The Daily Record gets up high on its outrage horse this morning with a front-page story titled “Double-crossed on devo”, echoing Jim Murphy’s claim of yesterday that the Tories’ manifesto pledge on “English votes for English laws” is a “betrayal” of the “Vow” signed by the three UK party leaders before the independence referendum.
Unsurprisingly, the Record gives rather less prominence to the news that the Vow isn’t worth the fake parchment it wasn’t written on than it did to repeatedly hyping it up and then proclaiming that it had already been delivered.
But there’s a twist.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: hypocrisyThe Vow
Category
analysis, comment, media, scottish politics, uk politics
Perhaps we’re just being over-sensitive, readers, but we think the Daily Record might be a little bit upset with us.
That’s the editor of the semi-popular Scottish Labour fanzine, Murray Foote, pictured above this afternoon apparently issuing his own very special honours list, but it’s not the crankiest thing the Record’s published in the last 24 hours.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
analysis, comment, media, navel-gazing, scottish politics
Sometimes a picture can say a lot more than a thousand words. Below, to the left of the vertical red line on our graphic, you can see the prominence that the Daily Record gave to their lies about “The Vow” and the Smith Commission report, which were found to be false by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.
On the right of the line, at the same scale, is the prominence they gave to the truth.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: The Vow
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
Alert readers should by now have spotted our story about the findings of the Independent Press Standards Organisation with regard to the Daily Record’s “The Vow Delivered” front page from last November. The paper was found by IPSO to have been guilty of “significantly misrepresent[ing] the fiscal consequences of the Smith Commission’s recommendations”, and ordered to publish a correction.
IPSO also noted in its judgement that the Record had amended the online version of the article accordingly. But that’s only partly true.
Read the rest of this entry →
Category
comment, investigation, media, scottish politics
The Independent Press Standards Organisation has delivered its verdict on the Daily Record’s coverage of the Smith Commission recommendations on 27 November 2014, after we lodged a complaint with the watchdog body.
We attach its findings below. (Emphases ours.)
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: flat-out liesThe Vow
Category
comment, debunks, media, scottish politics
A number of readers last night sent us copies of the response to complaints they’d made to the Independent Press Standards Organisation about the Daily Record’s infamous “The Vow” front cover. We attach the full judgement at the bottom of this article, and as far as we’re concerned it’s fair and accurate. The Vow was a deliberate deception, but it didn’t break any rules – it merely relied on readers misinterpreting it.
The bit we’re still interested in is the paragraph above.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: The Vow
Category
investigation, media, scottish politics
Kate Devlin of the Herald has been a political journalist as long as we can remember.
So it’s quite surprising that she’s apparently never heard of Gordon Brown before.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: The Vow
Category
analysis, comment, history, media, scottish politics
Official poster from the Tories:
Official leaflet from Labour:
So if Scots vote SNP in May, both Ed Miliband and David Cameron will get in. Glad we cleared that up. We might start work on some sort of handy translation chart (“vote Green get Ulster Unionist”; “vote UKIP get Monster Raving Loony”), so if you spot any more do drop us a line.
Actually, that last one’s true, isn’t it?
Category
comment, scottish politics, uk politics
We don’t get paid enough. Then again, we’re not sure how much money it would have taken to make the job of wading through the UK government’s 134-page “command paper” on Scottish devolution bearable. There may not BE that much money.
The entire document is a heroic achievement in the field of wonkspeak, screed after screed of impenetrable jargon deployed to create something which could in fact be accurately and fully summed up in six words: “Oh, we’ll figure something out later”.
Here’s a (very) typical passage:
We haven’t left out a subsequent paragraph explaining the answer. The paper simply leaves this and pretty much every other question hanging in the air, to be filled in at some unspecified future date after the general election, by whichever party is in government, if they can be bothered.
Don’t all celebrate at once.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: The Vow
Category
analysis
Just keeping you in the loop, readers.
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: The Vow
Category
media, scottish politics
The Daily Record, 27 November 2014:
So, IS the Scottish Government budget going to “nearly double”?
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: flat-out liesThe Vow
Category
comment, media, scottish politics