It’s not often that you see the same story on the front page of the i and the Financial Times. It’s even rarer – in fact, perhaps unprecedented – if that story’s about Scotland, because the otherwise-admirable mini-tabloid is barely even aware that there’s a part of the UK north of Newcastle.
(Its parent paper, the Independent, is we think unique among national UK newspapers in not even having a Scotland section, let alone a Scottish edition.)
So when it happens, you know it must be a pretty darned significant story – one which the Scottish press will be all over like a swarm of wasps at a jam-factory picnic. Right?
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Tags: flat-out liesmisinformationticktockwhitewash
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
We think we might have just worked out why Scottish newspaper sales are in irreversible decline, readers. It’s because if you buy the papers for about two weeks you can just keep them in a drawer, bring them out a few weeks later and read all the same stories again without having to pay for them twice.
Because in the Scottish media, every day is Groundhog Day.
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Tags: ticktock
Category
analysis, comment, media, scottish politics
The Huffington Post, 15 December 2013:
“The number of Britons who think Ed Miliband is likely to be the prime minister after the next election has fallen dramatically, according to a poll.
Research by ComRes for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror found 21% believed the Labour leader would be in No 10 after the next election, down 10 points since May.”
This, remember, is after a summer in which the nation’s political commentators almost universally agreed that Miliband’s conference promise of an energy price freeze and subsequent talk of a cost-of-living crisis was winning the hearts of the country.
Last week three separate opinion polls showed Labour’s lead over the Tories down to a pitiful five points, despite 70% of the population saying they’d felt no benefit from Britain’s feeble economic “recovery”.
We don’t think Labour has ever sacked a leader who hadn’t contested at least one general election. Ed Miliband will lead them to the polls in 2015, and only one in five Britons thinks he’ll end up in Number 10. Don’t take our word for it. Don’t heed the experts. Don’t even examine the statistics. Listen to the people who’ll be voting.
Tags: Kinnock Factorqftticktock
Category
analysis, stats, uk politics
We forget who, but someone we read this week – in the Herald, we think – referenced a line spoken by Jennifer Aniston’s character in an old episode of Friends (which we’ve managed to identify as S02E01, “The One With Ross’s New Girlfriend”):
“When I saw him get off that plane with her, I really thought I just hit rock bottom. But today, it’s like there’s rock bottom, then 50 feet of crap, then me.”
We were put in mind of it by something in this afternoon’s Guardian.
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Tags: smearsticktock
Category
comment, media, wtf
The papers, as you’d expect, take some differing views today of John Swinney’s draft Scottish Government budget, delivered in the Holyrood chamber yesterday. But two articles in particular caught our eye.
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Tags: ticktock
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
