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What Alistair Darling Said 225

Posted on June 05, 2014 by

There’s a considerable amount of uncertainty currently flying around on the internet with regards to Alistair Darling’s comments in an interview with the New Statesman which was published on the magazine’s website yesterday.

There seems to be no dispute that the “Better Together” leader compared Alex Salmond to dead North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, adding his name to the illustrious pantheon of assorted Unionist politicians and journalists who’ve likened Scotland’s democratically-elected First Minister to a series of genocidal murderers.

There is, however, something of a grey area around whether Mr Darling also accused the entire SNP of promoting “blood-and-soil nationalism” – an extremely offensive term normally used in reference to Nazi Germany, where it translated as “Blut und Boden”.

blutundboden

Well, let us clear that up for you. Yes, he did.

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Cybernats and phantoms 247

Posted on May 20, 2014 by

One of the long-term goals of Wings Over Scotland is to put itself out of a job. By teaching people how to read newspapers in such a way as to understand what they’re NOT telling you, and to be wise to methods they use to create completely false ideas while not actually saying anything untrue, one day we’ll hopefully reach a situation where there’s no need for us to exist and we can go on holiday or something.

carahilton

There’s a nicely subtle example of the craft of malicious spin in today’s Scottish Daily Mail, but it also sharply illustrates another toxic aspect of the media’s coverage of the independence debate – the rise of the phantom.

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Every man has his price 142

Posted on May 19, 2014 by

And it appears we’ve found Torcuil Crichton’s.

weirscrichton

It seems there’s to be no let-up in the Unionist/media campaign of vilification against Chris and Colin Weir – or “the Rich List Weirs”, as a nasty little comment piece by the Daily Record hack in today’s issue calls them. Let’s study those 51 sour wee words.

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What might have and what did 84

Posted on May 12, 2014 by

It’s been fascinating to watch the media slyly turning Chris and Colin Weir’s quite understandable objection to being defamed by loathsome right-wing newspapers and MSPs into an attack on “cybernats”.

But this morning Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph – who we rarely read even for laughs now, so far gone is his grasp on reality – added a particularly deft twist which we thought worthy of note for those who like to study how the press does its business.

schrodingers

And yes, we entirely meant that double entendre.

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Don’t come around here no more 162

Posted on May 07, 2014 by

With crushing predictability, the Scotsman today ran a “vile cybernats” story based around last week’s big thing, the fake-grassroots “Vote No Borders” campaign group. Weaker even than the usual efforts, this one simply reported the group’s claims at face value, not bothering with so much as a single example of the alleged abusive posts.

“A campaign group launched last week in support of a No vote in the referendum says it has suffered a “virulent and nasty attack” from Nationalists since going public.

The Vote No Borders campaign has been forced to block comments from being left on its website, as a result of the onslaught.”

But while tidying up some tabs tonight, we happened to notice that we still had a VNB page open, with the first day’s comments intact. Just how bad were they?

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Character assassination 195

Posted on May 07, 2014 by

This article from yesterday hasn’t made it onto the Daily Record’s website. When people told us about it, we thought they were joking. When someone typed the text out by hand and emailed it to us, we thought they were making it up. We had to get someone to scan the page for us before we believed it was real.

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This, that and the other 329

Posted on April 26, 2014 by

We don’t exactly have high expectations when it comes to the Daily Mail.

weirsmear

But a piece in today’s edition is despicable even for them.

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An embarrassment to journalism 136

Posted on April 17, 2014 by

The Scottish media displays such a remarkable uniformity of thought when it comes to the independence debate that you’d think it’d be the easiest thing in the world for them to at least all get their story straight when they launch a smear campaign against a prominent Yes figure.

peterkinbagpipes

That, however, would presuppose that they weren’t also incompetent.

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Beneath the headlines 115

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

With the Scottish Parliament on a two-week break, it appears to have fallen to the Telegraph to take on the role of Johann Lamont this Thursday.

Scottish Labour’s regional manager has recently been under the curious impression that the most pressing issue on the minds of the people of Scotland is the fine detail of the First Minister’s hotel bill during a trip to America to promote the Ryder Cup in 2012, and the Telegraph seems equally obsessed.

telegraph3k

But that dramatic splash isn’t quite what it seems.

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Keeping the records straight 43

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

The one on the left is for these guys, the one on the right is for these guys.

straighten

We particularly like the Scotsman’s use of the word “error”, as in “Whoops, we totally accidentally rewrote this story three times in 24 hours, with four different headlines, in order to make it more and more pejorative and sneery. Tch, clumsy old us, eh?”

Playing with fire 178

Posted on April 07, 2014 by

Earlier today we highlighted two pieces of disgraceful, mendacious smearing by The Scotsman, in conjunction with an “anonymous” Labour MP. The articles coincided with a wider campaign of demonisation across most of the Scottish and UK media against supporters of independence, backed up by elected Labour representatives on social media in what might easily be seen as a co-ordinated attack.

docherty

The tweets above are from the account of semi-literate Labour councillor for East Kilbride, James Docherty. They follow a week in which the Edinburgh South MP Ian Murray described the placing of one or more small “Yes 2014” stickers on his constituency office windows as an “out of control” escalation of intimidation and Alistair Darling accused some people objecting to a businessman sending a document full of scaremongering lies to 500 employees of his company as “shaming Scotland”.

These hysterical smears would be laughable were it not for the consequences they may yet bring about. We highlight some of those consequences below.

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The cornered rats 138

Posted on April 07, 2014 by

As someone who’s kept them as pets for over 20 years, I know a thing or two about rats. Intelligent and affectionate creatures, individuals nevertheless have very distinct personalities, and occasionally you’ll get a timid and/or grumpy one. Those take a lot of care, patience and attention to bring out of their shell, and until that point they may try to escape and hide in the tiniest, darkest, most inaccessible corner of the house.

angryrat

When found, and with all escape routes blocked off, these tiny creatures become incredibly ferocious. They have very long, razor-sharp teeth and move with astonishing speed, and won’t hesitate to attack something hundreds of times their size. Any long-term rat owner will have a few small but permanent battle scars.

And so to today’s Scotsman.

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