But Randy Andy & Dandy Mandy not (yet?) sharing a cell. https://tinyurl.com/54mwctac” Feb 23, 23:30
Confused on When the law breaks the law: “john davidsons outburst at the baftas that so annoyed people – that illustrated perfectly the whole point of the film…” Feb 23, 23:09
Andrew scott on When the law breaks the law: “Anyone see the watermelon party’s PPB? nothing of course of their obsession with trans rights” Feb 23, 22:41
Northcode on When the law breaks the law: “Part of our debate would perhaps be concerned with a definition of ‘colonisation’ A modern definition of colonialism: ” [colonialism]…” Feb 23, 22:00
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “AUTISTIC DETRANSITIONER AWARDED $2m AFTER HER BREASTS WERE REMOVED AT 16 An autistic woman who underwent a double mastectomy at…” Feb 23, 20:27
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “PUBERTY BLOCKER TRIAL HALTED OVER SAFETY CONCERNS Work on NHS England’s planned puberty blocker trial has been paused after the…” Feb 23, 20:00
Garavelli Princip on When the law breaks the law: “Well Young Lochinvar, I know Hatey well. He was my boss: Head of Lavatorial Services. Where do you think he…” Feb 23, 18:30
Willie on When the law breaks the law: “Obviously in not mounting an appeal Durham and Darlington dont have the unlimited resources like the Fife NHS have. Incredible…” Feb 23, 17:56
Willie on When the law breaks the law: “Touted with the great hurrah the reality is that the MV Isle of Islay was delivered one year and three…” Feb 23, 17:41
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “I wonder if host Alan Cummings would have been so fulsomely inclusive and supportive if the tick in question hard…” Feb 23, 17:19
sarah on When the law breaks the law: “Sara’s response has been posted onto Liberation Scotland’s facebook. She shows JK up for what he has become.” Feb 23, 17:04
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “HMcH @2.30 Hay fit, straw fit.. Based on that I very much doubt it. Oi Vey! How does that sit…” Feb 23, 17:01
100%Yes on When the law breaks the law: “James Kelly, is best ignored and forgotten about, he’s a thorn in the Indy movement side. You could write pages…” Feb 23, 16:36
sarah on When the law breaks the law: “@ 100%Yes: I hope you succeed in bringing Alba under the Alliance to Liberate Scotland umbrella. I’ve been dropping the…” Feb 23, 15:07
Cynicus on When the law breaks the law: ““ From the ashes of Culloden and the tragedy of the Highland Clearances to the cliffs of Quebec…” ======== It…” Feb 23, 15:05
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Anybody know if they swore an oath of allegiance to the British Sovereign and his successors? And if they did,…” Feb 23, 14:30
100%Yes on When the law breaks the law: “Both me and my wife have just rejoined the Alba Party to support any new leaders and to stick two…” Feb 23, 14:26
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “GROUSE BEATER: ‘ALBA PARTY NEWS’ « […] Four senior ALBA members have offered to take over the party to ensure…” Feb 23, 14:03
sam on When the law breaks the law: “Frae BBC “A health trust spent more than £600,000 on an employment tribunal which found it harassed a group of…” Feb 23, 13:56
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “HOW SCOTTISH REGIMENTS FORGED BRITAIN’S EMPIRE Intro text on YouTube site – « When you picture the British Empire, you…” Feb 23, 13:50
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Scotland all over the MSM today, as the waves of synthetic outrage swell into a tsunami sweeping all of yesterday’s…” Feb 23, 13:45
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “I’ve viewed it 110 times. Northy 615. Who’s the ither twa?” Feb 23, 13:29
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Haha, “humble Scot”. Maybes you forget your claims to be a millennia-old, interstellar-travelling, Pict. But the denizens of Area 51…” Feb 23, 13:22
