Drawing a blank 71
We’ve got nothing today, readers. We don’t want to turn into Wings Over Jim Murphy, but otherwise the Scottish political scene is a bit tumbleweedy. Tell us something interesting that we should be covering. Or just a fun fact, or a joke, or anything.
In the light of the absolute horror at Charlie Hebdo today, it’s either that or we’re going to start running cartoons of Mohammed on principle.
Back-to-work blues 372
It’s always tricky coming back to the office after the holidays. You get a bit ring-rusty and it can take a few days before you’re firing on all cylinders again.
So we’re going to be charitable and assume that lack of match fitness was the cause of Scottish Labour’s astonishing multi-track trainwreck yesterday.
A minor detail 192
One thousand louder 142
Then and now 165
The union of the snakes 418
There’s a new hot topic among the Westminster commentariat.
Because desperate times call for desperate measures.
We really do adore him 304
If twice is a coincidence and three times is a trend, then these five recent pictures of “Saint” Jim Murphy – the martyr who endured an egging for all our sins – from the print media surely tell us something interesting.
The Ne’erday Game 277
We’re technically on holiday today, folks, so for the first time in a very long time we’re going to write something about football and if you don’t like it that’s just your tough luck. Nobody’s making you click the “Read more” button.
Two fairly remarkable things happened in Scottish football today. The first was that Aberdeen went top of the Premiership for the first time in about 20 years, but the second was of a bit more relevance to this site’s political and media-monitoring brief.
That’s because, for the very first time that we’re aware of since Rangers went bust in 2012, the chief executive of the Scottish league’s governing body, Neil Doncaster, explicitly and directly stated that the club currently 15 points adrift of Hearts in the game’s second tier was the same one that died two and a half years ago.
And that matters more than you think it does.
That was a year that was 355
A simple plan 304
Scottish Labour clearly get a pretty good deal from the printers’ shop that makes the giant pound coins, because they’re waving them around again.
The North British branch office’s latest wizard jape is to upset all the people who they urged to join for £5 just last month – never mind the gullible saps forking out nine times that much – by offering cut-price memberships at £1 a year.
It’s what the retail trade calls a “loss leader” – in effect the party will be paying people to join, because £1 won’t come anywhere near to covering the cost of processing each new member, sending them a membership card and so on.
But it did give us an idea.