(It seems needlessly churlish and picky to also point out that McGarry currently isn’t an “SNP MP”, so we won’t do that.)
Instead, the author, worth hundreds of millions of pounds, intends to try to pressure McGarry into making a donation to her childrens’ charity, Lumos, which we can only presume is happy to receive money generated by what some people might regard as intimidation bordering on blackmail.
So that’s all well and good. If you’re going to bully people, after all, it’s probably best if it’s at least for a worthy cause. Rowling was full of praise for abusive Tweeter “Brian Spanner” when he raised some money for the same charity last year by selling t-shirts mocking the loony “Scottish Resistance” campaign group.
But not all charitable donations attract such gratitude.
The Scottish Daily Mail’s front page lead today is so galactically despicable that it’s easy to overlook another story that it bundles in with the same “SNP BAD” attack.
While excoriating Dr Philippa Whitford for having the sheer shameless gall to help save women’s lives in her holidays, the alleged newspaper also devotes a page-high article to an attack on another Nat MP, George Kerevan, for employing his wife.
As we noted on Tuesday, Scottish Labour’s opening election salvo for 2016 has been to blame the Scottish Government for unaffordable house prices.
Of the 450 most obvious flaws in that argument, not least the extraordinary efforts a 13-year Labour government went to to keep the housing bubble inflated, the one that caught our eye was that in the past three years we were regularly told of one thing that definitely WOULD bring prices down dramatically, but which Labour pathologically fought every step of the way.
Kezia Dugdale made a spectacle of herself again at First Minister’s Questions earlier today. Using time intended for holding the Scottish Government to account over its devolved responsibilities, Dugdale once more decided instead to ignore her duty to the people of Scotland and attack the FM over a matter which is entirely outwith the Scottish Government’s control, namely the past actions of a Westminster MP.
Pausing only to demand that Holyrood interfere in the running of the independent Law Society, Dugdale then abandoned her casual endangerment of a live police inquiry by focusing instead on the morality of the aforementioned MP’s business practices:
But Ms Dugdale’s own ethics left a few things to be desired.
Earlier today we made an observation about the overblown way the media has been covering the Scottish Government’s underspend of 1.3% of its budget (a figure about which the David Hume Institute today cooed approvingly “Even Mr Micawber could not budget more accurately”).
To nobody’s great amazement, Scottish Labour rentahonk Jackie Baillie – fresh from making a complete idiot of herself over the Michelle Thomson case – couldn’t resist jumping on the bandwagon.
Quite aside from the fact that it means no such thing – there’s no less money, it’s just that some of it will now be carried over and spent this year instead – we suppose the tweet does at least mean that Scottish Labour’s policy position is clear: the Scottish Government should always spend every penny of its budget. Right?
The editor of the New Statesman just tweeted this image, trailing an interview with Jim Murphy, who alert readers may recall led Scottish Labour for a few months this year before its apocalyptic disaster of a general election campaign which saw it lose 40 of the 41 Scottish seats it won in 2010:
Oh, wait – maybe he’s trying to claim the credit for it.
Last night we highlighted the reaction from various right-wing columnists to the SNP’s torpedoing yesterday of Tory attempts to relax the laws on foxhunting in England and Wales. Today the same commentariat has turned its rage to thoughts of revenge, in the form of “English votes for English laws”.
And we’re confused, because we don’t know what this “England” they speak of is.
By now you should all have had a chance to marvel at the extraordinary madness that is Scottish Labour’s 51-page suicide note of SNP members who’ve said rude words on the internet since 2012.
You may even have had time to read a data protection expert (and Labour voter)’s assessment of all the ways in which the dossier breaks the law.
STV’s notorious quisling correspondent Stephen “Stevo” Daisley has an interesting piece today about the latest manufactured “cybernat” shock-horror outrage being punted by the Daily Mail (although curiously, the major “CYBERNAT WEB OF HATE!” exposé they promised readers would be published on Thursday is yet to materialise).
Daisley’s column makes some valid points about how the SNP could distance itself from the most extremist elements of its online support, but with one important flaw – it overlooks a crucial factor driving internet rage, and as a result its recommendations would only actually make the situation worse.
But fear not, gentle and sensitive reader. Conveniently, there’s an easy solution.
Captain Caveman on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “@Lorn Sorry I accidentally submitted by post before finishing it. Sure you got the gist though. It’s ironic that it…” Aug 14, 11:44
sarah on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Rob, there was so much evidence saying the same as your wife from other women who had worked with Alex…” Aug 14, 11:33
sarah on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “It is extraordinary how ignorant journalists, and people in general, in England are of Scottish politics. Or is it deliberately…” Aug 14, 11:19
Willie on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “SEPA are rotten to the core. It is not just the areas around the nuclear bases that are contaminated. Few…” Aug 14, 11:17
Old John on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: ““The Endless Evil of Everyone Else” Nice piece of alliteration, and most appropriate. Equalled only by HP Donleavy’s “The Beastly…” Aug 14, 11:13
agent x on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “It’s Coulport on Loch Long that has been leaking – not Faslane: “Sepa said the flooding at Coulport was caused…” Aug 14, 11:08
agent x on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “@ Young Lochinvar “Yorkshire miners strongly supported the 1984-85 miners’ strike. The strike originated in Yorkshire, with miners at Cortonwood…” Aug 14, 10:56
socratesmacsporran on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Just read a cringe-worthy whitewash job on the Sturgeon memoirs, by Martin Kettle on The Guardian website. Inaccuracy after wrong…” Aug 14, 10:50
Rob on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “As my wife pointed out, after closely working with Salmond for many years since she was a young lass there…” Aug 14, 10:47
Captain Caveman on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “@Lorn I’d suggest we do need to move away from political cliches when retrospectively assessing Thatcher; separate (often convenient) myth…” Aug 14, 10:39
Dan on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Ach, I’m sure SEPA will be all over the issue, pulling or suspending MOD and Navy operating licenses, issuing big…” Aug 14, 10:30
Alf Baird on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “The assimilated colonized always look to the mother country for the culture they have exchanged for their own. As Fanon…” Aug 14, 10:29
Marie on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “I see Faslane is leaking like a sieve with radioactive water being poured into the loch from poorly maintained pipes.…” Aug 14, 10:06
am firinn on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Under the current version of s264(1) it matters not a jot whether the spouses are divorced or not:- (1)The spouse…” Aug 14, 09:59
Lorn on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Very good points, agent x, YL, Hatey. It is fact that it was the smaller pit that went first, before…” Aug 14, 09:37
James Cheyne on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Pretty sure that Ireland and Wales are dealing with, the same set of on point these problems from their leaders.” Aug 14, 09:23
James Cheyne on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “If it hadn’t been for those brave (Scots women) challenging that men should be recognised as men when in Womens…” Aug 14, 09:18
James Cheyne on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “How is the sale of that foreign Island going, has you know who, finished paying for it to taken of…” Aug 14, 09:02
Hatey McHateface on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Odd to think that where there’s a demand for stuff, they’re digging it up like there’s no tomorrow. Rare earths,…” Aug 14, 07:08
Hatey McHateface on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “@ Alf Baird says: 13 August, 2025 at 9:51 pm However, McHateface defines European Unionism as “an economically-intertwined, virtue-signalling political…” Aug 14, 06:44
Young Lochinvar on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Interesting AX Yet there’s no getting away from it that the bulk of early closure pits were small worked out…” Aug 14, 02:21
Young Lochinvar on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “A bit over simplified AX. SHE sent her place-person Breathy Bain down there with no greater mandate or cunning legalese…” Aug 14, 02:01
agent x on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “Harold Wilson (Labour) closed 253 pits as against Margaret Thatcher (Conservative) 115, more than twice as many. However because there…” Aug 13, 23:08
Lorn on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: “When I said New Labour were Tories by any other name, that is what they were but in a mirror…” Aug 13, 23:02
Alf Baird on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: ““UNIONISM is more than political, it is an exceptionalist worldview, more gut instinct than brain.” Yes, that might also be…” Aug 13, 21:51
Hatey McHateface on The Endless Evil Of Everyone Else: ““the chances of England succumbing to a tyrannical dictatorship are virtually nil” They may not yet be high, but to…” Aug 13, 20:56
