The Christmas truce on social media ended unusually early this year as Magnus Gardham, the political editor of the Herald, filed a column which had all the hallmarks of a man who’d overdone the sprouts and redirected the usual outcome of such an error out of his mouth rather than the other end of his digestive tract.
Backed up with a series of borderline-trolling tweets from his Herald colleague David Leask (who ambitiously referred to Gardham as a “genius”), the piece triggered a mild stushie on Twitter which we fully expect to see written up in tomorrow’s papers as “VILE CYBERNATS IN ABUSE STORM”, because it’s Christmas and you’ve got to fill pages with something.
Scotland’s two best-selling newspapers on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day:
We suppose we should just be grateful that they don’t publish on the day itself. The “STARVING REFUGEE BABIES RAPED BY AIDS DOGS” story* they’d doubtless lead with might put people off their turkey.
This was a brief exchange between the Scotland correspondent of the Guardian and the Political Editor of the Daily Record on Twitter last night. (The hug referred to is the one between Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru and Natalie Bennett of the Greens at one of the leaders’ debates for the May general election.)
An alert reader recently decided to get a bit meta and send an FOI request to the BBC about how many FOI requests it got, and how many it responded to with its standard get-out clause that basically amounts to “None of your business, get stuffed”.
This was the response. We’ve added the percentages in red.
You just pay for it, under penalty of law. It doesn’t answer to you.
Remarkably, it seems some angry Unionists are still trying to dispute the known facts surrounding the Forth Road Bridge closure. We’d like to think this quote from today’s Central Fife Times – from Tony Martin, the man who was convenor of the authority managing the bridge until a few months ago – was unambiguous enough to settle it once and for all.
That’s from the man who ought to know more about it than any human alive, and who as a Lib Dem councillor has no reason to make excuses for the Scottish Government.
This tweet mysteriously vanished from Blair McDougall’s Twitter timeline last night:
We’re not sure why, as we know that Scottish Labour love nothing more than to attack the Scottish Government (no matter how ham-fistedly) over education.
And we’re pretty sure it’s not because McDougall felt guilty about picking out only the negative aspects of what Scotland’s biggest teaching union called a “largely positive picture” of the state of Scottish education – and which the OECD itself said contained “much to be positive about” – because if there’s one thing we know for sure about Blair it’s that his conscience isn’t troubled by misleading people.
Our best guess was that even he was just too embarrassed at having made an attack line out of the fact that 20% of the country’s schools were “only” rated “satisfactory”, thereby implying that “satisfactory” status was actually in some way unsatisfactory.
In doing so, of course, he was echoing the words of his hapless leader Kezia Dugdale, who in September told the Holyrood chamber that “no parent wants a satisfactory education for their child”. Maybe McDougall just realised belatedly that he was reading from the wrong month’s script.
Hatey McHateface on The Love Of Big Brother: ““Decolonization of course permits a liberated people to more fully develop” “The colonial status quo is never an option to…” Oct 3, 20:28
Alf Baird on The Love Of Big Brother: ““the post colonial boys never come up with any policies” What they do say is that “what they do with…” Oct 3, 20:11
McDuff on The Love Of Big Brother: “It seems to me that the SNP is determined to make its self unelectable.” Oct 3, 20:11
Hatey McHateface on The Love Of Big Brother: ““A colonised people are by implication subject to foreign ideology so long as they remain colonised” There you go, Alf,…” Oct 3, 19:43
Hatey McHateface on The Love Of Big Brother: “The UK illegal tobacco market is estimated at £5 billion to £6 billion PA. With the discrepancies shown above between…” Oct 3, 19:36
Alf Baird on The Love Of Big Brother: ““I don’t agree that this constitutes “foreign ideology”” A colonized people are by implication subject to foreign ideology so long…” Oct 3, 19:12
Captain Caveman on The Love Of Big Brother: “Yes, trademark lefty delight, schadenfreude and faux moral superiority, wielding puritanical, joy-sapping, virtue signalling woke “progressive” policies as though they…” Oct 3, 18:41
Spartan 117 on The Love Of Big Brother: ““There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—…” Oct 3, 18:22
Northcode on The Love Of Big Brother: “I think it’s worth setting out what the Scottish Government’s proposed supermarket rules actually aim to achieve. Supermarkets have strong…” Oct 3, 18:21
Spartan 117 on The Love Of Big Brother: “More proof we are ruled by Authoritarian Communists, as if any further was needed.” Oct 3, 18:18
Captain Caveman on The Love Of Big Brother: “*righting any wrongs, even. (Duh)” Oct 3, 18:04
Captain Caveman on The Love Of Big Brother: “@GM I don’t agree that this constitutes “foreign ideology” – the likes of the SNP have wholeheartedly made it their…” Oct 3, 17:54
gm on The Love Of Big Brother: “Holyrood is a colonial administrative device. I agree with that. it is hardly surprising that they steal their wages and…” Oct 3, 17:29
Northcode on In The Eyes Of The Law: “In case it wasn’t clear in my last post, a judicial review can only look at whether the decision-making process…” Oct 3, 17:15
Captain Caveman on The Love Of Big Brother: “There really is no end to your grievance chimpery, is there? I mean, it couldn’t possibly be that the SNP…” Oct 3, 17:06
Alf Baird on The Love Of Big Brother: ““Holyrood, is not a place where policy is developed, debated and legislated on in response to public demand for reasons…” Oct 3, 16:35
Jonathan Offal on The Love Of Big Brother: “It’s worth noting that the “Alcohol tax” isn’t a tax. None of the money goes to the public, to alcohol…” Oct 3, 15:48
GM on The Love Of Big Brother: “There will be an element of that nae doot For example, there is plenty evidence that some in Holyrood and…” Oct 3, 15:44
Bill Cowan on The Love Of Big Brother: “The thing is, with the minimum price on alcohol and the massive discrepancies in price between England and Scotland, it…” Oct 3, 15:39
dearieme on The Love Of Big Brother: ““Utterly fascist in nature”: I don’t think so – I don’t remember allegations that Benito was a nutritionist nut. But…” Oct 3, 15:31
Patsy Millar on The Love Of Big Brother: “I think our government is now treating ‘1984’ as an instructional document!” Oct 3, 14:51
willie on The Love Of Big Brother: “Nutzlose Esser and Lebensunwertes Leben. The next policies for this utterly fascist government. Tried before, will be tried again!” Oct 3, 14:39
willie on The Love Of Big Brother: “Utterly fascist in nature and it begs the absolute question as to what right, and by what authority these scum…” Oct 3, 14:35
Alf Baird on The Love Of Big Brother: “You can buy 3 ferries for the price of 1, but such practices are banned in SNP la la land:…” Oct 3, 14:20
Captain Caveman on The Love Of Big Brother: “I don’t really buy that line of argument. Matters of personal efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and usefulness all seem like very…” Oct 3, 14:19
100%Yes on The Love Of Big Brother: “The SNP has no ideas and because of this we are suffering.” Oct 3, 14:17
Captain Caveman on The Love Of Big Brother: “The Left. Never happier than when condemning, banning, outing, othering, curtailing, censoring, deplatforming, criticising, silencing. People would do well to…” Oct 3, 14:14
gm on The Love Of Big Brother: “They do things like this, in part, because they need to fill their time doing something. Holyrood, is not a…” Oct 3, 14:09
Chris on The Love Of Big Brother: “The Nazis did this sort of thing in 1930’s Germany, and look how that ended up. Beware, the SNP is…” Oct 3, 13:42
Willie on In The Eyes Of The Law: “That Northcode is why we want a Judicial Review. It is as you say a precise legal tool. It will…” Oct 3, 12:56
