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The SNPBAD Files 318

Posted on February 17, 2016 by

Since the astonishing election of 56 SNP MPs to the UK Parliament last May, the Unionist media – suddenly deprived of a whole contacts book full of friendly Scottish Labour bench-warmers ready to feed it cosy stories over a boozy expenses lunch in Whitehall – has raked through every bin and gutter in the land looking for anything (however pathetic) that it can try to puff up, distort, and rope into service as “dirt” on each of the Nat members, in an attempt to discredit them and the party.

So let’s just have a little look in here and – YIKES!

This could take some time.

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How the Daily Mail works 235

Posted on February 05, 2016 by

Sometimes it’s the smallest, most trivial things that give you away. Graham Grant is the Home Affairs Editor of the Scottish Daily Mail, and earlier this morning he tweeted this snarky dig at prominent independence supporter and pundit Pat Kane, also of the primarily-1980s band Hue And Cry:

gggrant

Ostensibly it’s a throwaway gag aimed at puncturing an opponent’s pomposity and over-inflated self-regard while portraying the journalist as an arch, wise cynic.

But hold on a second.

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A world full of philanthropists 364

Posted on January 30, 2016 by

To the astonishment of all, it turns out that JK Rowling isn’t going to sue anyone after all. Or, as the ever-reliable-and-accurate Scottish Daily Mail puts it:

mailsue

(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.

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The tweets you won’t read 361

Posted on January 28, 2016 by

Social media amused itself briefly tonight over a spat between former SNP MP (now independent) Natalie McGarry and children’s author and hedge enthusiast JK Rowling.

It started like this:

rowlingnmg

And then some stuff happened.

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The headline is always a lie 133

Posted on January 27, 2016 by

In a cunning meta-twist which simultaneously proves and disproves its own claim, the headline above is itself a lie. It’s of course not true that every single headline you read in a newspaper is absolutely false.

It is, however, a pretty good rule of thumb.

beafraid

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Meet the new year, same as the old year 94

Posted on January 05, 2016 by

As politics wakes up from the holidays, any readers still bothering to gaze at the pages of the Scottish media could be forgiven for a crushing sense of deja vu.

2016papers

In more senses than one.

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The Forth Road Bridge FAQ 268

Posted on December 14, 2015 by

Over the last few days, as most of Scotland’s media has focused on hysterical smear stories and outright lies, we’ve been digging around trying to uncover the truth about events around and leading to the closure of the Forth Road Bridge.

frb

Here’s what we’ve got so far.

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The trick is to keep reading 74

Posted on December 13, 2015 by

We’ve lost count of how many times we’ve drawn people’s attention to the necessity of sticking with newspaper articles right to the end if you don’t want to be horribly misled by eye-catching headlines. But it never hurts to have another example.

scomailfrb

If you only read the start of today’s Scottish Mail On Sunday “bombshell” on the Forth Road Bridge (the left side of the picture above), you might come to a very alarming conclusion. But if you get all the way through it, to the paragraphs we’ve highlighted in red and enlarged on the right-hand side of the image, you’ll discover the truth.

You can do it when you try 20

Posted on December 10, 2015 by

Evidently the Daily Record actually IS capable of fixing dodgy stories:

recordcarmichaelv

We wonder why they still haven’t done it here.

An absence of clarity 307

Posted on December 04, 2015 by

On Wednesday the Daily Record ran this story:

mcgarrysyria

It didn’t have to wait long for the “questions” to be answered.

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The monstrous detriment of women 265

Posted on November 29, 2015 by

We were considering having a day off today, readers. There’s absolutely nothing of any note happening in Scottish politics, and the papers have been reduced to scraping up all manner of barely-reheated leftover dregs to fill their pages.

But then someone drew our attention to something in Scotland On Sunday about the ongoing Women For Independence fiasco, and we were too annoyed to let it lie.

sosowfi

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It’s that headline thing again 232

Posted on November 08, 2015 by

We saw this tweet from Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson yesterday:

rdtco

And we were quite confused.

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