The morning after 92
Posted on
October 09, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Nope, still too soon. Can’t take the world this morning.
In chronological order 146
Posted on
October 08, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We hate to be picky, but aren’t these the wrong way round?
November 2014: “The Vow has been delivered, ahead of schedule.”
That’s past tense, right?
The moral maze 193
Posted on
October 08, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Kezia Dugdale made a spectacle of herself again at First Minister’s Questions earlier today. Using time intended for holding the Scottish Government to account over its devolved responsibilities, Dugdale once more decided instead to ignore her duty to the people of Scotland and attack the FM over a matter which is entirely outwith the Scottish Government’s control, namely the past actions of a Westminster MP.
Pausing only to demand that Holyrood interfere in the running of the independent Law Society, Dugdale then abandoned her casual endangerment of a live police inquiry by focusing instead on the morality of the aforementioned MP’s business practices:
But Ms Dugdale’s own ethics left a few things to be desired.
The list of demands 476
Posted on
October 07, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
As life’s cruel weight bears increasingly down on your weary and creaking shoulders, readers – and it will, if it hasn’t already – you may find that you become decreasingly tolerant of those who waste your remaining time on Earth.
Certainly, this editor has rather less patience than he did in his youth, and engaged in a debate is often seen attempting to short-cut people’s outpourings of heartfelt rhetoric and hurry them along to their point, pleading “Yes, yes, all those awful things are awful but what is it you want to be actually done? What is your list of demands?”
It’s a phrase we’ve found in our minds a lot recently.
Damned if you don’t 155
Posted on
October 06, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Earlier today we made an observation about the overblown way the media has been covering the Scottish Government’s underspend of 1.3% of its budget (a figure about which the David Hume Institute today cooed approvingly “Even Mr Micawber could not budget more accurately”).
To nobody’s great amazement, Scottish Labour rentahonk Jackie Baillie – fresh from making a complete idiot of herself over the Michelle Thomson case – couldn’t resist jumping on the bandwagon.
Quite aside from the fact that it means no such thing – there’s no less money, it’s just that some of it will now be carried over and spent this year instead – we suppose the tweet does at least mean that Scottish Labour’s policy position is clear: the Scottish Government should always spend every penny of its budget. Right?
Spend, spend, spend 138
Posted on
October 06, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The media and Unionist politicians (we really need to come up with a word to describe that single entity), when not concocting hysterical frothing diatribes against Michelle Thomson or complaining about the Scottish Government giving money to T In The Park – a position we must confess we find ourselves in some sympathy with – have recently been loudly protesting about last year’s “underspend” in the Holyrood budget.
There’s an extremely good article here by Dr Craig Dalzell of the Scottish Greens dealing with the broader issue of why such complaints are idiotic, so rather than go over the ground again we thought we’d look at another angle.
What we’re told and what we know 152
Posted on
October 06, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We apologise for another post on the subject of The Wright House, everyone, but we do love getting our teeth into a puzzle, especially when it comes with a side order of lots of juicy evidence of the Scottish media telling people outright lies.
This should be the last one for the forseeable future, and we’ve actually got some solid info to impart this time rather than just a confused expression, so buckle up.
Once more for the folks at home 234
Posted on
October 06, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Even the alertest readers will probably already be confused by the baffling tale of Douglas and Jacqueline Wright, who sold their home to Edinburgh West MP Michelle Thomson. We certainly were last night, but on delving a little more into the media coverage of their story, things got a whole lot worse.
The world’s worst victim 181
Posted on
October 05, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Older readers may remember an ITV show called The Krypton Factor, which had an “observation round” section in which contestants were shown a short video clip and then asked a series of questions about it.
Let’s play it now.
A swing and a miss 143
Posted on
October 05, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Tories Of The Day 219
Posted on
October 05, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The ever-delightful Taxpayers’ Alliance, speaking at the Conservative conference:
We’re not sure about that last line, chaps.
The twitching corpses of truth 283
Posted on
October 04, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The newspaper is a fantastic concept. A cheap, accessible product, it’s a brilliant way of keeping yourself broadly abreast of current affairs. You turn a page and are presented with a diverse selection of interesting stories, often on subjects you’d never have thought to go and seek out in the self-refining echo chamber of the internet.
(Theoretically links on websites serve the same purpose, but dodging “sponsored” advertorial, gutter-level clickbait, pop-ups, autoplay video and pages that judder and leap around so much while loading all this rubbish that you’re about 50/50 to have an epileptic fit before you can read the story, has made clicking on one into a game of Russian Roulette fewer and fewer people are willing to take a chance on.)
This site has never believed that the ongoing steep decline in newspaper sales is a fundamental problem with the format. Rather, the truth is that people stop buying papers because they’re full of garbage.
