“Dry your eyes. On your feet.”
Sometimes the world’s random turns throw up a charmed piece of timing. That was the first tweet that I read on 19th September 2014, sitting on the side of the bed, eyes burning, wondering what on Earth I could possibly do with a day for which I’d bought champagne, but which broke my heart before dawn.
I’d resisted Twitter for a while, then fallen in love with it, weirdly comfortable with the disembodied voices of strangers. Small phrases, 140 characters: at its best, little postcards that made me smile, laugh or think.
For whatever reason, that tweet cut through, its arrival perfect to give me a virtual shake. I’d tell the writer – if I knew who they were – that I managed to carry out half of their instruction to us hollow-eyed, political orphans that day, though I failed miserably for a while on the first bit.
Today we should have become independent. We’re not, and it’s not okay, but since I don’t think we can ignore the power that time and timing can possess, and since words are all I’ve got, I’d like to tell you a story.
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comment, history, scottish politics
Two front pages in the same newspaper, two weeks apart.
The top image is Scotland within the UK. The bottom one is an independent Scotland.
£5 billion better off with independence? We’d call that a no-brainer.
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comment, media, scottish politics
Scotland isn’t independent today.
Let’s not get fooled again.
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history, scottish politics
We hadn’t heard of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust until today. It turns out that it’s a sister organisation to the highly admirable Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which does great work highlighting and fighting issues around poverty and social injustice.
The Reform Trust, not so much.
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Tags: memogate
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comment, scottish politics, scum
To mark the day when Scotland would have become independent had it voted Yes in 2014, the Scottish Conservatives have hired someone who sells dog food (not very successfully) for a living to produce a 37-page dossier about how absolutely dreadful Scotland is and how it would be the most bankrupt country in Europe – poorer than Greece, poorer than Latvia and poorer than Cyprus.
It wasn’t supposed to be released publicly until tomorrow, so that all the papers could splurge their loads on it, but someone found a copy that had been left on a bus and sent it to us. It’s incredibly dull, but if you really want to read it, it’s here.
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Category
idiots, scottish politics
We’re very confused today.
Okay, so that’s all straightforward enough. The SNP are bad because they’re going to hit “middle Scotland” with more tax. Bunch of dangerous tax-and-spend lefties. Right?
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analysis, comment, media, scottish politics
Q: What are the chances of us NOT having something special for you tomorrow?
A:
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admin
From the Scotsman tonight:
As previously, we’re having quite a lot of trouble understanding the difference between “independence” (39%), and “the Scottish Parliament should make all the decisions for Scotland” (51%). We’re going to drop the SSAS a line and see if they’ll ask for us.
Tags: and finally
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investigation, scottish politics, wtf
Barring some sort of unforseeable apocalypse, Scottish Labour aren’t going to win the Holyrood election in May, so it doesn’t really matter what their policy proposals are – they’re never going to happen.
Nevertheless, it’s pretty much our job to examine stuff like their plan to “scrap council tax”, and it’s more fun than watching the news today, so let’s give it a go.
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Category
analysis, scottish politics
Brussels terror atrocity = SNP BAD.
Chris Deerin, Iain Martin, Alan Cochrane and Ian Smart will be hopping mad.
Tags: britnats
Category
scum, world
Even by the low, low normal arithmetical standards of the Scottish media, yesterday’s Scottish Sunday Express humiliated itself with the most stupendously factually wrong articles we’ve seen in a newspaper for some time.
James Kelly on Scot Goes Pop! has already eviscerated its comically inept bumbling in detail, but we thought we’d just quickly give you a visual version.
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Tags: arithmetic fail, flat-out lies, misinformation
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analysis, comment, debunks, idiots, media, scottish politics, stats, wtf
We’ve got a little surprise for you this week, readers.
Stay tuned.
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admin
