As our veteran readers will know, Duncan Hothersall is a prominent Scottish Labour activist, occasional BBC and STV pundit, prospective Labour parliamentary candidate and editor of LabourHame, the party’s favoured blog in Scotland.
Earlier today we got an email from someone who wanted us to ask him a question.
Here’s how the conversation went.
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.
There’s a remarkable piece in today’s Scotsman that we had to share with you:
And if you think that magnificent headline’s good, wait until you hear the rest.
A tweet from SNP MSP Marco Biagi caught our eye yesterday:
It’s a fun little morale-booster, especially when you note that the 2011 poll came just TWO months before the election, whereas there are still NINE months left to turn round the No camp’s steadily-shrinking lead on the referendum. But we found something even more fun when we were checking back on the stats.
An alert reader sends in this letter received by their company in 2009:
“Hello,
[identifying paragraph removed]
I’ve now taken the plunge to set myself up as a freelancer and am looking for voiceover work in commercials, documentaries and corporate films as well as scripting and media training.
I’m [redacted] years old with a warm, rich voice which has both light and shade. A long history of factual programming means I can convey information with authority, combined with an openness and accessibility which encourages interest; the unexpected world of live broadcasting means I’ve learned to be equally adept at putting across humour. My accent is a neutral blend of central Scotland tones.
As a wee treat to keep out the winter chill, we’ve got a special double dose of “And Finally” for you tonight, readers. First up, a couple of late entries for our “Unionists Say The Funniest Things” compilation this week, both of them from Labour MSP production line Michael McMahon (Uddingston and Bellshill):
(Click the image for the article in question.)
We haven’t had one of these for a while, but it’s a peach. Phil Welsh is an official of the Unison trade union in Dundee, though we notice he’s recently removed that fact from his Twitter bio. We’ve had to block him now for associating with our hate-crazed psycho stalker, but earlier this week we were having a chat about the bedroom tax and Labour’s evictions policy when this happened.
See below for the rest of the conversation.
After a reader revealed that the lonely lady staffing the “Better Together” stall in Dundee yesterday was from the north-east of England, we did a little digging and discovered that she’s so dedicated to the No cause she’s been touring the whole of the UK (and even some farther-flung places) espousing the positive case for the Union.
It took some Euan McColm-esque sleuthing to track down all the evidence, but Wings Over Scotland stops at nothing to bring its readers the news that really matters.
Alistair Darling’s gremlin-plagued “positive case for the Union” speech in Glasgow yesterday, even leaving aside the weakness of its tired, reheated arguments (basically the same old “We cannae dae it” doom and gloom resprayed with an atom-thin coat of All-New Positivitrex!) might be the most boring thing we’ve ever read.
It drones on for a soul-sapping 26 pages and we can’t imagine how long it must have seemed when you were stuck in the room hearing it in Darling’s querulous, vexatious voice, but there’s one saving grace: the graphs. There are no fewer than 23 frequently-incomprehensible boxes, charts and diagrams, of which this is our favourite.
We’re not sure they’ve quite grasped how polling works.
We should, if for nothing else, commend the No campaign for gradually learning from experience. Much hilarity ensued when it attempted to claim an independent Scotland would need to renegotiate “14,000 treaties”, and even more fun was had when it produced a list of 500 (actually 507) “questions” about independence.
So we applaud the UK government for dialling down the crazy a notch and producing another doom-and-gloom list of reasons why it would be impossible for Scotland to achieve what around 150 countries have managed to achieve in the last century or so, but which restricts itself to just a modest 200 entries.
The No campaign makes for some unlikely bedfellows.
We’d like you to meet our new favourite patriots.
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
You do @IanBlackfordMP a disservice. The point is rather more subtle - if one part of UK can benefit from one type of differentiated deal for its unique reasons then another may likewise benefit for albeit different reasons. #brexit #ScotlandsPlaceInEurope https://t.co/AoCRRajZdk
As @IanBlackfordMP just demonstrated once again, just the word ‘Scotland ‘ used in the HoC is a Pavlovian trigger for howls of Tory braying.
If Scotland had chosen Indy in 2014 we could all be laughing endlessly at the utter mess the rUK is in atm
Instead we're being dragged into the abyss by Brexit
Don't be fooled twice
Wings Over Scotland
