Did we miss a meeting? 254
Posted on
November 16, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Here’s Neil Findlay MSP on this morning’s Andrew Marr Show:
Wait, what?
Search Results
More ordinary voters 418
Posted on
August 14, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
From a leaflet sent out this week by Scotland’s only Tory MP, David Mundell:
“Do Keith and Michelle have a surname?”, nosy readers might be wondering.
An embarrassment to journalism 136
Posted on
April 17, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Scottish media displays such a remarkable uniformity of thought when it comes to the independence debate that you’d think it’d be the easiest thing in the world for them to at least all get their story straight when they launch a smear campaign against a prominent Yes figure.
That, however, would presuppose that they weren’t also incompetent.
Scotland on repeat 136
Posted on
December 08, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We must confess ourselves perplexed by the Messianic awe in which much of the Scottish media appears to hold Douglas Alexander. The epitome of the modern career politician (as far as we’re aware he’s never had any sort of job outside politics), Alexander has risen without trace through the Labour ranks, and his Wikipedia profile is unable to attribute one noteworthy achievement to the former minister despite his having held some of the most senior offices of state.
We’re unable to recall a single instance of Alexander ever expressing a view on any subject that was anything other than 100% in line with the official orthodox party position, and in Scotland his name is perhaps most associated with the shambolic conduct of the 2007 Holyrood election.
Nevertheless, for some reason Scottish newspapers appear to regard him as some sort of intellectual powerhouse within Scottish Labour, and the fact that his speeches don’t consist exclusively of tangibly bitter, hate-filled attacks on the SNP also seems to have him marked down as the party’s great thinker.
Which means that roughly every two months we have to endure a vacuous torrent of middle-management duckspeak such as the one Scotland on Sunday has inexplicably chosen to make its front-page lead this morning.
When two plus two is fourteen 58
Posted on
February 12, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It defies belief, in a way. It’s now been a full week since we mocked Willie Rennie’s embarrassingly clueless claim that an independent Scotland would need to negotiate “14,000 international treaties”, in a feature which was widely circulated and quoted.
So ridiculed was Rennie’s claim that even the Scotsman couldn’t make it stick, acknowledging on Monday that it had been exaggerated by at least 70%, with a maximum of 8500 actually still being in effect, let alone relevant to Scotland. An entertaining introductory package on last night’s Newsnight Scotland even highlighted our particular favourite of the UK’s treaties.
At which point the programme brought on the rare protected species that is Scotland’s only Tory MP, the Scotland Office minister David Mundell.
Contributors 24
Posted on
January 29, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A list of our excellent authors, with links to all their articles.
Miguel Boronha aka WG Saraband
Fancy a chat, Darling? 59
Posted on
January 07, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Scotsman’s last attempt at a live webchat didn’t go too well. In fact it didn’t happen at all, and the page has now vanished entirely. So we were pleased to see them having another go today, in the shape of a well-trailed Q&A session with “Better Together” campaign head Alistair Darling. We tuned in to see how it went.
We submitted a question of our own a few hours in advance of the event, on the subject of this. It wasn’t selected. We also made a few comments during the “chat”, but none were printed. Indeed, nothing at all was published which wasn’t a prepared question – there were no apparent responses to anything Darling said, and no discussion at all, just question followed by answer followed by new question.
You can see a full transcript below (verbatim – we haven’t corrected any typos), along with our analysis of Darling’s responses in red. Did he engage in full and informative answers, or did he just dodge his way to the end? See if you can guess.
Willie Rennie, suicide bomber 47
Posted on
September 28, 2012 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Ever since May 2007, one of the strangest aspects of Scottish politics has been the poisonous hostility of the Scottish Liberal Democrats to the SNP. The parties sit very close to each other on the political spectrum, and the SNP are sympathetic to some key Lib Dem policies – most obviously a local income tax – which the Lib Dems stood no chance of implementing in coalition with anyone but the nationalists.
(The Lib Dems are also still officially a party of federalism, committed to far stronger devolution than Labour or the Tories.)
Yet a succession of leaders have treated the SNP as little short of pure evil. Nicol Stephen, Tavish Scott (especially) and now Willie Rennie appear to regard Alex Salmond’s party with undisguised hatred, for no immediately obvious reason, and the idea of any sort of co-operation on any issue about as unthinkable as Barack Obama announcing a treaty of friendship with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In this site’s view, that approach was at least as responsible for the Scottish Lib Dems’ humiliation in 2011 as the UK party’s Westminster coalition with the Conservatives. Most people had expected the Lib Dems to form a coalition with the SNP in 2007, and when they refused we suspect that middle-ground Scottish voters no longer saw the party as serving any sort of practical purpose.
But the reduction of the Scottish Lib Dems to a tiny, embarrassing rump of just five MSPs, without a single constituency on the entire Scottish mainland, has given them a useful role in the service of the anti-independence campaign: that of cannon fodder.
Mental Mickey’s Wild Ride 56
Posted on
August 09, 2012 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Strap yourselves in, readers. And scatter some cushions around your chair, because there’s a pretty good chance you’re about to fall off it. Not in surprise, though, because as we predicted yesterday the Scottish media has imposed a near-blanket ban on reporting Labour MP and Scottish Affairs Select Committee chairman Ian Davidson’s astonishing meltdown on Tuesday’s edition of Newsnight Scotland.
The Herald buried a small neutral piece on it yesterday afternoon in an obscure corner of its website, with no bylines and no quotes from any of the parties (in either sense of the word) concerned. Interestingly the exact same story appears word-for-word in the Daily Record, still without attribution, but that’s it for news coverage.
On the BBC website there’s not a peep, even in the Scotland Politics section, despite the direct and savage attack on the Corporation’s prized impartiality. (Political editor Brian Taylor hasn’t graced the site with a blog in six weeks.) Over at the Guardian, the paper’s fearless Scotland correspondent Severin Carrell – normally so keen to cover media matters – felt a five-minute fuss over an advertising poster at Edinburgh Airport was the big Scottish story of the day. And so on.
The Twittersphere was also strangely quiet, or at least the Union-friendly side of it was. Tom Gordon of the Herald and Eddie Barnes of the Scotsman both tried to play the story down as a storm in a teacup (here’s a fun game to play: imagine the Scottish media reaction if Stewart Hosie or Alex Neil had done the same thing, especially during the political slow news season), and every normally-prolific Scottish Labour activist adopted a policy of total radio silence on the subject.
Only Angus Macleod of the Times went public to suggest that Johann Lamont should discipline Davidson for his “bonkers” outburst, while Al Jazeera reporter (and former Scottish Labour senior media adviser) Andrew McFadyen called the performance a “bad misjudgement” directed at “one of the best broadcasters in Scotland”, while noting that the point of politicians giving interviews to TV news programmes is supposed to be “to win people over, not put them off”.
We were just about to congratulate ourselves on our powers of insight when we noticed a link hidden right down at the bottom of the Scotsman’s politics section. “Michael Kelly: Showdown has put BBC objectivity to the test”, it said. We went and made ourselves a drink. “This should be good”, we thought. We weren’t disappointed.
Meltdown man 102
Posted on
August 08, 2012 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
When the history of the independence movement is written, and should the 2014 referendum result in a Yes vote, last night may be celebrated as one of those iconic “Portillo moments” about which the victors ask each other “Were you there?”
Like the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club, in the future the number of people claiming to have been watching last night’s episode of Newsnight Scotland may one day eclipse the population of the country. The BBC programme featured perhaps the most spectacular on-air implosion of a British politician that we’ve ever seen, wherein a senior Labour MP and Commons Select Committee chairman embarked upon a suicidal and sustained diatribe of thuggish, juvenile petulance the likes of which – well, let’s not spoil the fun if you didn’t see it. Take a look for yourself, from 1m 44s.
We’ve painstakingly transcribed the entire incident for posterity below, just in case you don’t believe the evidence of your own senses the first time. We’ve also added some analysis of our own, in red, because there’s a lot to take in and it’s easy to miss bits. (Regular readers will recognise this Labour tactic.) See you down there.
Where’s Johann? 10
Posted on
February 27, 2012 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
There’s been a lot going on in Scottish politics since the start of the year. David Cameron’s intervention in the referendum debate in early January kickstarted a tumultuous outbreak of activity, and in the fevered frenzy of non-stop media analysis and speculation that’s erupted since then, everyone and their granny’s dog has had something to say about it. Well, nearly everyone.
Because one person has been conspicuous by their absence from the nation’s airwaves. Johann Lamont was elected leader of Scottish Labour just before Christmas (by an electorate whose precise size remains a secret) – timing ideally suited for her to hit the ground running and help to frame and shape the debate as it raged on the nation’s screens. But for some unknown reason, Labour have been incredibly reluctant to let her speak to the Scottish people.
Lamont appeared very briefly on Channel 4 News on January 9th to comment on Cameron’s interview on the Andrew Marr show the previous day. Since then, this blog has been unable to locate a single TV interview given by the Labour leader (other than at First Minister’s Questions) in almost two months. Dozens of episodes of Scotland Tonight, Newsnight Scotland, Sunday Politics Scotland and more have come and gone without Lamont’s input, while her ostensible deputy (Westminster MP Anas Sarwar) has been ubiquitous, making (at least) half-a-dozen visits to the BBC and STV studios.
Almost any significant figure you can think of in Scottish politics (and plenty of pretty insignificant ones too) has been on TV more than Lamont during this critical period. Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney, Michael Moore, Ruth Davidson, Ken McIntosh, Margaret Curran, Patrick Harvie, Humza Yousaf, Stewart Hosie, Derek Mackay, even Lord Wallace of Tankerness have all logged more airtime.
