This morning’s SNP BAD piece in the Herald has undergone a slight change in tone since we wrote about it.
We’ll just assume that a small pang of conscience overcame someone.
There’s a story in today’s Herald about yet another SNP disaster:
Backfires? What, the fares have gone UP?
God knows, readers, there’s almost nothing we want to write about less than either David Torrance or the Scottish Six. Just to restate our own position for the record, we couldn’t care less either way about a dedicated teatime Scottish news programme on BBC Scotland – not because it’s a bad idea but because we have no confidence that in reality it’d end up any better than the embarrassment that is Reporting Scotland, far and away the regional station’s worst current-affairs broadcast.
(Certainly now that Scotland 2016’s had the chop.)
Nevertheless, the former’s article about the latter in today’s Herald is one of the most abysmally disingenuous and badly-argued things we’ve seen in the Scottish media for quite some time, and in the absence of any more diverting news in what now seems to have reasserted itself as the traditional summer slow season, we might as well take a methodical look at it.
Straight from a Scottish Labour activist, here’s a little something that’s worth keeping in mind every day of the next decade (or more) of brutal Tory governments imposing policies rejected by the vast majority of Scots.
WARNING: this post isn’t about football, but it will refer to football for quite a while in order to illustrate its point. Get over it or go outside for some fresh air.
Today is the opening day of the SPFL Premiership season, and will see the top-flight debut of a four-year-old club which is legally entitled under company law to use the name and trademarks of a much older one which went into liquidation in 2012 owing creditors tens of millions of pounds.
The facts of that matter are beyond any empirical dispute, but human beings are adept at arguing things which are demonstrably not true and so the truth is hotly and furiously rejected by a substantial group of people, weirdly including the club itself (even as it insists that it can’t be held responsible for the old club’s debts because it’s not the same club).
We’re not going to attempt to settle that argument here, because (a) it’s already been settled, and (b) we have nothing new to say that would remotely convince the people who’ve already steadfastly refused to acknowledge any of the proven facts.
Instead, we’re going to talk – not for the first time, sadly – about why the “debate” around “Rangers” won’t die, and what it tells us about the Scottish media.
Have you ever wondered how you try to poison and shut down a debate and a political environment that you fear you’ve found yourself on the losing side of, readers? Well, it’s funny you should ask, because as it happens we’ve got a visiting professor – an expert authority on the subject – with us today to give us a demonstration.
Make sure you’ve got your pens and notepads ready. He’s got a very busy schedule and we can’t afford to have him here for long.
A parable of internet abuse. Acknowledgements to Alan Moore and Frankie Boyle.
Dedicated to David Torrance, Susan Calman, Johanna Baxter and Angela Eagle.
There’s been a statistic released in Scotland, so obviously there’s a crisis.
Anarchy on the streets can only be moments away.
The mad explosion of news that consumed most of July has largely abated. The Tories have a new leader, Labour are settling in for an insanely destructive and bitter two-month factional war in order to (almost certainly) re-elect the same one they only elected 10 months ago, and Brexit is on hold until next year.
So with a palpable sigh of relief, the Scottish political media has been able to get back to what it does best: juvenile silly-season drivel about nothing.
In December 2013, the editor of this site – who knew nothing of the secret this article is about to reveal – tweeted “When we write the chronicles of independence, I hope there’ll be a whole chapter on @A_DarlingMP”.
Well, this is as close as we’re going to get.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
