The Financial Times has a gardening section. No, really, it does.
We have not made that quote up. (Gigha, incidentally, was in fact bought out by the community in 2002, over five years before the SNP came to power.)
The Steve Bell cartoon in yesterday’s Guardian caused a fairly predictable reaction. SNP supporters and Yes voters were offended, some Guardian journalists drew ludicrous defensive comparisons citing Charlie Hebdo – as if people had called for Bell to be beheaded, rather than just expressed the opinion that the cartoon was nasty and racist – and lovers of comedy went off scratching their heads after fruitless attempts to understand what the joke was supposed to be.
(“It’s a quote!”, shouted quite a few people, naming about a dozen different historical figures as the alleged source of a line about trying everything once, but none of them offering anything by way of explanation on how that was connected to any comment or policy of Nicola Sturgeon’s or the SNP’s.)
Anyone naively thinking that the publication of the cartoon was just an unfortunate lapse or oversight will have been disappointed by today’s paper, which carries another painfully unfunny and incomprehensible Nat-bashing effort from Bell, although this time the offence is limited to the portrayal of Sturgeon and Alex Salmond as a pair of stereotypical kilt-wearing Jocks.
(The caption explains the strip as being purportedly about “Salmond and Sturgeon’s Highland fling”, but we haven’t a clue what that’s supposed to mean. We’re not aware of them having visited the Highlands recently and we can’t think of any characteristic of full fiscal autonomy that resembles a traditional dance.)
Unionists, meanwhile, indignantly pointed out to some complainants that attacking the SNP isn’t the same thing as attacking Scots as a whole. But as media hysteria about the apparently-unconscionable prospect of Scottish MPs influencing a UK government reaches fever pitch, that distinction is getting less and less meaninfgul.
From Steve Bell in your liberal, Labour-supporting Guardian today:
Feel that social-democratic brotherly British love, readers.
As promised earlier, here’s the full glory of Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray’s stellar performance on Sunday Politics Scotland today.
Lovers of blood sports enjoyed a very special treat on this morning’s Sunday Politics Scotland, as Gordon Brewer got his teeth firmly around the throat of hapless Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray and shook him like a rag doll for ten toe-curling minutes.
We’ll have the entire 18-rated clip for you later, but Brewer was having so much fun tormenting Murray by repeatedly demanding an answer to the question of whether his party would rule out an electoral deal with the SNP that he didn’t notice when, at about the 15th time of asking, he actually got one.
If you picked up a copy of The Sun On Sunday in Scotland today, it’s possible you may have missed this article from the English edition, which hasn’t made it across the border due to print gremlins at Carlisle or something.
We feel sure that just months ago Scots were being begged to stay in the UK and exercise their “strong voice in the UK parliament”, but perhaps we’re mistaken.
Here’s delightful Labour MP “Diddy” David Hamilton this morning:
His personal attack on the First Minister’s appearance went down well, not just with the crowd in the room at the Scottish Labour conference but also with the party’s sniggering juvenile boys’ club. They wouldn’t say their wives were fat, but…
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
