As it happens, one of the things that we’ve been occupying ourselves with during the current news drought is pulling together a post called “The SNPBAD Files”, collecting all the desperate smear and innuendo of the Unionist press as it systematically tries to discredit every one of the 56 SNP MPs elected last May.
Until last night we hadn’t been sure which had been the most pathetically dismal. Was it the MP who still did a few haircuts in his barber shop on Saturday afternoons? The one who bought a derelict London house many years before he was an MP, renovated it with his own hands and now sometimes stays there when working at Westminster, rather than charging expenses to the public for accommodation? Or perhaps the one who tweeted that he was opposed to the concept of monarchy, the foul monster?
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.
Alert readers may recall an incident last year in which the Scottish media got itself very worked up about some independence supporters threatening to boycott holiday company Barrhead Travel after its owner sent a barking-mad letter to staff about how the company would go out of business if Scotland voted Yes.
So we’re sure that you won’t be able to move later today and tomorrow for newspaper articles about something similar, but significantly worse, that happened this weekend.
Last night we ran a piece about a story in last week’s Daily Record in which a Scottish Labour official was given free rein to make an extended political attack on the SNP in the guise of a “business student” from the University of the West of Scotland, without his Labour identity being revealed, on the flimsy basis of a petition about college cuts with a few hundred signatures.
As it happens, another UWS student also has a petition doing the rounds at the moment. But it got treated rather differently by the Scottish press.
We’ve noted on more than one occasion that the spectacular SNP surge since the referendum appears to have completely unhinged much of the Scottish and UK press. Having pumped out a vast avalanche of hysterical coverage which utterly failed to stop the Scottish electorate returning 56 SNPs out of 59, the papers have responded to the rebuff by simply turning the volume up.
But even by those standards, today has been special.
Amazingly enough, the Scottish press today ISN’T wall-to-wall with stories about Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale, UK peer and lawmaker, endorsing the “f***ing booting” of Conservative supporters at the weekend, in a striking contrast to when a young SNP candidate said similar but less offensive things some months ago.
(Lord McConnell’s friends were talking in the future tense about something they would do. Mhairi Black was talking in the past tense, about things which she HADN’T done.)
As far as we’ve seen, the small piece above in the Scottish Sun is the only coverage. (The Daily Record, as well as not reporting the McConnell comments at all, actually has another go at Mhairi Black instead.)
But we were having trouble recalling any “hate-filled violent mobs” (McConnell’s actual full quote) on the Yes/SNP side. And so was an alert reader who had a dig through the papers from the last couple of years.
At today’s First Minister’s Questions, the Scottish Labour deputy leader Kezia Dugdale launched into an ill-advised attack over an SNP candidate who’d made some foolish (but not especially outrageous) comments on Twitter in 2012. Rather than simply issuing the standard generic condemnation of abusive remarks, Nicola Sturgeon did so but also drew Dugdale’s attention to the beam in her own eye.
Labour activist, blogger, lawyer and regular BBC pundit Ian Smart (he hasn’t been seen on STV since accusing them repeatedly, without any evidence, of letting the SNP pre-approve all interview questions some time ago) is well known to readers of this blog. Bizarrely, however, Dugdale feigned ignorance of his activity.
To help her, we’ve compiled some of Mr Smart’s greatest hits.
As alert readers will already know, this site’s core long-term aim is to eventually render itself redundant, by showing people how to read between the lines, spot what isn’t being said and understand the various tricks that newspapers use in order to get the public to believe things that aren’t true without ever doing anything so crass (and more to the point, legally-actionable) as directly lying.
Today’s papers provide an especially clear-cut example.
That clip (from just past midnight on the BBC News channel) isn’t a bad starting-point summary of last night’s extraordinary story, except by our count the Telegraph’s piece was fourth-hand rather than third-hand.
(First-hand would have been Nicola Sturgeon. Second-hand would have been the ambassador. Third-hand would have been the consul-general. The civil servant – who doubted the story him/herself – is fourth-hand.)
This is also a pretty good primer. Now let’s get to the fun stuff.
Former Labour spindoctor Charlie Whelan in the Strathspey & Badenoch Herald:
Click to enlarge as Whelan segues seamlessly from terrible Scottish “nationalism” to racial genocide in Auschwitz, because, you know, Yes voters are all basically Nazis*.
*George Galloway’s comments (made in his capacity as a nominated representative of “Better Together”) from yesterday’s BBC “Big Big Debate” were edited out of the broadcast version. We’re sure it was just to keep the running time tight.
TURABDIN on The Modern Politician: “THE 1973 futurist fantasy by the french travel writer/trad. catholic/monarchist/ nationalist Jean-Paul Raspail called Le Camp des Saints deals graphically…” Feb 12, 12:46
lothianlad on A Dumber Nation: “The SNP leadrship are utterly compromised!!” Feb 12, 12:12
Confused on The Modern Politician: “Being a lover of history, you realise there is nothing really new, and any sweet scam you can think of,…” Feb 12, 11:48
Bilbo on The Modern Politician: “The only thing Ratcliffe cares about is getting a Reform government elected that will be beneficial to his UK business…” Feb 12, 11:24
Bilbo on The Modern Politician: “I’m not sure if the online pictures of the Trans shooter is real or AI generated but he looks like…” Feb 12, 11:05
Chas on The Modern Politician: “Can I suggest that you pick an article written by Stu some 3 or 4 years ago. Any one will…” Feb 12, 09:17
Billie on The Modern Politician: “Turning if I may it may be of much interest to readers to learn about the suspension of an elected…” Feb 12, 08:53
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “Good to see Sir Jim Ratcliffe under fire for stating the bleeding obvious – that the UK is being colonised.…” Feb 12, 08:47
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “It’s criminally remiss of your so-called friends and family not to have told you that Thatcher lost office a touch…” Feb 12, 08:29
Willie on The Modern Politician: “It may be grim observation but one cannot help wonder to what extent the sentiment of the woo woo ideologues…” Feb 12, 07:38
twathater on The Modern Politician: “@ Young Lochinvar 12.32am, Well said and as usual the POLITICIANS and deviants pushing this ideology are avoiding any responsibility…” Feb 12, 02:30
Young Lochinvar on The Modern Politician: “Well said. An example of how feminisation of society, nihilistic ideology and care in the community/ abandonment of the clinically…” Feb 12, 00:32
Young Lochinvar on The Modern Politician: “Chas Try reading top to bottom and left to right. Things will make more sense.. If you don’t agree with…” Feb 12, 00:06
willie on The Modern Politician: “Tragic, tragic, tragic the death of six killed and the twenty seven is just that. Who know what was in…” Feb 11, 22:38
DaveL on The Modern Politician: “Aye, and the BBC still don’t know that…” Feb 11, 22:24
Andrew scott on The Modern Politician: “O/T shooter in canada a tranny Quelle surprise” Feb 11, 20:17
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “Grangemouth closed because the SNP/Green wreckers at HR voted for virtue signalling Scottish Nutt Zero by 2045. 5 years ahead…” Feb 11, 19:45
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: ““The deindustrialisation of Thatcher has ruined the health of much of the Scottish population and of the North of England”…” Feb 11, 19:36
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: ““explain what you mean” If politicians get re-elected time after time, then in the eyes of the voters, they’re not…” Feb 11, 19:17
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: ““girls fed testosterone” Crivens! I’d heard of maneaters. I’d never realised it was a literal description.” Feb 11, 19:11
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “Form an orderly queue, Insider. I’m still waiting to hear how Alf presents the passport issued by an imaginary country…” Feb 11, 19:06
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “Great stuff, Alf. Could have been better though – needed something from Fanon to add that little bit extra. BTW.…” Feb 11, 19:01
Insider on The Modern Politician: “Alf ! Still waiting for an answer to my query yesterday concerning your fascinating comments about how “different animal species”…” Feb 11, 18:01
Chas on The Modern Politician: “As usual, I read the comments starting from the bottom up. I note 6 in a row from Cheyne, all…” Feb 11, 16:02
Alf Baird on The Modern Politician: ““Scottish politics is different” Indeed so, but we must understand why this is the case. Its because we are talking…” Feb 11, 15:04
PC Foster on The Modern Politician: “Ha . A woman ‘in a dress’ is code for ‘we are too scared to mention it was a trans.!” Feb 11, 14:24
James Cheyne on The Modern Politician: “The awful governance and policies of Tories, Labour, Greens, libdems and the SNP are the worst of the worst applied…” Feb 11, 13:42
James Cheyne on The Modern Politician: “Psyops and psychology worked on the democratic voters.” Feb 11, 13:08
James Cheyne on The Modern Politician: “Making your options so awful, they can guide you into making the choices they aways wanted you to make.” Feb 11, 12:37
