Always have a backup 69
Posted on
February 01, 2014 by
Chris Cairns
The tumbleweed express 136
Posted on
January 31, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We were expecting the turnout for the No campaign’s Great Train Mobbery to be a lot better for the afternoon session, on account of the fact that nobody would have to get up at 6am to go and leaflet a dark, freezing-cold railway station.
The opposite turned out to be true.
Type mismatch 160
Posted on
January 31, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
While we struggle through a tax return and our intrepid spotters document the second half of Better Together’s Big Train-Station Day Out, we figured you might like to read the Scottish Daily Mail’s story on the operation.
It’s a strange piece, opening with a dramatic “evil cybernat spies under the bed” headline and an opening paragraph about “sinister twists” and how we’re a “notorious abusive blog”, but then the remainder of the text twice repeats the point that we asked spotters not to harass anyone and that we’re merely challenging BT’s untruths.
It’s like their heart just wasn’t in the smear anymore.
The lonely hours 309
Posted on
January 31, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We take our hats off to the No campaigners who braved a cold, dark Scottish morning to go and hand out leaflets to the public at train stations across the country today.
We’d have preferred it if they were distributing leaflets that weren’t packed with a litany of flat-out lies, of course, but we suppose you can’t have everything.
Another goodbye 140
Posted on
January 30, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Bad news for binmen 76
Posted on
January 30, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Guardian tonight reports, by way of covering Johann Lamont’s debacle at First Minister’s Questions today, an interesting snippet related to our post of earlier today:
Half a million? This weekend? Are we sure about that?
The honesty patrol 584
Posted on
January 30, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Earlier this week we had a little fun at the expense of the anaemic “grassroots” No campaign, revealing that almost all of its planned activity between now and the referendum was a single day’s leafleting of some railway stations. Yesterday we found out the reason – they’ve got a new leaflet, all about yesterday’s unspectacular comments on currency by Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank Of England.
We have to assume that the leaflet was printed before the speech, and that any assertions it might make about Mr Carney’s view might not necessarily be entirely true. So let’s see if we can make sure everything stays on the straight and narrow.
A hot tip 84
Posted on
January 30, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
So we’ll just leave this here:
And then we’re off to bed.
[EDIT: Story confirmed with Jessica Bridges at Ladbrokes press office.]
Glass found one-third empty 49
Posted on
January 29, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
As this site tends to focus mainly on the output of serious newspapers we haven’t previously spent a great deal of time scrutinising the Scottish Daily Mail, and we can only surmise that it’s upset them, because they seem to have been trying very hard this month to get our attention.
We must confess, it’s now become something of an addiction.
Quoted for sense 161
Posted on
January 29, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The media is positively jumping with analyses of Mark Carney’s much-anticipated speech about currency unions, with thousands of words being expended to discuss something we’ve already summed up accurately in eleven. It’s almost comical to watch the amount of anti- (and very occasionally pro-) independence spin being put on a text which went pathologically out of its way not to make any kind of judgement whatsoever on the subject.
(Something Carney continued to do at the post-speech Q&A with journalists, at which he frequently looked bemused as a series of political hacks asked him massively leading questions along the lines of “So, you said X…” which he then had to wearily but firmly point out he hadn’t actually said at all. If you click the image below you can listen to an audio recording of the session.)
However much of an awful grump he is, the best, most sensible and balanced analysis (okay, the second-best after ours) is probably David Torrance’s.
Carney speech: definitive analysis 148
Posted on
January 29, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The slumbering watchdog 83
Posted on
January 29, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
When studying the Press Complaints Commission Code of Practice, in truth one is spoiled for choice when considering the Scottish Daily Mail’s ongoing hate campaign against so-called “cybernats”.
It seems fair to say that the paper has blithely ignored Article 2, “A fair opportunity for reply to inaccuracies must be given when reasonably called for”, for example.
Articles 3 (i) (“Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital communications”) and 3 (iii) (“It is unacceptable to photograph individuals in private places without their consent”) also seem to have been somewhat cavalierly treated.
So we pretty much just stuck a pin in at random.
