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Kezia Dugdale Fact Check, Part 682 128

Posted on May 26, 2017 by

We hadn’t been planning to talk any more about the curious case of Claire Austin, the suddenly publicity-shy Edinburgh nurse who – how can we put this? – seemed a rather ill-chosen figurehead for the good cause of getting more pay for a group of people who are rightly well-regarded by the public.

But yesterday, the release of a letter from Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale re-opened political hostilities after last week’s hiatus for the Manchester terror attack by shoving the now-reticent Ms Austin right back into the spotlight.

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Tags:
Category investigation, scottish politics

The new arithmetic 67

Posted on May 10, 2017 by

Most of the papers today are full of stories screaming hysterically about a (real, but somewhat exaggerated) decline in Scottish educational standards. But if the contents of those papers are anything to go by, Scotland’s schools have been disgorging idiots into the general population for a lot longer than the last 10 years.

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Tags:
Category analysis, debunks, media, scottish politics

Kezia Dugdale Fact Check, Part 681 418

Posted on May 08, 2017 by

This one definitely looks dodgy.

We, um… we don’t think they DID show that, Kez.

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Tags:
Category comment, debunks, scottish politics, stats

If France had Unionists 137

Posted on May 07, 2017 by

So the French presidential election result is in. And we’re getting early reactions:

Well, those are a bit weird, aren’t they?

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Tags:
Category comment, europe, scottish politics

What they’re trying to sell you 129

Posted on May 06, 2017 by

It’s come to a pretty pass indeed when the Telegraph is the bastion of truth.

Because if you listened to the Unionist opposition and media today, you’d come away with a very different impression of what’s just happened.

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Tags:
Category analysis, comment, media, scottish politics

A failure of comprehension 318

Posted on May 02, 2017 by

Scottish schoolchildren start their exams today. We wish them good luck, because if any of them have taken their lead in language skills from the nation’s media they’re going to be in a lot of trouble.

For 10% of extra course credit, let’s find out why.

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Tags:
Category debunks, media, scottish politics

Incompetence and lies 263

Posted on April 26, 2017 by

We’ve never tried to put a precise breakdown on how much of the falsehood pumped out daily by the Scottish political media is due to deliberately misleading spin and how much of it is simply due to journalists who are really, really terrible at their jobs.

But there’s plenty of both in today’s Times.

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Tags:
Category analysis, comment, debunks, media, scottish politics

Scotland’s sourest grapes 241

Posted on April 11, 2017 by

Most of the Scottish media today reports the latest Lord Ashcroft poll, which found Nicola Sturgeon to be by a distance the most popular political leader in Scotland.

“Scots feel quite positive about Sturgeon”, said the Daily Record, while the Scotsman headline was “Poll shows Scots approve of Sturgeon’s performance” and the Herald went with “Poll reveals strong support for Sturgeon”.

All three opened with almost identical paragraphs observing that the First Minister was the only UK politician to record a net positive approval rating in Scotland, putting her a thumping 32 points ahead of her nearest domestic rival.

The Scottish Daily Mail, though, had a slightly different take.

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Category comment, media, scottish politics

That context thing again 352

Posted on April 03, 2017 by

Unionists were barely able to hide their excitement last month at the thought of some dead pensioners. This was former Labour MSP Dr Richard Simpson, for example:

(Simpson later went on to embellish the claim by saying that it had in fact reversed.)

The story was serious enough to be the Sunday Times Scotland front page lead.

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Tags:
Category investigation, media, missing context, scottish politics

What the people want 206

Posted on March 31, 2017 by

On today’s Good Morning Scotland, a Tory MSP (in this case seven-time voter reject Murdo Fraser) was allowed to repeatedly get away unchallenged – for about the 100th time on broadcast media in recent days – with telling the flat-out lie that opinion polls show a clear and large majority in opposition to the Scottish Government’s position and proposed timing on a second independence referendum.

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 31 March 2017)
.

We’ve endlessly shown these claims to be absolutely and categorically false, yet for some reason that we’re unable to explain, no interviewer has ever stopped Fraser, or Adam Tomkins, or Ruth Davidson, or Jackson Carlaw, and pointed that fact out.

Today, a tiny bar buried on a left-hand page in the Herald delivers yet more proof of public support for the Scottish Government’s stance.

It deserves rather more prominence, and while we’re about it we figured we might as well collect some of the evidence together.

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Tags:
Category comment, debunks, media, scottish politics

Harder than you think 317

Posted on March 30, 2017 by

Scotland is plagued by a Parliament of morons. The vast majority of opposition MSPs are people who were directly and personally rejected by the voters – usually with good reason – but who were parachuted into lucrative jobs anyway by their parties.

And yesterday, as Theresa May formally began the process that will tear Scotland out of the EU without its permission, those opposition MSPs queued up to demonstrate their pettiness, ignorance and stupidity.

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Tags:
Category analysis, comment, europe, idiots, media, scottish politics

How soon isn’t now? 524

Posted on March 16, 2017 by

Sigh.

None of the tweets below are true.

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Tags:
Category comment, debunks, europe, idiots, scottish politics, uk politics

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