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Wings Over Scotland



Quoted for lies 51

Posted on September 20, 2013 by

We just noticed this from The Observer in January 2012:

“Since Labour lost the general election in May 2010, Alistair Darling has been enjoying the relative calm of life as a backbench MP.

After David Cameron reignited the debate about independence a week ago, demanding that Scottish National party leader and Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, come clean over the timing and scope of a referendum, Darling was immediately punted as the best man to lead the “no” campaign. He is respected, he is not a Tory, and he is a fervent unionist. Perfect for the job. But he wants none of it.

“I will play my part, certainly. But I don’t want to do that. I am too busy as a Westminster MP. This campaign has to be run in Scotland.”

A man whose word can clearly be relied on, there.

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Turning the truth upside down 110

Posted on September 16, 2013 by

There’s a fascinating, if rather dry, report published today on the website of the Economic and Social Research Council today. Written by David Bell, David Comerford and David Eiser and entitled “Constitutional Change and Inequality in Scotland”, it specifically concerns itself with whether the Scottish Government has the tools already to deal with inequality, particularly through an adjustment of the Council Tax.

upsidekit

The issue is a central part of Labour’s criticism of the Scottish Government. The party asserts that the Council Tax freeze is a “regressive” policy and opposes it, calling for increases in order to fund services. (Although it also adopted the freeze as a policy at the 2011 Holyrood election and some Labour councils have even cut the tax.)

This should be interesting, then.

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The lies of the land 139

Posted on September 13, 2013 by

Sometimes it’s hard not to salute the Scottish media’s sheer dogged, implacable commitment to misinformation, even in the face of seemingly-impossible odds.

sptdeal4

Yesterday’s fiasco at First Minister’s Questions, where Johann Lamont dug herself a great big hole while trying to smear a successful Scottish businessman and imply corruption where none existed, was so farcically absurd and ham-fisted that the Scotsman had to bite its tongue and report it with the headline “Apology demanded over Lamont’s SNP land deal claim”.

Even Newsnight Scotland couldn’t brush it off, with hapless Labour MSP James Kelly wheeled on as the sacrificial bam sent to bluster his way through some rather timid questioning from Gordon Brewer. But no such trifling concepts as basic journalistic integrity or competence were going to trouble Magnus Gardham at the Herald.

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Something something Oceania 137

Posted on September 11, 2013 by

As you can perhaps tell, we’re starting to run out of post titles referencing “1984” and the Ingsoc habit of rewriting newspaper versions of history to pretend that certain things which happened didn’t happen, and vice versa. Here’s today’s case in point:

whitepaper

Wait a minute – “shifts to”? Are we sure about that?

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Fingers jammed in ears 105

Posted on September 10, 2013 by

Sometimes even a site like this, dedicated to spending a large percentage of its time exposing the barely-concealed bias of the Scottish press, is almost lost for words.

fingerears

We’ll see if we can dredge up a few for the latest plume of billowing black smoke and flame to spurt out during the death-dive of the Scotsman, though.

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Honesty boxing 55

Posted on September 09, 2013 by

Shall we keep track of some of the falsehoods printed by the Scottish and UK media today with regard to the Lord Ashcroft polling, and see which ones ever get corrected?

homebakes

It seems like that’s the sort of thing we usually do, so we probably should.

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Making up the numbers 72

Posted on September 09, 2013 by

We know “Better Together” has a history of mangling statistics beyond all recognition, but today’s effort might just take the biscuit. Their Facebook page and Twitter feed still carries a graphic distorting the true findings of today’s Lord Ashcroft polling to a degree so spectacular as to be unmeasurable.

btp1

It’s going to be hard to count all the untruths in that single image – partly because some of them are falsehoods on several different levels – but we’ll try.

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Woman confused about location 110

Posted on August 30, 2013 by

STV this morning reports a speech to be given today by Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson, in which she issues some blood-curdling warnings about the chaotic impact of independence on Scottish trade with the UK.

ruthdavidsonst3

There are a couple of things Ms Davidson should probably know.

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The gospel truth 60

Posted on August 29, 2013 by

From the “Better Together” blog today:

btcommitted

“No doubt”? Now, we know that isn’t true, and what’s more we know that almost 70% of Scots don’t believe it either. So who are the No camp trying to fool?

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Drip, drip, drip 97

Posted on August 25, 2013 by

This site spends much of its time highlighting major outbreaks of misrepresentation, spin, distortion and outright lying in the Scottish and UK media. Readers will be aware that we very rarely find ourselves short of material.

dripdrip2

Which means that we don’t often have time to report the small stuff.

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Waking up in Madland 72

Posted on August 22, 2013 by

We were up very late last night after a poker game. We think we might still be in some sort of fever dream, because however much we rub our eyes we can’t quite believe what we’re seeing in Scotland’s media this morning.

madnesscb

We’ll get to the bizarre story about the alleged hacking of Yes Scotland’s email and the No camp’s desperate, astonishing, barely believable attempts to whip up a smokescreen around it later. But first we want to take a quick look at something we missed yesterday in all the fundraising excitement, and which one of our indispensably alert readers brought our attention to.

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Lies on Marr 65

Posted on August 17, 2013 by

Below is the headline of a story from this morning’s Independent.

indymarr

We’ve read the article in question several times now looking for the supposed “bad news” for the Scottish First Minister, and we’re having no luck at all. Perhaps you can help us out with it, readers.

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    • Hatey McHateface on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Assuming rounded populations of England at 50 million and Scotland at 5 million. The political will to address the issue…Jul 23, 20:47
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