The fine art of selection
Alert readers may have spotted that today’s Sunday Herald features Professor Adam Tomkins and myself for its weekly “In The Hot Seat” interviews with opposing figures in the independence debate. The paper’s Investigations Editor Paul Hutcheon flew down from Glasgow on Wednesday, and we had an interesting and enjoyable two-and-a-half-hour chat on the subject of the referendum and politics in general.
Obviously it’s not easy to edit that down to a short 1,000-word article. But just for fun, I thought it might be enlightening to compare the content of the two columns.
WORDS OF QUOTATIONS FROM INTERVIEWS
(One-word or two-word responses excluded)
Tomkins: 459 (47% of article)
Me: 229 (24%)
WORDS OF QUOTATIONS ABOUT THE REFERENDUM/POLITICS
Tomkins: 415 (90% of quotes)
Me: 0 (0%)
WORDS OF QUOTATIONS DEFENDING SELF AGAINST ACCUSATIONS
Tomkins: 0 (0%)
Me: 157 (69%)
Glean from the bare facts whatever you will, readers.
I suspect that Paul Hutcheon’s petty resentment at your large following will simply win you more readers, Stu.
The thing about Tomkins is that he has the ability to make the discredited Alistair Darling look like he is almost sensible. Tomkins prattling on doesn’t help the No side one little bit.
Two bloggers, one openly so Yesser, they other an “academic” and noted anonymous Naysayer.
So why should it appear that one is being questioned and the other just discussing his opinions
Ah yes, it is the fact that one is a noted academic and the other who says he does not have a degree?
No other reason I suppose?
Adrian B
I give Tomkin’s opinions a wide berth.
That seems to work and my doctor has been able to reduce my blood pressure medicinal treatments.
With great power comes great responsibility, or something.
Really don’t know why you bothered Rev. It was always going to be a stitch up.
I can’t really read the text of the articles but the headline on the Tomkins side, “I am being forced to choose … would I want to stay in an independent Scotland as a No voter?” is irritating.
Does he really think he’s the only person being “forced” to choose something? Because “I am being forced to choose … would I want to stay in the UK as a person who believes in the welfare state, is opposed to the replacement of Trident, and is deeply concerned by growing inequality in the UK?”
Journalist edits article to fit their own agenda. I expected Sunday Herald to be better than that. No mention of the proven lies that Tomkins continue to expound nor indeed any challenge to the Prof about it. ‘Investigations Editor’ oxymoron if I ever heard one.
I doubt anyone here is surprised by this selective reportage Stu. The sunday edition having a different outlook to the daily smelt off all along.
My girlfriend Prof Tomkins makes himself more than heard here if you read ghastly Grauniad, probably the biggest teamGB media hypocrites desperately trying to annihilate Scottish democracy.
link to id.theguardian.com
Rev. Did you tape the interview when you were giving it? If so, can you give us an unedited version? Just so we can compare and contrast.
@ Laura Vivanco
Agree.
Nobody is being “forced” to choose whether to stay in Scotland whichever way the vote goes: at least not in the way so many people over the years have been “forced to choose” whether to stay in Scotland or have a job. Which, you may recall, was presented as the ultimate freedom of choice and a good thing!
[…] « The fine art of selection […]
@ Bugger (the Panda),
I give Tomkin’s opinions a wide berth.
I do to 😀 he spouts complete nonsense. He stands in a wilderness of Unionist groupthink shouting out his views. He only ones that listen are already No voters.
I just read the two articles one after another. The point you make Rev is spot on and interesting. I initially thought the two articles were part of the one feature but after reading concluded that Tomkins was “in the hot seat” and yours was separate. Now you’ve confirmed they were part of the same feature but clearly interviewed with different agenda.
The thing most striking about Adam Tomkins is that he describes himself as, “one of the leading constitutional law scholars in the UK”, but later expresses an extremely naive view about extra tax powers from devolution transforming Scottish politics and a grown up argument. Interestingly he says nothing of the risks attached to Scots leaving power retained with the Tories despite there track record on Scotland before.
Looks to me like the seat he was in for this interview was anything but hot unlike the one you occupied.
I thought, the Sunday Herald was on the YES side, silly me.
Well that’s my brief flirtation with the Sunday Herald finished.
Is this from the pro-independence Sunday Herald? Yeah sure, this pretence is well and truly over.
Was it really necessary for Paul Hutcheon to pen the last para with ‘troublemaker’ ? Snide, petty and unwarranted.
A hit piece of journalism. Paul Hutcheon is a scum bag.
I believe Paul Hutcheon is a Green but not of the Independence variety and more than Robin Harper of the No camp.
I do hop the Rev was not too naïve in placing his trust an a pleasant chat.
“An IT expert with a history of trouble making” compared to a ukok fanatic like Prof Tomkins, aka Herald’s Slovene Jezereena and Grauns Aliesbadas, is way too much. Certainly wont be buying Sunday Herald again. What a massive fraud Scotlandshire press really is.
Upon reflection, I will now wait to see if the SH retains a pro Yes position before spending my €0.89 per electroniuc copy.
My only sanction.
Further proof of panic inside the newspaper business as they realise their biased coverage of the referendum is costing them customers as these former customers now favour the internet for referendum coverage.
It will be great to see the end of lying publications like the Daily Mail and Scotsman.
Paul Hutcheon says “Wings is the poster boy for a certain type of online independence campaigner.”
I pointed out that from the comments below the piece the readership of Wings didn’t appear to be much different from the readership of the Herald.
These print journos really should learn that it’s not good policy to insult your paying readers.
I’m very disappointed in the Sunday Herald, note also the lack of approved comments on the article featuring Stu – 6 – compared with 45 for the Prof. Anyone seriously think that’s representative of the volume of comments each article is likely to attract?
Well you your picture is about 20% bigger than Adam Tomkins! Are you jealous that he got an add for a conservatory his page and not you? 🙂
Don’t buy the Sunday Herald.
Let it go the same way as Scotland on Sunday – down the plug hole into the sewer.
heedtracker
Do you think the SH knows of Prof Tomkin’s real job as a left wing loony blogger and that is the reason for the juxtaposition?
????
Seems to me that WoS is competition for the MSM and the good professor is not. Maybe not that surprising that they are treated differently in such a series?
Having read the article, I find nothing overtly ‘untrue’ in the words of Paul Hutcheon. However, if he had written 1000 words about Stuart’s facial hair, this statement would still stand. That’s not the point! The article is an editorial piece about Stuart and, in many ways, it’s a bit of a character assasination. I suspect that the writer is both envious of Stuarts following and an inferior journalist to boot.
What we have here is one man (PH) telling everyone what he thinks of the man, not the politics or the issues. Still, as they say in Holywood, there’s no such thing as bad press.
I, myself, can be a polarising character who lives in a world of black and white. Whilst I don’t have a particular view on Stuart’s proclaimations about Liverpool, I can’t disagree with his reported statement about the cause of deaths at Hillsborough. Note I use the word ’cause’ as opposed to ‘blame’. An iceberg caused the sinking of the Titanic, but the iceberg was not to blame.
However, regardless of your own views on the hisorical events in Liverpool, these have no bearing on the subject of Scottish independence.
What is the author saying here? That if you disagree with anything Stuart has ever said then you should disagree with whatever he has said/done since? Nonsense!
I’ve never met Stuart, but if I did, I fear he might intimidate me with his knowledge, his ability to express himself and his (apparent) lack of concern for the sensibilities of others. For this reason alone, I would not invite him to tea with my parents! But he’d be very welcome to dinner with myself and my wife.
I respect what Stu has done with ‘Wings’ and I’m very grateful for it. I’m not going to sit here all day and blow sunshine up his arse, but let me tell you something – I couldn’t have done what Stu has acheived, neither from an IT perspective, nor a journalistic one. Anyone who feels they could have done, may be in a position to cast the first stone. Mr Paul Hutcheon isn’t one of these people.
Haven’t read it yet, but maybe it’s because you’ve been attacked recently the paper thought giving you a chance to straighten things out would go over well with undecideds? Those undecideds will all now know you’re a prominent Yes because of that recent coverage, and could be harbouring doubts about your character… I dunno. Like I said, haven’t read it yet.
I expect better from Paul Hutcheon and the Sunday Herald, but there again why should I or anyone else?
Let’s face it the support it trumpeted using Alister Gray has been slightly less than tepid.
I had hoped that after a yes vote all Scots ( by that I mean everyone with the ability to vote in the referendum despite where they were born) would be pulling together to put Scotland right up there at the top. Now we know that this will not be the case Some people will leave and that is a shame.
However look on the bright side when they leave so will the negativity, the back biting , & the oh we cannae dae that attitudes. If the self proclaimed Leading constitutional law academic in the UK wants to move elsewhere. that is up to him. May I suggest the Crimea? they seem to be crying out for constitutional experts.
We will of course also be looking for new talent to run the replacement for the discredited BBC and staff from most of the daily papers whose attitude towards the referendum have
destroyed the public’s faith in fair, decent and honest journalism.
Can I book you a removal van for the 19th Rev?
@biggpolmont
They won’t go, though.
I note the two interviews were done by two different people. Did they each write the articles? The styles are so different, from agenda through to prose.
Anyway, I don’t like this style of reporting an interview. It should have been a short introduction followed by Q&A, exactly as said. On both halves there is far too much opinion unrelated to the interview.
As Stu points out, most is not actual quotation. The article, certainly in Stu’s case, could have been written with actually doing an interview!
Shoddy journalism.
An IT expert with a history of trouble making
Is an “IT expert” someone who can run a twitter account and be a journalist?
Fiona
Then you and I both know that they will find it very hard to do a journalism job when no one will talk to you.
A disappointingly unflattering article. The interviewer surely missed the opportunity to highlight one of the biggest positive stories of the entire referendum campaign and instead dwelt on dug-up negatives about Stu as an individual.
@biggpolmont
I do not think they will have much trouble, really. They already make it up as they go along…..
Without reading the text, I could think of no greater insult than being put on a par with Tomkins.
The Sunday Herald strategy is becoming clearer.
Turn out and say you support YES, write some articles that point to this being the case. Grab an increase in sales, keep gaining trust in the YES camp. Then on the final straight, turn NO and stab Yes in the back. Works for me!
What a petty, snide and nasty article. That’s me stopped buying the Sunday Herald too. Wings has made an enormous difference to the Independence Campaign, we would not be as close to success as we are without the work that you have done, Stu and everyone knows it. Because of that and the huge esteem that you are held in by so many in the yes side of the campaign, there is bound to be a lot of jealousy and spite directed towards you personally.
I am so pleased that you have dissected this rubbish so well, with your usual style and wit. Do take comfort in the fact that far many more people will read your article about the interviews than will read the paper, that is what they hate so much.
The media in Scotland does not represent us and they are not even pretending anymore. We get excited by the odd fair, balanced article when that is the least we should be able to expect. All that they have is smears and distortions, nothing else.
Dire article and just a personal criticism of the person, compared to the love in with Tomkins.
I know that, if given the chance to get your point made in a newspaper, you would probably take it.
But since this paper’s print circulation & readership is in free fall, it’s hard to argue that any of its copy that prints or is supportive of, your argument is effective.
The Herald is a biased, distorted mouthpiece for Labour/Unionists/BritNats & frequently prints outright lies either to draw more clicks to its online version or in a comical attempt to convince undecided voters to choose NO.
All of this unpleasantness can easily be rectified of course by not buying their print copies or visiting their website. With sufficient discipline, we can bring forward the day when it finally shuts it doors for good so we can see off a puerile, comic standard example of Scottish journalism.
Almost all print media is in steep decline & it is sites like Wings which are breaking new ground & returning to the high standard of investigative journalism based upon excruciating attention to detail & a level of thorough analysis that most of the BritNat print media lazily neglects.
And as the stats in the article above clearly demonstrates, the allegedly “balanced” Sunday Herald is nothing of the sort. They really can’t help themselves can they?
So let’s help put The Herald group out of its tortured misery for good.
Actually I must say the really ,really interesting item on the Profs page was that fantastic conservatory . I was really impressed ! It looked really good. Do you think that this is a cunning plan by the editor to encourage people to look at that page rather than glance at it and use it for lighting the fire ?
OT but thought this was a very good piece of news for the Yes campaign.
Former chief medical officer expressing concerns re the privatisation of the NHS in England and the threat this poses to NHS Scotland.
link to bbc.co.uk
The comments he made to an audit committee in 2012 put across succinctly why we need to vote Yes in September.
link to bbc.co.uk
A better Scotland is possible if we vote Yes.
Just read both interviews, Stuart, now see you’ve posted them.
The press have a way of enticing people like you out of your comfort zone then making them appear shallow and shifty. [Been through that early in my vocation finally eschewing all interviews.] They want to test your resolve and to reduce you to shallow unreliable celebrity. It’s a wonder you were not asked about your sex life.
Hutcheon’s selective comments is hack garbage.
I would’ve counselled you to decline his invitation. Almost all he writes did not need you to be there or him, for that matter. He could have gleaned it off back history.
Tomkins makes a classic error of personal bias dismissing the Referendum as ‘divisive,’ only to demand instead a debate on the constitutional changes for Scotland, the very thing that IS the debate and narrative of the Referendum, and that has given Tomkins the opportunity to make known his face.
Disappointing to say the least. If The Sunday Herald is slowly returning to the fold, then everything it says will once again be treated with great suspicion.
God knows what these papers are going to do come the 19th if Yes win. There will be quite a bit of soul-searching within the newsroom I think, as they try to work out the direction they need to take post-indy. The only problem is, we might not be so forgiving.
Would really have expected better from the Sunday herald. A sad day.
@ Laura Vivanco
I ken yer mum! Hope she’s well.
@Conan
Thanks for asking! Yes, she’s fine.
Hutcheon mentioned Stu’s insult of Alex Johnstone, in quotation, but of course didn’t mention the context. None of the media ever allow the context. Nor did he make clear that it was the first time Stu had just given it laldy and openly insulted someone, a point Stu made on STV last week.
I do wish Stu hadn’t said all that about Hillsborough, and I accept the cause and blame argument, but the cause was mainly the authorities incredibly negligent planning and foresight, especially as they had had a warning about Leppings Lane in the 1981 semi between Spurs and Wolves, when a similar tragedy almost took place. However, what it has to do with the matter at hand is beyond me. We don’t all need to agree over everything.
I’ll probably continue to buy the Sunday Herald. Iain McWhirter and Ian Bell are the best columnists around and the letters page today is again excellent.
Having read the Revs article, apart from the obvious attempt at character assassination, I believe it will only increase traffic to Wings from curious onlookers wishing to read more by this ‘troublemaker’.
No such thing as bad advertising remember.
Bin the Sunday Herald, it does not deserve our support.
Leopard and it’s spots and all that.
It looks like the Sunday Herald’s professed support for independence is as shallow and meaningless as the Sun’s support for the SNP in the early 1990s. Paul Hutcheon and Tom Gordon are diehard unionists, and both are leading figures at the Sunday Herald. I was prepared to give the SH the benefit of the doubt, but I think it is obvious that with these two journalists the supposed support for a Yes vote is really just a con. They are trying to stem their falling circulation.
Donald Anderson,
I don’t think the vituperative journalist is a Green, my journalist friends think he belongs to the hard left.
A very poorly written article. Agree with galamcennalath as to the favoured fomat of a profile /interview piece.
Having said that he can’t be criticised for enquiring about the ‘Rev’ tag or the alleged Hillsborough comments.
I have wondered about them both myself. This article is so poorly written that I still have no further information of what you actually said and what the context was.
Despite that neither has anything to do with Scottish politics or the referendum and every single view you have written regarding Scottish politics and IndyRef I agree with entirely.
It is fascinating watching your ascent into the eyes of the MSM.
I dont agree with everything that rev Stu Campbell has to say, I dont agree with his views on Hillsborough, I dont agree with what everyone posts on this website and I dont agree with all of SNP’s policies or all that Al-Iqsammin has to say.
Strangely enough that doesn’t fit into the media representation of the debate or this website…
Suzanne K, you could be right. In fact, maybe some women will now be having a look as girls all love a bad boy, don’t they?
“Wings is the poster boy for a certain type of online independence campaigner.”
What the hell is that statement supposed to mean?
“A certain type”?
Do we resemble Quasimodo, Dorian Gray, Burke or Hare? Are we Beelzebub’s helpmates, or sewer rats?
And what does he mean buy “poster boy.” Lance Armstrong? John Bannerman? Che Guevara? How many witless, imprecise phrases does Hutcheons have at his disposal?
That is piss-poor journalism. And bloody insulting.
Rev ah canny read the story even Magnifyed,an chace of you puting up the Audio taped version.
Tomkins “would I want to stay in an Independence Scotland as a No voter?”
After a Yes, feel free to leave!
@sausage fingered luddite
Pretty much my view as well.
Why doesn’t Stu e-mail the Editor of the SH and request a space to actually him to state his case rather than be the subject of a put down.
My rage synapses are firing rapidly after reading that so called interview. One of the worst bits of journalism I’ve seen about the participants in the referendum.
The SH journalist had 2 1/2 hours with one of the major players / opinion formers and he gives us this p**h. Hopefully he is clearing his desk and making room for a real journalist as we speak.
As someone mentioned above, I hope Stu recorded this interview and he can upload the recording.
Oops, Stu, I wrote a response to Mr Hutcheon regarding his blog about Blair Jenkins,I wasn’t very nice to him. Now he has no idea I imagine I write here very occasionally but I hope that I did not have any hand in this however small.
Ah, no I don’t, that is one bitter wee man.
Sorry O/T
Rory the Tory has extensive interview on BBC Scottish Politics, allowed to ramble on about how bad Independence will be, tamely challenged. Followed by another negative.
I’ve just read the article and think it will increase the interest in Stu and the WOS site. It gives the impression of an edgy, sharp, and wildly popular online guru. The MSM are obviously jealous of Stu’s success. One sentence is a classic of MSM innuendo.
“Other than giving readers what he describes as the ‘facts’ about Independence, Wings also attempts to shine a light on newspaper alleged bias.”
The “facts” in quotes and alleged not in quotes. Subtle, yes?
Started to read the Prof Tomkins article but gave up. Life is just too short.
what the article quotes is what the REV said,so no complaints from me
Ian bell and Iain Macwhirter are worth a read
Sunday Herald always said it would be neutral as possible
Just looking at the raw numbers, attempted hatchet-job springs to mind.
Now I shall go and read the article to see if I am right.
Did anyone else hear Hazel Irvine’s comment re voting on whetehr wimmin are banned from Scotland on 18th Sept? Made during an interview with R&A Chairman at golf this morning. Even he looked stunned and quickly changed topic.
Grouse Beater says:
That is piss-poor journalism
I’ve learned a lot about people and the roles they try to fill, this last year so. Every able bodied person, in their own way, attempts to contribute to society. Opinions vary enormously, but most folks work hard and try to do their best in whatever capacity they find themselves.
That is, with the notable exception of two groups. There are two distinct roles in society which seem to attract a disproportionately large number of useless people! Firstly troughing politicians and secondly incompetent journalists!
And, in this referendum campaign we find them in an unholy alliance!
Bought a bottle of water at Aberdeen railway station on Tuesday. The seller handed me a “free” copy of the Daily Telegraph. I declined the offer. Walking away I realised my water purchase would still count as a purchase of the unionist broadsheet. Is this how some newspapers keep their circulation figures alive? Desperate stuff.
ah canny read the story even Magnifyed
Ronnie, get onto the Sunday Herald’s site, click on ‘Politics’ top of the Home Page, there you’ll find both articles. (You’re allowed to read three articles before they stop you surfing their pages and ask you to sign up and pay.)
Well done Rev for taking the opportunity to state your case.
In the limited chances to get the message out to a wider audience you have to take risks. The fact is the case for independence is overwhelming for anyone who bothers to find out more information.
Appearing in a prominent feature in a mainstream paper will surely make any free-thinking person wonder why you are being formally interviewed and taken so seriously.
For those of us who believe in free speech, I do not really care what you write about on other subjects – as long as you set out your detailed case to draw your conclusions is all that matters. People can agree or disagree. That is what people do in a mature and civilised society.
Herald mask has slipped for me ever sinmce supposedly coming out for YES.
Now seems to have been a purely circulation / ‘business ploy'(re Editors comments). No ground breaking or game changing articles, no exposures. Nothing risky but constant chipping away at yes side.
Sorry no longer convinced and stopped buying from today.
At very best ‘even handed’ (which is fine), but just what was at the back of REV v Tompkins pish ???
No longer wasting my money on purile garbage, sorry.
Time to drop the pretence that the Sunday Herald is pro-Indy. The only thing they are pro is increased circulation and they have been unable to sustain their brief flirtation with YES before reverting to type. I fully expect YES to be stabbed in the back in September with an article on how they thought Independence would be a good thing but they are not so sure any more. The SH has shown its true colours today. I would not spend money on this publication.
Tartan Tory at 11.18. Excellent post, Sir.
Dan Huil
I think so. Coming down to London on the train last week we were given a copy of the Times, I declined it. I said I didn’t like their politics, the chap with a cheeky laugh said, it could have been worse, it could have been the Scotsman.
Rev : Forgot to say – Dont think the Scotsman could have done a better hatchet job on you !
Oh … but they forgot your Zodiac sign 🙂
Helena Brown
I tried to post a response to him on the Blair Jenkin’s piece where he repeatedly asked Bl;air Jenkin’s his salary.
I asked him, what was his.
Like snaw aff a dyke.
I started to worry about the Sunday Herald when they buried Prof Robertson’s exposure of BBC bias in another vaguely related article a few weeks ago. This is the final straw and I will not be investing my honestly earned cash in this rag.
You can hear the Editor of the Sunday Herald being interviewed by Derek Bateman;
link to batemanbroadcasting.com
So the herald interviewed someone they banned from their own comments & chose not to mention it?
I think that says it all….
If the Prof and others of his mindset leave after a Yes suely that’s a good thing. Good jobs like those don’t grow on trees. It gives the rest of us a chance. We are the most highly educated country in Europe after all!
Sunday Herald no more for me. Balanced journalism is all we ask, but they just can’t help themselves.
Did anyone else hear Hazel Irvine’s comment re voting on whetehr wimmin are banned from Scotland on 18th Sept?
What time, what channel?
Like others I have had great difficulty in taking seriously the claims of the Sunday Herald, although I did initially try to do so. However, knowing the history of Hutcheon and Gordon, and seeing the three-eighths hearted attempts at challenging the cosy consensus in the MSM (last week’s front page on BT’s administrative mix-ups was embarrassingly timid), I concur with others who think that the paper is likely to revise its view on independence in the last days of the campaign (having of course thoroughly investigated the issue a la Hutcheon).
I’m done with it.
BtP I got no response either, I said that if I had been Blair Jenkins approached in such a manner I would not have told him either. I said I had long given up on any investigative journalism from the MSM and had to rely on those of the so called citizen journalists. You can see why my remarks may have annoyed. I think I went further but then I cannot read any comments attached to his blog.
Oh,here we go again.
Paul Hutcheon is a unionist.
He is also a journalist who writes for the Herald group. He is very unlikely to do so on the basis that he writes what he is telt. In fact he is a political attack dog and can’t actually do anything else (as a short foray into political reporting with some absolutely dire stuff indicated a couple of years ago).
Does the fact that Joan McAlpine writes for the Record make it a nationalist newspaper?
Do some folk think that the Sunday Herald should read as an
uncritical YES pamphlet?
The coverage in the Herald will probably have put several thousand more onto the WINGS readership
Some folk writing on here need to sharpen up.
Another excellent Sunday Herald
The coverage in the Herald will probably have put several thousand more onto the WINGS readership.
Really?
Do you think that article amounted to an enquiry into Campbell’s political beliefs and hopes for a better Scotland. We must have read two different articles.
O/T but to cheer folks up -yesterday’s New York Times has run a piece with headline Scottish Independence is Inevitable.
We are playing on a bigger playing field here and we are winning ….who cares about the Sunday Herald ….
link to nytimes.com
Did anyone else hear Hazel Irvine’s comment re voting on whetehr wimmin are banned from Scotland on 18th Sept?
What time, what channel?
I found it, it was pretty innocent, more of a dig at the R&A’s attitude to women rather than anything to do with the independence referendum.
I have just read many of the opinions on here again.
It appears that the the fact that that the Sunday Herald is actually peppered with pro independence articles has been completely missed and Macwhirter, for instance,reinforcing the message that NO vote means we can forget the NHS was only in my copy.
And I thought we were engaged in an intelligent community on here.
Perhaps Stu wasn’t aware of Hutcheon’s history when he agreed to be interviewed. You will search for a long time for Hutcheon doing anything other than undermine anyone he deals with.
Other than Bell, McWhirter and reader’s letters I struggle to see much quality in the SH over the past couple of weeks. The splash last week was incredibly weak. Can’t believe they ran a ‘blow for a Salmond’ header in an article. Sadly, for me now the paper simply seems to have lost its confidence with regards to indyref.
There has been so much indyref news, so much potential for investigation over the past week, in particular the EU debacle and Charlie Kennedy telling porkie pies in the commons – but it’s the Scotland on Sunday who run EU story? Meanwhile the Sunday Herald insults its readers who visit this site – it’s disrespectful in the extreme. What’s going on? SH Yes front page has now been removed from my window, and I certainly won’t be buying this week’s paper.
Hazel Irvine was on bbc2 this morning aroundabout 11am. It was during an interview with the chairman of the R&A and just before a clip of Tom Watson if your fast forwarding through it. I think the programme finished at 1130.
Sorry there’s no link, this is about as good as I can manage from a phone that’s smarter than me!
@Dave McEwan Hill
Sorry I just do not buy that anymore. It is not just Hutcheon either. Tom Gordon is as diehard a unionist as you will get. The Sunday Herald’ support is the same as the Sun’s so called endorsement of the SNP in the early 1990s. IMO neither are genuine. The Sunday Herald supported Yes to try and reverse or stem falling circulation. I just don’t believe them. It looks more and more like a business decision.
McEwan Hill says: And I thought we were engaged in an intelligent community on here.
Yes. That’s why I think your remarks stupid in the extreme.
Yes, I absolutely agree that the article … But especially the reader comments after … will add thousands to the readership of Wings. People want to see what they are missing, even if they only come here due to rubbernecking or a mild curiosity, I believe if they are undecided or at the very least, open minded, what they find here will be like gold dust. Food for the brain. By crikey they will stay.
@sausage fingered luddite
I found it on the iplayer, it was pretty innocent and more a dig at the R&A’s attitude to women.
And what’s with the £10,000? As far as I can remember it wasn’t even in the Indigogo appeal, so it could have been for anything. The cost of lawyers making a will leaving everything to the Emergency Kitten, Air conditioning for the Rev’s Cray supercomputer. It wasn’t required to be diclosed by the Electoral Commission and that’s the end of it unless Hutcheon wants to re-open the CBI “participation” in the referendum.
I’m afraid that was a couple of hours wasted, Stu, but at least you will have gained a first hand knowledge of how the MSM will twist facts to suit their prejudice.
Indigo
You obviously missed Neal Acherson’s magnificent piece in support of indpendence last week’s Herald then or the marvelous whole page piece from the Orange Lodge lady who was voting YES.
Correspondents on here seem to want the Sunday Herald to behave exactly the same way in support of YES that they complain about the other papers giving blanket support to NO.
Well all i can say is well done Stu if after all this time that is the best they can come up with to try to smear you with,you did this in full knowledge what they would print didnt you lol
Sunday Herald you just got winged now watch your sales plummet.
I stopped buying the Sunday Herald weeks ago, after there was an article ( do not remember the reporter, who called Alex Salmond – Alexi Salmonella !
From a YES newspaper? They are gone for me.
Scotland On Sunday exposing more BT lies over Junker’s comments
link to scotsman.com
James123 says:
I found it on the iplayer, it was pretty innocent and more a dig at the R&A’s attitude to women.
——
I was kinda the opposite bud. Found it inappropriate in the context of the interview and dismissive of the referendum. Even R&A chairman who is as establishment as they come stunned. He almost swallowed his teeth which would’ve been no mean feat!
McEwan Hill claims: Correspondents on here seem to want the Sunday Herald …
No.
Hutcheons portrayed Campbell as he, personally, saw him, and how he wishes us, posters and readers, to think of him.
He also reduced the political breadth and comprehensive nature, the analytical skills of Wings topics, to mischievousness, its consequent debates to mere visiting numbers who attend it – colloqually, ‘hits.’
He also stated the Yes Campaign disavows itself from all published on this site. He does not say why, or opiune if their judgment is impaired.
The article would sit comfortably in the Daily Mail
Iain McWhirter and Ian Bell have published separate thought provoking articles in the Sunday Herald today.
Pity that Iain McWhirter and Ian Bell cannot be employed by WoS where logic is lethal.
Despicable – that the Sunday Herald spoils the work of two decent journalists to garrotte saint Stu.
Volunteering to be interviewed – IN GOOD FAITH – reminds us to be wary when geeks bear gifts on IndyRef coverage.
However, this deceitful spiteful scare-job reminds all of us that “Trust” must be measured in micro-grains.
O/T
WHY do those who promise to leave Scotland on a YES – not just fuck-off before the IndyRef – and we, who will stay whatever the result – can run our country ?
No Grouse Beater. They are not.
The Sunday Herald editorially supports independence , its two major correspondents support independence and the majority of its other contributors like David Pratt and Alan Taylor and Tom Shields support independence, it is weekly peppered with pro independence articles and it’s readers letters are dominated by pro independence views.
Just like the Express or the Mail.eh?
It’s a fecking newspaper,the Sunday Herald and is entirely entitled to present a range of views and some of it’s staff writers are unionists like Hutcheon and Gordon. And some like Judith Duffy are fair enough but all at seas in politics
If you want an independence pamphlet buy the Scots Independent
And the Prof Tomkins thing is just hard core bettertogether propaganda with some cunning vote No jam tomorrow going on from the Prof as in
” Tomkins says devolving income tax to the Scottish Parliament would transform politics in the country by triggering a “grown-up” argument about tax and spend. He would like to see unionists and nationalists work together to develop devolution further, arguing there has been a “silo” approach to constitutional politics for too long.”
He’s never showed anything but utter contempt for Holyrood, Scottish democracy, a constitution, you name it, Prof Tomkins has monstered it. But now he’s flogging another “grown up” devo max fraud. A mystery wrapped in reams of raging Slovene bleh.
I noticed this morning that the pile of Sunday Heralds was quite large.
I am still buying it – for the time being.
However, I find their support is rather lukewarm and flagging. If they do not up their game soon, I may stop bothering to go to the shop on a Sunday morning.
McEwan misses the point: The Sunday Herald editorially supports independence
If, as you aver, we here are intelligent, then it follows we know that. So, you can stuff your patronising remarks.
What you seem not to perceive out of contrariness or arrogance, but Campbell and others can, is the profound imbalance between two interviews on the same subject – independence – treated radically differently in the same newspaper.
One allows the interviewee to state his political beliefs and insight without contradiction and without mention of any allegedly past indiscretions, the other interrogates the subject and taints by adding adverse comments made by others.
The latter tells readers what to think about Campbell, the former allowed readers to make up their own mind about the candidate. The latter show respect.
It is selective journalism at its most blatant.
I was kinda the opposite bud. Found it inappropriate in the context of the interview and dismissive of the referendum. Even R&A chairman who is as establishment as they come stunned. He almost swallowed his teeth which would’ve been no mean feat!
That’s because it’s a very touchy subject, Irvine was trying to embarrass him which he probably didn’t expect. The vote in September will ask whether women should be allowed to join the R&A for the first time in its 260 year history! Irvine combined the two votes as a way to show how ludicrous the R&A’s position has been.
Heedtracker says:
Tomkins is flogging another “grown up” devo max fraud.
Agreed.
He takes the ‘I’m above the fray’ stance to make himself appear of greater moral stature, while all the time he is telling Scotland to shut the fuck up.
Dave I read the article from the lady raised within the OO on the Wee Ginger Dog blog, and I noted that there was no reference to the blog that inspired the article in the SH coverage, which tbh I thought was a bit disrespectful.
I did read Neal’s article, it was fine enough, I’ve read better from him, but yes, an oversight on my part not referencing it.
Personally I want balance, not Yes propaganda, from a newspaper, but my reading of SH is that in terms of news reporting it seems to be moving away from balance
The article was fine. He drilled down to most of the criticisms of stu and this site and stu gave a good account of himself and was given the space to do. I despair at the whiners and wimps in these comments at times.
@ Dave McEwan Hill i guess we had to make sure we did not have an enemy in the camp pretending to be something they are not ,this is more dangerous to the yes campaign than the downright bias shown by the MSM.
Who knows maybe the SH will up there game now after having their bum spanked for being naughty 😉
I’ve heard it all now over on the Daily Record site apparently the dead say we’re Better Together
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
If you can’t see the contrast between the cloying tone and content focus afforded Tompkins and the snide character assassination and virtual absence of discussion of the actual issues afforded Stuart Campbell then you really ain’t looking hard enough.
I strongly believe the Daily Record will come out on the YES side before September
I strongly believe the Daily Record will come out on the YES side before September
Training Day: you really ain’t looking hard enough.
Or deliberately turning a blind eye to it.
@ TrainFares
Tony Benn was a British nationalist. If he was alive today he would be happily endorsing the lies of the No campaign.
Dan: Tony Benn was a British nationalist.
It’s one of those odd contradictions of firebrand Labour politicians that they prove themselves incompetent or inept when elevated to high office, (Benn almost cleaved his party in two) but great debaters for justice when a mere back-bencher or no longer an MP.
@ Grouse Beater
The pressures of compromise in office?
This will be the same Tony Benn who helped make sure the McCrone report stayed buried?
Oh, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Hutcheon casually acquiesces in the lie that Vote No Borders is a genuine campaign in his piece on Tompkins. Perhaps the ‘investigations editor’ might apply one tenth of the investigation this website has undertaken into this ersatz organisation and thereby achieve some credibility?
Dan asks: The pressures of compromise in office?
There has to be that element. You’re a team player or you’re out. On the other hand, perhaps you’re in the wrong party to begin with. It doesn’t epitomise your ideals.
TrainFares
This would be the same Tony Benn who knew all about the real value of the Scottish Oil reserves and what it could have done for Scotland if they had taken the Norwegian route of saving the money. Callaghan decided he needed to bribe his TU mate and but votes.
Tony Benn kept his mouth shut and did as he was told.
Unless his family have a ouija board, I believe they have no felkin right to say what Tony Benn would or would not have said. His passage into wherever he has gone may have caused him to reflect and rethink some of his positions.
As someone said he was a party first man.
Who gives a Flying, anyway?
Fyi, The r&a are having a members vote on same day as indyref to allow females into clubhouse.
Grousebeater
Do you have insider knowledge of how Mentorn operate their contract with the BBC.
Is it a technical outsourcing; crew and logistics.
Do they do audience vetting as well.
Do they do the who 9 yards for the BBC and charge then a fee per program?
I wonder if any BBC employees were cc’d on the e-mails?
Anyone, Stu, up to ask the Sunday Times?
@Bugger (the Panda)
I am well aware of the man’s history. My point was this seems to be the first time the MSM are referencing the dead as in
LOOK HERE – EVEN THE DEAD WOULD VOTE NO!
I’ve read the Sunday Herald piece about Stu and I think it is lazily written and Paul Hutcheon has done himself a disservice in this article. He is much better than this.
Nevertheless Stu is – like it or not – a target. In journalistic terms he does not suffer fools gladly so there are plenty of quotes about; in political terms he is at the forefront of an overwhelming response to change of the status quo; in editorial terms his online brand is in sharp contrast to the declining print media; and he is challenging the broadcast output of TV.
Should we then be surprised by the journalistic task taken? No.
Should we expect perhaps something more original from Sunday Herald than the worn-out journalism shown? Absolutely.
I never believed that the Sunday Herald was a genuine Yes supporting paper. Part business decision and part opening up another way to attack independence posing as Yes.
James123 says:
That’s because it’s a very touchy subject, Irvine was trying to embarrass him which he probably didn’t expect. The vote in September will ask whether women should be allowed to join the R&A for the first time in its 260 year history! Irvine combined the two votes as a way to show how ludicrous the R&A’s position has been.
———
I am aware of subject and dont imagine that Irvine was attempting to embarrass the chairman of R&A at his own tournament. She interviews him every year at roughly the same time on the Sunday. Its all very cosy and not really indepth in any way.
I guess I just interpreted her comments differently from you ;0)
OK
I though that that was a normal Labour ploy anyway.
I am sure my Granny who resides in some cemetery in St Rllox still votes Labour and will be voting no.
🙂
@ TrainFares
I agree, although there has been throughout the WWI “commemorations” the implicit suggestion/assumption that all these men died for king and country, the union in other words, and not for freedom of choice.
Didn’t buy the Sunday Herald
Prof Tomkins is pay by Scottish taxpayers and should show some respect.
@ Grouse Beater, you can watch Tomkins in Scottish Affairs committee action here but its essentially a long hard monstering of everything Holyrood, plus amazing amounts of time spent by Prof Tomkins recounting his outrage/apology demand from Holyrood, because someone interrupted him in committee. Its outrage probably familiar to readers of his bettertogether Slovenia Cif stuff. Ian Davidson has his eye on Miss Aliesbabas.
link to iandavidsonmp.com
BtP asks: Do you have insider knowledge of how Mentorn operate their contract with the BBC
I’d like to think its the same as any other indie: submit your idea and costs in writing, discuss the proposal at a face-to-face BBC meeting, get selected, make a pilot, and if deemed okay, get the funding and schedule.
It’s a happier experience, of course, if youy’ve made past programmes successfully – you get met with smiles and glad-handed.
Again, if you are in with the bricks the BBC will come to you now and again with an idea they want produced as an indie production, (perhaps to keep indie percentages up) though I bet that happens rarely in Scotland unless, like Mentorn, you are a London-based company.
None of that guarantees standards don’t lapse in the making of programmes, or corruption doesn’t happen. BBC supervisors have to be vigilant. Remember the indies who gathered thousands of pounds from expensive telephone calls for competitions that had ended weeks earlier.
For my part, I was asked to place 10% of the TV buy-out of my production in the … erm, executive’s Swiss bank account and he’d happily take the project on board and transmit it. It transpired his MOD was common knowledge amongst distributors in London. One supposes they went along with the scam in order to survive. Back then, discovered, he’d be portrayed as a lone maverick.
(And no, I didn’t make the deal.)
feeling good here, didn’t buy a Sunday Newspaper for the first time in years – finished with the dead tree press and their distortions.
@Ian Mackay
I’ve read the Sunday Herald piece about Stu and I think it is lazily written and Paul Hutcheon has done himself a disservice in this article. He is much better than this.
Can you explain why he is much better than this?
I too was tempted to pay the Herald view £1 fee, just this morning. After this though I have revised that thought.
Either the editorial process is pretty much absent or their much vaunted supposed move to support the Yes campaign is just a move to improve their circulation.
Sorry Herald but you just lost my money. So I can’t view your articles for a while, no great loss imho.
Must try much, much harder.
Also in that Ian Davidson MP Committee vid is Ian Davidson etc bashing on about what a great committee his one is, how Holyrood is corrupt and no good and how his committee all never disagree and its great. Except for Davidson himself threatening the SNP committee member with a doing, forcing her to quit and not be replaced. That’s thuggery and hypocrisy, Westminster style.
@JLT says: 20 July, 2014 at 11:30 am:
“God knows what these papers are going to do come the 19th if Yes win. There will be quite a bit of soul-searching within the newsroom I think, as they try to work out the direction they need to take post-indy. The only problem is, we might not be so forgiving.
Those of us who were old enough to remember the post WWII European scene and who were politically aware will remember the apparent total absence of any Hitler supporters or NAZI Party members. The allies did a wonderful job of eradicating them all. Either that or they had all been such patriots as to have fought to the last, “fibre of their being”, (now where did I hear that quote before)?
I suspect, after we take our independence, a similar situation will prevail. You won’t find a NO voter or campaigner from The Northern Isles to the Solway/Tweed border. What’s more the ones we do find will all make the same faux defence as the NAZI war criminals at Nuremburg – “Not me Gov, I was just obeying orders”.
You been upsetting the mejya again Stu? 😛
Heedtracker: Grouse Beater, you can watch Tomkins in Scottish Affairs committee
Yes, worth a watch to know how your enemy operates; he’s intellectually ‘terribly brave’ to the point of grossly arrogant and insulting when among friends keen to feed him anodine questions.
The idea that anyone would be ‘forced to stay’ in Scotland if and hope to god we do, choose Independence, is just ridiculous, childish and not very intelligent, and just does mot make any sense at all. On that note, in fact we were discussing that if it is a no vote and England votes us out of Europe, we would be wise to leave said uk before that vote, otherwise we could be stuck in the uk for good!
It looks like the S Herald has duped the people of Scotland into believing that their allegiance is with Independence and not against. Why? Well it boosted their sales and still does, how to gain the trust of your enemy while actually attacking them. It must be a very old trick to shake hands with your the ones you want to defeat,under false pretences, then knee them in the balls, or worse.
Oops, sorry too many typos, stupid ipad.
@ Grouse Beater, thanks for the Herald link,got my comment in.
Grouse Beater
Was QT not an in-house production initially and was outsourced as part of a feeble attempt to show that London was augmenting their Scottish output?
Basically the deal was that it was transferred to some shell company in Scotland and, job done?
Just as I would not condemn a painter for one bad painting, or a composer for one bad overture, or a married man or a woman for having one affair, knowing they still loved their spouse, I will not condemn the Sunday Herald for one truly crap article.
But I can condemn it for a truly awful standard.
O/T
Against my better judgement I am forcing myself to watch last nights Commonwealth Games tragicomedy from Edinburgh Castle.
There’s something very very wrong with this apart from the fact that Edinburgh is not in Glasgow.
Selection of specifically non Scottish acts, an audience that looks like its being held against it’s will at gunpoint being forced to applaud what wouldn’t be given the time of day at a Karaoke night. Ronnie Corbett – dearie me, an actual genuine sub 5ft embarassment to Scotland. A WELSH presenter who’s unionist credentials appear to be rock solid.
On the plus side, for those attending, it appears to have been very misty so at least those sitting at the back will not have been subjected to the full horror of this traincrash.
BtP: Was QT not an in-house production initially and was outsourced as part of a feeble attempt to show that London was augmenting their Scottish output?
Correct.
My mistake was not socialising with the power elite, or for that matter, sleeping with them.
Paul Hutcheon’s narrow and clearly biased article about Rev Stu does list the viewing stats for WOS.
If I were a reader of SH, having maybe not been a WOS visitor, I would want to see what the “phenomenon” was all about.
I would be drawn to “New readers start here” and then “First time visitor? Click here to see what we’re all about”. The articles and materials in there are excellent.
Ronnie: Grouse Beater, thanks for the Herald link, got my comment in.
Good man!
There’s a epigram somewhere in that: ‘He who gets his comment in, get’s his reward, or in Stuart Campbell’s case, his comeuppance.
Grousebeater
Do tell
no kisses needed.
BtP: Do tell…
Chuckle.
I was so slow on the uptake – two colleagues were witness -busily making the pitch on behalf of the assembled Scots talent, I didn’t realise what he was suggesting thinking he meant the broadcaster’s normal bank account was in Switzerland … d’oh!
@Hetty
Your post reminds me of Cicero’s quote:
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the ("Tractor" - Ed) moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the ("Tractor" - Ed) appears not a ("Tractor" - Ed); he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
@muttley79
For me Paul Hutcheon’s best pieces were his Wendy Alexander ‘Bring it on’ and Wendygate articles. It was the first time I remember a Scottish journalist looking at the corruption endemic in the Labour Party and holding it to account.
I would have thought that Paul would have took more pride in his work than a standard ‘slight piece’.
Grouse Beater
I was thinking more about the salacious stuff.
Slow day here in rural France perdue.
Sorry for going O/T here but if anyone is planning to make a pro independence album then perhaps this song could be considered for inclusion? 😉
link to tinyurl.com
Grouse Beater
If you were to try to set up a bank account in Switzerland, you would be very lucky to find a Bank which would entertain you for less than about €4 millions.
Two very different interviews, Judith’s being about the subject at hand and Paul’s some sort of sub New Musical Express effort.
It would have made more sense for Judith to have interviewed both.
L A
What about this, a classic?
Wonder if we could coax him out of retirement for out post Yes concert?
link to youtube.com
BtP: I was thinking more about the salacious stuff.
The dalliances and peccadilloes of the rich and powerful will have to wait. I’m off to Sunday chores – up an old pair of ladders fixing cracks in a large wooden porch, burn off old paint, hot bits falling on bare arms, sand the timber, undercoat it, legs aching with cramp!
Rather like the No campaign’s politics, I carry out my duties balancing precariously on a shaky erection.
To be fair BtP I’d have put that down more as a song for the unionists to sing AFTER we win in September. 😛
Hand & Shrimp: Paul’s [article] some sort of sub New Musical Express effort.
Ha! That was also my first impression, interviewing an infamous, smash up hotel rooms, second-grade pop star.
One caveat I would highlight is that being called a troublemaker in a political context is not a bad thing. I think most of my favourite politicians have been troublemakers in one way or another.
I’m one of those plebs who never really learned to READ and coupled with my levels of laziness, I find myself in the fortunate position of not feeling as let down by SH as some may be. They weren’t there when we all started, so f*ck ’em !
@galamcennalath says: 20 July, 2014 at 12:00 pm
“There are two distinct roles in society which seem to attract a disproportionately large number of useless people! Firstly troughing politicians and secondly incompetent journalists!”
Did you forget the most useless feckless, talentless, brainless and sensless group of numpties that ever sooked a Dummy Teat?
TA! DA!
The ‘Celebs
Just watched a part of the “Scottish Select Committee” with Davidson and Tomkins, got fed up after 25 min of Tomkins prattling on about his time with the Committee at the Scottish parliament.
All that time he was going on about his “terrible experience” of being interrupted. The wee sweetie! Given all the air he needs by Davidson et all. Meanwhile Davidson pointing out how their Committee would NEVER do that. All to deride Scotland.
Up till I had enough, I heard hardly anything about their agenda of the same. Who up here would want to listen to any of them in such a kangaroo (NO) court.
Hi Grouse Beater (and for others).
You typed, at 12:03 pm
“Ronnie, get onto the Sunday Herald’s site, click on ‘Politics’ top of the Home Page, there you’ll find both articles. (You’re allowed to read three articles before they stop you surfing their pages and ask you to sign up and pay.)
There’s an add-on available for Firefox which is VERY useful.
From the web site:
“This is a simple extension that allows you to remove all the cookies of site you are on. It adds a right-click menu item and a toolbar button to do the operation.
It only removes cookies that are the part of the current site. For example, if you are on http://www.google.com, it will delete cookies by “google.com”, but will not remove those set by “images.google.com”.
What you do is go the Herald page and, if you have used up your free entitlement, you right-click on the page and find that there is now a menu item “Remove cookies for site”.
You select that, then reload the page and the web site thinks you are a new visitor, because it doesn’t find any cookies on your machine. Hence, you get the full article.
You can download and install here:
link to dwipal.com
Robert Pfeffers
We are not amused.
Sunday Herald suddenly switching from very pro UK to Yes is merely the suits playing politics and protecting company/professional reputation.
One newspaper out of what 30+ changes side and seems like nothing out here but for teamGB politics, it’s same old bullshit around BBC bias. As in, “we can’t be biased, we get complaints from all sides, it’s what makes yewkay journalism great”
Or who can remember Ian Davidson MP telling newsnicht they were hopelessly biased to Yes and oh the outrage from the nice BBC lady too. Old school politico lying bloater up from Westminster, plus expenses.
We’ve been had.
FFS they done you no favours there a knife in the back O/T maybe this will cheer you up
Willie Bain Mp doing the rounds(or wobbling around about 25 stone) up here with his no thanks bullshit and the Yes Puppies were snarling at the window he got close to the door seen my Yes sticker and ran away wish i had shouted “release the hounds ” bastirt a lost moment i will never get back. So it looks like they believe there is no chance of convincing a yes to no
@MoJo says: 20 July, 2014 at 12:32 pm
“O/T but to cheer folks up -yesterday’s New York Times has run a piece with headline Scottish Independence is Inevitable.
We are playing on a bigger playing field here and we are winning ….who cares about the Sunday Herald ….
link to nytimes.com
“On resiste a l’invasion des armees; on ne resiste pas a l’invasion des idees”. (“One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas”).
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Funnily enough just cancelled my Sunday Herald order at my local newsagent. It is not living up to my expectations. I expected good investigative journalism on e.g. The McCrone Report, Willie McRae etc.
Here is a song that could be Scotland’s song to Westminster, listen to the Lyrics, it could have been written for us, it is brilliant. ( Something inside so strong )
link to youtube.com
To be honest, if I were Paul Hutcheon’s boss, I’d seriously be wondering why I paid for his time and plane fare to fly down to Bath to interview Stu. There’s nothing in that article that Paul couldn’t have gotten simply by googling it. Quite frankly, I could have written the same thing via simple internet search. Why did he go to the bother of a face-to-face interview? It reads to me as though he had already written the piece before even meeting with Stu.
Is the campaign for Scottish independence the only fight for independence the Labour Party have actively fought against?
@Grouse Beater
Please nip the navel gazing in the bud, and don’t encourage others on this.
If you have a grouse about an issue then do something about it: I thought that was your intent on choosing such a name for this website?
As Dave McEwan -Hill has pointed out many people will be attracted to Wings as a result of Paul Hutcheon’s Herald piece. In any Indy conversation, we can now, even more-so, say that Wings is an acknowledged credible information source in the Indy debate, hence Stu’s recognition and interviews, of which there are now many, in the MSM.
We know Paul Hutcheon and all the Bitters go to Wings to guage the mood and they will be loving this thread – “Paranoid Nats desert their precious wee Sunday Herald because of a non-puff piece on Rev Stu”
C’mon. If we believe in ourselves, and our message, this matters not a jot. Are we so precious and fragile at this late stage; when the momentum is prove-ably with us? (Remember the mega headlines the FT has given us lately, upon which Yes Scotland rightly relies)
All who post here will have read Wee Ginger Dug’s “Get Canvassing” post
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
If one can articulate via a keyboard, then you can telephone canvass efficiently. Contact your local Yes Group, get a Yesmo account and telephone canvass if you can’t get out on the street like I do. And let’s stop this inward looking pish – playing – as usual to the No side’s agenda.
BTW, GB you are an invaluable commenter on this site . Keep up the good work. My comment is observational, not personal 🙂
@ Bugger.
Got your name added.
@ Tattie Bogle,
“release the hounds ”
That wid have gein him the skitters.
🙂
GP taa
@Quentin Quale says: 20 July, 2014 at 3:15 pm
“Is the campaign for Scottish independence the only fight for independence the Labour Party have actively fought against?”.
Never forget that what is left of the Labour Party that was begun by a Kier Hardie, a former member of the Scottish Crofter’s Party and sponsored by the Trade Unions and the Liberals. It became the Labour movement composed of the Unions, Co-operative movement and the Labour Party.
First it distanced itself from the co-op movement, has almost done so now with the Trade Unions and instead of MPs sponsored by the Co-op and unions is, “noo fu tae the gunnals”, with career political persons from the upper earning classes with top University graduations who have never done an honest day’s work in their otherwise cosseted, comfortable lives.
Briandoonthetoon, many thanks for the Firefox cookie tip
My flirtation with the Sunday Herald is now over.
I now think that their ‘coming out’ for Yes was for purely financial reasons and they don’t deserve our hard earned cash.
Stu, as Oscar Wilde famously quipped,”There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”. Sure, the article may put less alert readers off you personally, but they are hardly going to vote NO because of this ‘malice aforethought’. On the other hand, if it gets even one ‘undecided’ to visit your site, he/she, like the rest of us, will become addicted and vote YES. It’s a win, win situation. Our enemies make us strong. I hope that your skin is as thick as the armadillo’s.
And another thing, there are two particularly good pieces in the Sunday Herald this week by Iain MacWhirter and Ian Bell. The piece by Ian Bell is outstanding. I’m afraid Paul Hutcheon’s piece makes him look like a rank amateur in comparison with the two Ians. A wee tip to Paul – if you’re going to write a character assassination piece, don’t do it the same week your colleagues write really professional, researched articles – otherwise you’ll look second-rate.
Invite Prof Jezereena Tomkins on WoS for an EU/rUK/SCO style q&a, as in where does his fanatical vote no constitutional bias sit with Cons like this guy?
link to theguardian.com
I haven’t read the whole string so forgive me if I’m repeating what someone else has already said.
A number of years ago Paul Hutcheon penned an article (in the Herald I think) expressing his personal dislike for Alex Salmond, the SNP and independence politics generally which he compared sarcastically with ‘real’ politics i.e. the Labour Party variety. Main thing to note was the personal element – I thought he was brown-nosing for a job, but it seems to be his own thinking.
I never forget an enemy and I wondered when he would out himself on the so-called independence supporting Sunday Herald..
I’ve never met Stu. Perhaps one day I will and if I do I’ll decide over a one to one chat whether I like him as a person and someone who I’d like to call a friend. What I do know is his exposes and brilliant investigative journalism cuts to the heart of what is fast becoming a desperate rear-guard action by a floundering No campaign and their cohorts. That is why I read Wings. The fact that an incredibly poor example of the technique of newspaper interview does not heap praise on him is beside the point. The weekly comment by McWhirter alone is reason enough to keep buying the Herald, I would think, but ultimately it is Stu’s work on this site which will help carry the day.
Jeannie it’s not just an attack on WoS, it’s the wildly grovelling stuff on Prof Aleisalbas Tomkins.
I remember back in the dying days of the McConnell administration, Hutcheon was the darling of the proto-cybernats. He shredded McConnell like a pro. One day when he didn’t have an article, Jo Greenhorn or someone asked if Labour had kidnapped him and were holding him incommunicado.
There wasn’t a picture on his articles then, so I was intrigued when he was invited on to Newsnight. Well well. Talk about scales falling from my eyes.
Bitter wee man whose only talent is to write hatchet-jobs. During the conversation on the BBC it became abundantly clear that he was someone who would put the boot into anyone, justified or not, if it would get him a few column inches. It so happened that SLAB had been his target but I knew then that he’d turn on anyone in power, whether they were doing a good job or not, and whether or not his attack was justified.
I wasn’t wrong. He’s a despicable hack.
Even IN THE HOT SEAT header is bollox. What’s hot about the seat the herald liggers have plonked him in, too close to the radiator?
Part of the problem is that many of our top “journalists” made their names in the days when Labour ruled and their reputation was made in analysis of the minutiae of Slab politicking. Just as the Labour party they so diligently scrutinised they have not made the transition to a non-Labour Scotland and, as Slab, dinosaurs like Hutcheon, Crichton, Gardham, Gill roam the MSM trying to tread on all the new that threatens their pensions.
Interesting to note that Ian Mackay at 2.22 above states For me Paul Hutcheon’s best pieces were his Wendy Alexander ‘Bring it on’ and Wendygate articles. It was the first time I remember a Scottish journalist looking at the corruption endemic in the Labour Party and holding it to account. which helps to prove my point.
About the only one of the breed that has accepted his irrelevance to the modern world is Brian Toodle Oo who now just reworks his English essays from St Andrew’s student days both on the one hand and the other, its your choice and I’m eligible for my pension in XXX days. What is needed is a Chicxulub to put these modern day dinosaurs out of their misery and 18th September sounds like the best candidate.
Scene from Braveheart (2014 anniversary IndyRef Cybernat’s cut):-
Sunday Herald Editor: A rebellion has begun.
Newsquest Director: Under whom?
Sunday Herald Editor: A commoner named Stuart Campbell.
Newsquest Director: We will embrace this rebellion. Support it from the Sunday Herald. I will gain English favour by condemning it, and ordering it opposed from the daily Herald.
Adam Tomkins, what makes you so special?
I am being forced to choose…would I want to stay in a powerless Scotland as a Yes voter?
You utter twat.
just watching “Blethering Referendum” programme on BBC, what drivel , supposed to be funny but absolutely pathetic.
Those of you who are cancelling the paper- you did read other articles, didn’t you?
Is someone forcing those 250,000 unique users mentioned to read wings every month? What about the followers on Twitter 15,200 c.f. 3385 for the other chap (they quoted these so therefore Stu is more important to them?) The circulation of the paper is… 24,000 I think their site says. How many readers decided not to vote yes because one article was uncomplimentary?
Hopefully none, certainly less than will want a wee look at the rogue’s very successful page 🙂
Keep calm and focussed :-0
He also stated the Yes Campaign disavows itself from all published on this site.
Yeah, that’ll be why at yesterday’s Yes Clydesdale canvass meeting there were three activists wearing Wings t-shirts. (And mine was the only one from the Wings Megastore, the others had been made up by the wearers themselves to include the url.) That’ll be why the leaflet we were giving out listing good indy sites (not Aye Right, a locally-produced one) had Wings second on the list. That’ll be why Yes Tweeddale thanked me for getting more Aye Right leaflets and wants more of the Wings leaflet to target the undecided.
That’ll be why many of the Clydesdale activists wanted to talk to me about Wings, because they know I post here and have had a couple of articles published.
That comment is exactly what Duncan Hotdogstall and his mates have been trying to propagate for months. It’s not true. None of the Yes groups have been told not to publicise Wings and they are gleefully publicising it with all the gusto they can manage. Hutcheon is a lying hack.
He’s special because he’s monstering Scotland running Scotland with the aid of a crystal ball and plain old fashioned BetterTogether fear mongering lies. No wonder BBC loves this guy and he sure loves UKIP or the BBC fact that Scotland now loves UKIP. What a Triumph of BBC attack propaganda that was.
Plus he’s rather keen to frighten people over immigration into Scotland and all those bloody foreign types. So Tomkins is very sneery/mocking about SNP Scots.gov immigration projection of 24 thousand a year or somewhere the size of Dundee he fears. Tomkins knows that net immigration to Scotland is roughly 24 thousand now and has been for over a decade, but why let facts get in the way of ivory tower BetterTogether no thanks polemics.
link to notesfromnorthbritain.wordpress.com
There’s also a creepy end to his blog above that says the UKOK benefit for Scotland is that the UK is a force for good in the world but you might not hear that kind of thing in the Middle East say, for a very long time.
Also, why exactly would the UK suddenly stop being a force for good in the world should Scotland vote Yes for democracy in Holyrood and a Scotland actually running Scotland, is just some more real world question that the good Prof ignores completely.
Must work harder Aleisbadas, seem me after class.
Hey Indy Scot that is just what my Husband and I were saying. We got no choice until now and we are still not being allowed a fair and free choice. He got it just like he wanted it for all of his life up till now.
Knickers in a twist resume
Some of Paul Hutcheon’s recent assaults
“Labour Row over Holyrood candidate selections”
“CBI director being forced to quit”
“Union backs NO side after hearing only one side”
“Darling’s link to treasury mandarin revealed”
“Tory chairman savages Better Together’s Darling”
As I said Paul Hutcheon is an attack dog and if somebody indicates something or somebody he can attack he will do so. In the natural order of things those in power make the better and more attractive targets.
That’s the newspapers for you.
I am entirely confident that Stu can look after himself but I certainly wouldn’t ever agree to be the subject of a Paul Hutcheon feature.
Indigo says
Dave I read the article from the lady raised within the OO on the Wee Ginger Dog blog, and I noted that there was no reference to the blog that inspired the article in the SH coverage, which tbh I thought was a bit disrespectful.
Incorrect. They said “This is an edited version of the letter Lauren Reid wrote to the pro-independence Wee Ginger Dug website”.
A lot of toys being thrown from prams from folk I respect and would consider more intelligent than me. The SH has reporters that are not pro-independence so should we be surprised at the occasional hatchet piece? By and large, week in, week out, it is very pro-indy. This week for example!
Someone said earlier it had suddenly gone from very pro-UK to for Yes. I don’t think that person could have been a regular buyer as it had been very Yes-friendly for a couple of years, so much so that it was no real surprise to any regular reader when it came out and had that famous front page.
Finally, is it just me that has no clue what heedtracker is on about when he mentions Slovenia every time he talks about Prof Tomkins?
Alan Taylor’s light-hearted diary in the Herald has been calling Salmond “Alexei Salmonella” for many years. Long before he was FM in fact. He has equally ludicrous names for other politicians and luminaries.
For goodness sake get a sense of perspective.
For goodness sake get a sense of perspective.
I would if I could, but I can’t so I won’t and just carry on regardless! 😉 😛
@briandoonthetoon, thanks for the cookie tip,ah should have done that longago.
“For goodness sake get a sense of perspective.” Indeed which is why Herald decided that the Hillsborough tragedy in Sheffield, April 1989, is relevant to his reportage and why raving No Prof Tomkins gets such a lovely full page puff in pro Yes Herald. Do go on dear:D
@ Indigo,Slovenia is a Troll suspected to be Tomkins
If the poster, named Andy, cares to hie himself over to the article, “In other news,The Pope, Catholic”, he will find a reply to what seems a direct attack upon my posting.
I have been buying 2 copies of SH every week just to support the paper, I am stopping it now!
By the way, HandandShrimp, would you mid most awfully turning into Nogbad for a minute and going over to JREF to vote on my poll? (100% Yes so far, obviously Soapy Sam, Nessie and Mummymonkey haven’t seen it yet.)
@ Morag G K, the reason Yes Scotland advised not to give out Aye Right leaflets,was they,re was no Printers name on them, that was before the Official Campain started in case there was any complaints from BT,all the new leaflets comply with the Electorial Commission rules, ie Printer name address ect.
What has become clear to me is that journalists, political commentators and the likes have now come to realise that The Rev is now more important than they are, and they don’t like it, and they are not sure how to deal with it.
Heedtracker, criticise what is open to criticism, but for goodness sake if someone is going to stop buying the Herald just because they just noticed that Alan Taylor has funny names for Scottish luminaries that he’s been using in his spoof diary articles for decades, that’s a complete loss of perspective.
Ronnie, I believe it was only one group that mentioned something about not using the Aye Right leaflets for that reason. As you said, the newer ones have an imprint and they are still being distributed.
I remember Paul Hutcheon from what seems now to be the dim and distant past when we cybernats waited up beyond midnight of a Saturday evening to see what the pundits were saying about independence in the Sunday papers. Those were the days when the Herald actually had a Sunday paper at midnight. Now e have to wait ’till daybreak for the finished article.
We thought at the time that Paul was a YES supporter after reading what seemed to be sympathetic nuances into some of his articles, but I remember him making a very robust response to comments on his articles that he was not a YES supporter. Not much change there then. He seems to have been well rewarded as he climbed the greasy poll to his exalted position.
At the same time the Herald was giving our comments dogs abuse in the shape of their columnist of the time Douglas Fraser now, huddled up with BBC Scotland.
@Indy_Scot says: 20 July, 2014 at 5:04 pm
“What has become clear to me is that journalists, political commentators and the likes have now come to realise that The Rev is now more important than they are, and they don’t like it, and they are not sure how to deal with it.”
They need to learn the most basic of all the rules of journalism. Tell the truth.
Now where did I read that quote again – “The Truth will make you free”?
Well at least don’t get caught telling lies
Wis it no sam gadgie ca’d Jock?
(“If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” John 8:32)
If Paul Hutcheon is the attack dog and Judith Duffy the cuddly wee dug, why was Paul given the assignment to interview and Judith Prof Tomkins?
Who would have decided that and why?
Correction
Paul given the Rev and Judith, Prof Tomkins.
gettin worse
@ Morag Graham Kerr, it’s probably sheer frustration under the relentless vote No pressure from all BBC UKOK news media. You know that last straw, from a bunch of sneaks and creeps basically. Prof Tomkins goes “you’re all SNP fascists and moronic dictator worshipers ” but only anonymously in CiF Slovenia and he gets blanket worshipful fellatio teamGB style coverage.
WoS tells another Tory bloater hypocrite exactly what he is,Yes say goodbye, UKOK attack machine moves in for the coupe of grass, they wish.
OT couldn’t get the folowing to post on Off Topic
We have some friends of our son Ewen staying with us in Kirriemuir on holiday from Finland. They are an intelligent and talented bunch of kids and I took the opportunity to ask them about Scottish independence. This is a video from my tablet I took of that ‘interview’. It follows a very good jamming session where they came up with what I think is a very good ad hoc composition.
Please share if you think, as I do that this might promote the cause.
link to youtube.com
@ Chic McGregor, that wiz brilliant Chic, that laddy,s a braw fiddle player ,& to make a tune up like that def brilliant. thanks for shareing.
JWil, I remember that time too. Hutcheon was the darling of the less discriminating proto-cybernat. As I said, it was seeing him interviewed on Newsnight that opened my eyes, and then some. He’s a very nasty piece of work.
I think he could write good material, but the urge to stab his subject in the back (and anywhere else accessible) is too strong. He’s also a unionist of course.
@chic mcgregor
You have a son called Ewen McGregor??? Really enjoyed that wee clip from your Finnish visitors and the music was great.
@Robert Peffers, noo nae Biblical Quotes & mentions of the Rev in the same post. Am perfectly happy being described as a Winger ah dont want to be a Deciple ave nae Displine lol.
It’s funny, I read all the comments above and therefore didn’t bother even reading the Sunday Herald piece… and it struck me that I trust the opinions of all fellow Wingers, way more than I will ever trust the establishment press. 🙂
@Dave McEwan Hill
Do some folk think that the Sunday Herald should read as an uncritical YES pamphlet?
It kind of looks that way.
Recently the SH’s support for Yes has been so uncritical that I feared it would actually damage the campaign. Last week’s daft front page story about BT registering the wrong address was an example. They were in danger of becoming the Telegraph of Yes.
Now there’s one piece which is slanted against a Yes campaigner and people on here are saying they’ll never buy the paper again, its professed support must have been a sham etc.
Can anyone who’s making these claims point to a single other article in the SH in recent weeks which was biased against Yes?
After having considered binning my Sunday Herald unopened, I opened it to check up on the Alan Taylor diary, and then read the rest of it while carefully avoiding the “hot seat” part. (This involved some inventive folding as the end of the MacWhirter article is a sidebar to the Hutcheon piece.)
It’s decent enough with a lot of pro-independence journalism. It’s really just the Hot Seat stuff that is a disgrace. It looks to me like very bad editorial control rather than deliberate editorial malice. Hutcheon needs his evil black wings clipped though. Hatchet jobs are all very well, but only if they’re based on truth.
@Brian McHugh
I’d recommend the two articles by Iain MacWhirter and Ian Bell, though – especially Ian Bell. Ignore the Paul Hutcheon one – it’s clear to me that Hutcheon is simply at it with this one – honestly. A senior investigations journalist flies all the way to Bath to meet Stu face-to-face, interview him for 2 hours and all he can come up with is what everybody else already knows and can get by googling Stu’s name? What’s investigative about that?
But overall, when you look at ALL of their articles, I think it balances out not too badly. I’m hoping that Hutcheon’s article brings non-Wings readers onto the site, but it might also be that the article brings Iain MacWhirter and Ian Bell to the attention of Wings readers who don’t normally read their articles.
I think Stu knew what he was doing on this one.
link to adamtomkins.net
On another note, I wonder who Hutcheon’s got in his sites next.
First off, good to read a post from Jeannie, and Morag.
I agree with Dave McEwan Hill, let’s not be too quick to temper.McWhirter,Bell and Taylor are sufficient reason for me to buy the Sunday Herald.
Hutchison’s article is poor, and petty. As for me, “one of the leading linguist analysts in the UK” – C’mon if Prof Tomkins can “describe himself as one of leading constitutional law scholars in the UK”, why can’t I puff myself up? I consider Paul Hutcheon’s article to be piss poor.
“Notorious reviewer of video games”. Relevance to the referendum campaign.? And substantiation of this statement?
“Yes Scotland won’t touch Wings with a barge pole”. Eh?
I’ve just spent my afternoon door canvassing, and I’m Yes Lead Ambassador canvassing and extolling WOS? Oh and my tiny sample of today. Yes including Undecideds 60%. Excluding Undecideds 80%.
“He does not have a university qualification”: Yes but he has a sharp analytical brain, and that’s why WOS succeeds, Rev Stu articulates what we others are thinking.
“An IT literate troublemaker”. I know nothing about IT. I have learned to pay some attention to the views of those termed as troublemakers.
I think Stu hoped for better and now realises his time could have been better spent. Onwards and upwards.
You live and learn Stu.
Beware of Unionists offering you tea and cake and wanting a friendly wee chat.
Remember what happened to Alex Salmond when he got invited out by Alistair Campbell for a cosy chat.
Campbell turned the whole story on it’s head and absolutely slaughtered Alex Salmond.
As Velofello says, if Yes Scotland are uncomfortable with Wings, they haven’t bothered to tell the troops. (The troops who wouldn’t listen anyway.)
We’re putting out Aye Right leaflets and the Wings leaflets with the Yes material. Next door group (completely separate) was doing the same when I went to lend a hand yesterday. Several of their activists were canvassing and leafleting in Wings t-shirts. They also had a leaflet of their own promoting Wings prominently in their list of good indy sites.
Oops, looks like Paul Hutcheon has just slashed the SH circulation by hundreds, if not thousands.
I never expected a yes pamphlet from the SH, just a bit of fairness. This Wings-bad-Tomkins-good-vote-no-jam-tomorrow guff has nothing in common with fairness or good journalism.
I’m surprised they would be foolish enough to alienate so many readers with this shabby rubbish.
Oh, and note Hutcheon said “qualification”. Stu does in fact have a university education. He merely left before sitting his degree exams because he was headhunted by an employer.
@velofello
Hiya 🙂 Still got my badge!
@Jeannie
Aye, we named the poor bugger that just before the other yin became famous.
For years his nickname in Scotland was Obi.
“He does not have a university qualification”: ‘Yes but he has a sharp analytical brain’ – Oor Stuey is the Heineken of journos’ reaching the parts that other journos don’t (or wont)!’ If Smirnoff did journos, or Guinness did websites …….’. 🙂
No mention of the rats in the SH interview – strange.
Petty stuff,I’m sure they’ll both get a round house kick of justice at some point over the next wee while and on the 19th.
@velofello
““Yes Scotland won’t touch Wings with a barge pole”. Eh?
I’ve just spent my afternoon door canvassing, and I’m Yes Lead Ambassador canvassing and extolling WOS?”
And wings features heavily in our yes shop in Kirrie.
By the way, I did a couple of animated gifs of the Wings logo which can be used as a signature on emails, some folk have asked me how to do this.
A great way to show your support for wings and to direct correspondents to the web site.
***********
Yahoo installation. First, the main requirement is that you have a url for the animated gif i.e. that it exists somewhere on line. This is true of all email browsers not just Yahoo.
The one I am using below, resides in my online photobucket account, which is a free on line store.
You can see it here:
link to i51.photobucket.com
Note, it does not need to be in my photobucket account, you can download it and copy it into any on line store of your choice and use the url for that. Note however, that not all on line stores allow full direct gif access. e.g. dropbox doesn’t work. But it needs to be on line and accessible somewhere. I would strongly recommend using photobucket.
Next, how to get it into a Yahoo sig.
On a desktop or laptop (Windows 7). Get into your yahoo email account. There should be a ‘cog wheel’ in the top RH corner.
Click on that, select ‘settings’
Now select ‘Writing email’
A page with a signature box should appear.
Make sure the signature box is set to Rich Text,
Next, in a new internet browser window open up your photobucket gif, either the url above or one to a photobucket account of your own. With the gif running in photobucket. Place you cursor over it and right click and select copy.
Move your cursor into the sig. box in the other browser window. Right click and select paste.
[Note selecting the url from the ‘links’ options box on the right of the running gif in photobucket and pasting that will not work. It isn’t like facebook.]
The gif should then appear in your sig. box.
Next, to set it so that when you click on it at the bottom of an email, it will take you directly to Wings,
You need to highlight it by using your cusor. It will assume a blue overlay to let you know when it is highlighted.
Click on the link symbol at the top of the box and enter the Wings url
Save the job.
That should be it.
**************
The Herald is playing with your emotions; the daily version is so full of shite, it causes angry readers to write in or click the comments pages just so they can claim an increase in the ad click rate.
The Sunday version coming out for YES remains a see through scam to halt the plunging sales volume. But even they still can’t help themselves.
I would have preferred of course if they stuck to fact based articles while questioning everyone with the same investigative veracity & throwing in their conclusion whatever that was.
Instead, every edition is a mishmash of extremist Unionist propaganda, mostly poorly written & rarely investigated for truth or fact.
The result is basically a comic standard daily/WE edition of light news & puerile claims supported by aggressive bigots like OBE who are given free reign to write whatever twisted invective he awoke to while dreaming it up, that day.
Instead of clicking their pages or buying their hard copies why not send a monthly cheque to Better Together? The output & effect is exactly the same if that’s what tickles your fancy.
Alternatively, ignore this garbage & focus on the undecide voters who come here looking for evidence in order to reach a considered decision, whatever their resultant choice may be. And if someone comes here & still choses NO, that’s fine.
But don’t finance The Herald because you’re only enabling it to twist the facts & deliver extremist propaganda to folks who can’t make up their minds yet.
@ronnie anderson says: 20 July, 2014 at 6:02 pm@
“@Robert Peffers, noo nae Biblical Quotes & mentions of the Rev in the same post. Am perfectly happy being described as a Winger ah dont want to be a Deciple ave nae Displine lol.”
Ach! That’s aa richt, Ronnie. Ah divna hae ony religion ava, masel. Ah jist read a lot an hae an afu guid memory.
Onywey! Ye dinna hae tae fash until efter ye get twa wings … an ane o yon lichtit up circles roond abin yer heid.
:-))
Well thats wan Rory a very happy chappy, noo whits happenin wie oor wee pet lamb Rory the Tory is the foundation layed yet.
‘ Robert Peffers, its a hollow heid ah hiv an nae place tae stick the Halo.
It’ll be the internet “wot won it” for Yes.
@ronnie Anderson
Here you go Ronnie…stane laid. Hahahahahaha
link to itv.com
Harry McAye
Thanks for that clarification, that acknowledgement for wee ginger dug wasn’t on the online version which is where I read it, haven’t opened my hard copy of last weeks paper yet
From my recollection all of the comparative articles written since the Sunday Herald declared for Yes have resulted in an obvious hatchet job on the Yes supporter. Banks, the business for scotland leader was unfairly treated and this has been the case in these comparative articles. I was not surprised by todays offering.
Hi Chic.
That’s a fine wee GIF!
I like the animated wings as it lands…
Wee ginger dug makes a good point – is there a freepost address for the cairn that we can send stones to?
When you think about it, when journalists from independent countries descend on our country as the indyref gets nearer and find that our country has a media 100% against its independence, they may be inclined to question its democratic credentials, and what the feck is going on.
Our one day a week Sunday Herald trumpeting for YES may have been but a fig leaf? Maybe? will we ever know?
On the other hand if Sunday Herald is for YES, then to keep its credibility intact, surely that would not be maintained by churning out BT ”scare in tatters” every week.
However, I cant forget the kicking it has given the onion on its front pages over the last few months, and MacWhirter and Bell I do not doubt, so on balance I will stick with it.
@G H Graham
every edition is a mishmash of extremist Unionist propaganda, mostly poorly written & rarely investigated for truth or fact.
Please, point us to some of the “extremist Unionist propaganda” in the Sunday Herald. If it’s in every edition it should be easy to find an example.
ronnie anderson says: 20 July, 2014 at 6:59 pm
“Well thats wan Rory a very happy chappy, noo whits happenin wie oor wee pet lamb Rory the Tory is the foundation layed yet.”
I think this is Rory’s master plan for after we get our independence. He plans to have these cairns every 100yds right across the border. Then man them with EDL members to throw stones from the cairns at any Scot who dares to try and get into England.
He hasn’t thought this through, though, there’ll be so many Scots coming home that the ammo will be on the wrong side of the border and there’ll be sneaky English folks among them looking for free prescriptions, free elderly care and free education his EDL lot won’t know who to throw the stones at.
@ Nana Smith, thanks Nana by the lookes of it its gonna be rid white n blue wai awe they painted stane’s, ah wonder if anyboy fae Essex sent some Stains.
Maybe Rory is trying to build Hadrian’s wall in the right place?
O/T
WTF have BBC Scotland done with our National flag.
There was a concert in Edinburgh last night to do with the Commonwealth Games and I never saw a Saltire all night.
Then on news reports on BBC News 24 and Reporting Scotland at various times today, they have been updating us on the progress on the Queen’s Baton. Not a Saltire in sight.
It’s as if the have made a conscious decision NOT to show the Saltire. This is getting serious now.
We should be letting BBC Scotland know that it is our National flag and we demand to have it shown on our TV screens.
If you were a don’t know or a foreign journalist covering Scotland 2014, after reading both the articles up there from Sunday Herald, who would you trust, listen to with respect, want to report on etc?
Thing is Prof Tomkins, Jezereena, Aliealabadas, don’t you even think about quitting your endless vote NO you fascist and dictator Scots CiFing and your creepy buffoonish anti Holyrood Commons Committee displays, you do so much harm to Bliar Macbloater’s big con, you’re worth his weight in pies.
@Robert Peffers, an ah hiv a dasterdly plan tae throw them stanes back, anybody want tae crowdfund Bungee Ropes an a big widden thingy.
Agree completely about it being a sham article.
I have never found the need to examine Stu’s opinion on hillsborough.
Mine is simple though, The police were a disgrace after the event. Useless during the event (lined horses across the centre circle thinking forest fans wanted to fight when they wanted to help).
The refusal to delay the KO to accomodate pressures from tv companies was a factor, as was a failure to recognise earlier what was happening.
There is One area where i shall defend the police to an extent.
The opening of the barn gates at the turnstyles was critical imo to events that day.
There is actually video of events at that gate which never gets airtime. If the gate was not opened people imo would have died outside in the dangerous swaying crush.
The liverpool fans outside causing that crush outside pressurised the police to open the gates, and the results of their actions wete catastrophic.
The whole thing was an example of useless crowd management and co operation by various authorities.
There would have been crush casualties regardless, but those whose actions gave the police the decision to open that gate have a lot of responsibility for what followed.
The innocent as always were those who tragically paid the price.
The resultant reprehensible behaviour of the authorities and the Sun newspaper in particular is as bad, worse even, as the mismanagement on the day.
Sorry about going on a bit there, but the hypocracy about hillsborough is breathtaking at times.
I’ve now read both articles. The NO guy sounds very elitist. He really does not like the hoi polloi (you & me)having our say, does he? We should leave it to our betters (him). Great that he’s clinging rather desperately to his ivory-tower side-kick Curtice’s polls to estimate a 60% NO win. Pretty rickety crutches of belief. History is not kind to polls. Polls did not foresee the two Obama victories. Polls were wrong over Kinnock’s expected landslide. Polls were spectacularly wrong in the last two SNP wins in 2007 and 2011. Curtice tried to say he was the only one who DID foresee both SNP wins. If so, he kept very quiet about both! [Well he would, he does think very highly of himself & he needs to convince those who pay for polls that they actually amount to a hill of beans; which they don’t]. POlls did not foresee UKIP wins from Labour heartlands in the UK EU elections or the far right wins in France in same election. Polls are weighted on previous party loyalty but, HELLO, there has never been a vote for Scottish Independence, so that ‘weighting’ is no indicator. Polls have excluded vast hinterlands, e.g those with no internet connection (26% of Scots households), those with no landline phone connection, deprived urban areas, isolated rural areas, the list goes on & on.
The Sunday Herald backing independence is clearly a commercial decision not an editorial decision.
Interesting Colour balance on the photos as well, stu is a bit pink, like an angry person whilst Prof Tomkins is basked in the comforting warm glow of the sun. Just saying.
The Sunday Herald is a newspaper. Not a propaganda sheet. There too many of those already.
Yes, and 87.5% of statistics are made up on the spot 🙂
@Chic McGregor
Nice video clip. Talented young people.
Nicola Benedetti has a new album called “Homecoming” which can be sampled here. Stunning violin playing of some old favourites.
link to youtube.com
Don’t forget though That the official yes campaign doesn’t “approve” of this site bizarrely while the likes of Jim Sillars buys into the no camps vile cybernat propaganda.
So you could argue that the SHerald being a bit biased against it as well is sort of towing the yes line, um couldn’t you?
I don’t know anyone who has ever been asked for a political opinion, ever. Perhaps i am in the wrong demographic, Central belt, working for min wage… consequently, i tend to ignore them.
I see Tory Rory Stewart wasnae alane either Nana. That pathetic excuse of a Tory David Mundell was there as well to give a cheer for the release of the red, white and blue balloons, just in case no one else did! How dare he. One minute he’s opening Food banks like the queen next minute he’s cheering bloody balloons. He is a disgrace. Just as well we didn’t visit their wee *ahem* building site today. Mundell is still suffering the after effects of me tearing strips off him the other week I don’t think he’d survive me tearing another strip off of him today. 😛
I confess I didn’t read the AbiesJezeeraAlbaTomkins interview. I’ve heard quite enough fanaticism from that front thanks.
The interview with Stu made me laugh though “I don’t particularly care if people don’t want to be associated with us”. Spot on the money. I was expecting more of an assassination piece frankly given the author.
This isn’t like any other campaign ever held in the UK.
I watched McKenna on some panel the other day & he said (I paraphrase probably) “its great, politicians are horrified that the hoi-polloi are getting involved all over the internet” 😀
When its a Yes vote then it won’t be the Sun wot won it, it’ll be the internet providing info & linking up like-minded people like you.
We live in interesting times.
Sorry O/T second time today! Won`t do it again!
AYE RIGHT LEAFLETS
Final order to printer for leaflets. Must have any orders (5K minimum) by mid day next friday.
Orders to :- gavinlessells AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk
I repeat a comment I had posted on 12th July, in reply to G H Graham:
G H Graham,
“Only a gullible idiot would b(u)y the Sunday Herald.”
Anyone buying it for its ‘Yes support’ is certainly gullible.
It is simply opportunistic token support and its editor has been heard sneering at and criticising Yes supporters.
The same will apply if either the Record and / or Sun ‘come out’ for Yes.
They are doing it for themselves, not for Scotland.
Absolutely no need for us to buy these papers.
Let them do it their own expense, not ours. For once, let us take advantage without being fooled and paying for it.
Many posters here are scathing about people continuing to vote for Labour despite what Labour stands for these days.
Posters here are extremely well informed on political matters yet were so easily duped into buying the Sunday Herald.
Maybe posters should now look at ‘diehard’ Labour voters in this light.
Labour voters are thoroughly decent, fair minded folks, trusting of the BBC and the MSM, who have been misled for generations.
If we can be so easily duped is it any wonder that poor Labour voters are?
“An IT literate trouble maker” lol.
Or just a man who is a good journalist hence the 4.5 million page views a month. I wonder how many people read the gentleman who wrote this article.
I’ll still be buying the Sunday Herald. The editor has previously told us that not all the staff were in favour of the paper coming out for YES. Ian MacWhirter’s article was pro Indy. Ian Bell’s also.The letters page is well balanced.
One poor article is no reason to withdraw support!
Yup I hated the last paragraph in PAUL Hutcheon’S article. Clearly designed to shock.
Was only on reading the Tomkin’s interview that the different interview styles became aparent. In short The Rev was put on the defensive whilst Tomkins was allowed to put forward his views on the Referendum.
Paul Hutcheon disappointed me here with his less than subtle jibes. Maybe he was overawed meeting an investigative journalist.
@ a2, ignore awe that shite, Yes campainers are the backbone Grassrooters dont think for a nano second their listening to Jim Sillers about Cybernats ( us Wingers )are yes campainers tae & were invited tae the Yes in Strathclyde Park event & very welcomed we were to ,same at the BBC Demo’s Wingers are buisy distributing leaflets/anything we can get our hands on.We,re well prepared for the next BBC Demo,thanks to Kendomacaroonbar giving us Badges + the Badges we ordered ourseleves & the campain material from Airdrie & Shotts Yes group.
@Lesley-Anne
As you say they are a disgrace. I received an ‘invitation’ from John Thurso to join him in campaigning for a no vote. I have written a reply in which I tried to be polite however I failed.
I am at the stage where my anger at the mps [naysayers] is making my body hurt. Having to take deep breaths or I will explode.
What got me was the sneering about no uni degree, let me get this right, my opinion is worthless if i am only a builder, plumber, bricklayer or bin man? Clowns like this guy really gets oan ma …. chest..He has a degree, and just uses it to write crap, without digging as deep as my 8 year old nephew would. If we ignore him, he might go away.
Just in, this from our roving reporter at the grand *ahem* build in Gretna today. (Don’t worry folks it wasn’t me link provided by AyeHaveADream, over on Twitter.) 😉 😛
link to tinyurl.com
caz-m, to be fair to the BBC (yes, I know) there have been plenty of Baton Reports showing plenty of saltires. I didn’t watch the Edinburgh thing and it seems that was the correct decision.
RE My previous post Willie Bain MP stopped my cousin on the street and asked are you voting in the referendum she said aye, to which he replied you’re voting yes aren’t you , You can tell. I thought mmmm maybe they don’t think jock public will be voting in droves unless they are voting yes
lesley-anne they just no cairn anymore
T.B. I’m beginning to think that the game’s afoot, as a certain private investigator would say ;). It would appear that at least one or two individual unionists are beginning to see that the end is nigh, so to speak. 😛
Tattie-bogle says:
lesley-anne they just no cairn anymore
They’re no cairn anymore T.b.? 😉
Hell I’M no cairn anymore! 😛
Is spud murphy still a close personal “Labour Friend of Israel”? Who else in the party is a member and will they renounce their support for the childkillers?
Yes Spud is a Friend of all reactionaries and, like the whole of the Celtic Board, a big fan of the Jelly Bean.
@Lesley-Anne – Loved it when the piper was playing Flower of Scotland 🙂 Also would have loved to hear the conversation between Mundell and Rory..
Mundell – Well Rory what do you think?
Rory – Well David looks like I’ve made a cnut of myself
Aye Croop, I’m certain their conversation went along those sort of lines. 😛
as for Spud murphy it look like The republic of ireland have kicked out the israeli ambassador
link to secure.avaaz.org
or atleast they are trying to
Rock dear – you are being a wee bit silly (again).
Geeo, your thoughts about Hillsborough are scarily similar to Stu’s article. Get ready to be monstered by Paul Hutcheon and others.
Paula Rose says:
Rock dear – you are being a wee bit silly (again).
You tell him Paula. There’s only room enough for ONE *ahem “village idiot” on this site and I am that idiot end of. 😛
Tomkins is where journalists like Hutcheon are comfortable, regardless of content, a Prof is the appropriate authority figure.
Everybody else must be the subject of an article not the prime mover of it. So each is assigned a role and cut to fit the role.
Otherwise the whole world of the uncritical journalist comes tumbling down.
Jon D says: many people will be attracted to Wings as a result of Paul Hutcheon’s Herald piece
That’s your personal supposition. Had I not been a contributor here Hutcheon’s piece would have stopped me entering what is implied to be a rebel rousing clique.
But that isn’t the point – the point is the standard of the article, full of unproven assertions, innuendo, and shallow observation. It is the antithesis of the one on Tomkins. Why?
Intelligent readers can tell Tomkin’s politics are half-baked and seriously flawed. We don’t need it spelled out on the wall in spray can red.
For some reason Hutcheon decided to depict the one and only journalist with forensic ability to spot humbug, hypocrisy and lies, and dedicated enough to write well about them, as a loose cannon, an anarchist with no real politics, a video game ‘reviewer.’
Dammned by faint praise, and dismissed as a troublemaker.
I mentioned on another thread a while ago that in June when I was in Ukraine I spoke to quite a few people about independence and all of them were shocked when I said we didn’t have our own TV channels in Scotland and all the main newspapers were owned outside Scotland. However, really what we need in the future is better education rather than our simply our own media: educating kids at school to see newspapers and TV as NOT a source of reliable information. I think Calgacus MacAndrews was bang on with the way it is working with the herald.
As for Rev Stu and his attitudes to Hillsborough, Transgenders, or whatever else, I’m sure the readers here are grown enough to know that they are irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of what he prints.
@ Lesley-Anne – Wings rock chick (Marc).
Jeepster.
Gillie says: The Sunday Herald backing independence is clearly a commercial decision not an editorial decision.
I’m sorry to say I agree entirely with that opinion.
You can imagine both editors of the Herald and the SH deciding it is better to be seen with split loyalties, so whatever the result – the ‘Herald’ made the right one.
Their redeeming side is their employment of fearless freelancers who know what Scotland needs in the way of democratic powers and how to protect them.
I’m currently riding my White Swan Paula. 😉 😛
Grouse Beater and various others – wtf darlings, most of us have been busy talking to our brothers and sisters whilst you type away bemoaning the media. Get real – we are the children of the revolution.
O/T Does anyone who comments on the Guardian’s Cif know why they are allowing no comments on articles on the situation in the Gaza Strip? It seems rather odd, particular when the Arab League are saying that Israel has committed a war crime today.
You been talking to Telegram Sam Paula? 😛
Paula Rose: most of us have been busy talking to our brothers and sisters whilst you type away bemoaning the media
Good for you.
I did that too, and between my earlier posts and these last two demolished a third of an delapidated property, met a daughter for dinner, cleaned her car, answered some postsand wrote three business letters.
Crisiscult, the daft thing is that there’s nothing wrong with Stu’s attitude to women, transgender people or gays. There are examples of all of these categories posting happily on the forum – sometimes all three in one person!
His spoof tirade about 9/11 and this “Steve” guy getting cancer was deliberate hyperbole attempting to say the most shocking things he could dream up. It makes sense in context.
There’s another one where, after finding the WoS inbox full of commercial spam, he said “I hope there’s a special kind of cancer only spammers get!” This was also immediately pounced on as proof that he wishes cancer on people. (He also said “In other news, my penis is now 26 feet long,” which isn’t so often quoted.)
His Hillsborough article is thoughtful and indeed sensitive. I happen to disagree, although taking into account what Geeo just pointed out, maybe I don’t disagree as much as I originally did. Anyway, it’s a point of view. Was the sinking of the Titanic caused by an iceberg, or a poor lookout, or bad piloting decisions? You could argue from any position, while still acknowledging the importance of the other factors.
The real point is that the enemies of the independence movement are scared witless by Wings, more so than by the official Yes campaign. They have no come-back at all to his forensic demolition of the unionist arguments and the bias of the press. So they lift these things out of context to support an ad hominem attack. Don’t look at this man’s blog because he’s a bad person!
It’s all they’ve got, and that’s telling. It’s not working though. Yes campaigners across the country are promoting Wings at every house they visit, and Yes Scotland isn’t breathing a word to prevent them.
Oh Grouse Beater doll – I can get a wee bit het up, sorry dears – those high heels can pinch at times.
Morag dear – I’m glad I didn’t take him up on his generous offer, michty me!
Paula Rose: those high heels can pinch at times
You sound like Grayson Perry.
Stu gets attacked because he’s highly effective and extremely successful at what he is doing. Just as Alex Salmond gets attacked, and Nicola. They go for the people they are afraid of, those that show them up for what they are, and hope to bring them down. Those who don’t pose a threat don’t suffer attack.
And although these people can’t stop the attacks, they also know that the winner at the end of the day is likely to be Wings as the page views and unique readers rise yet again. But they’ve arched the stage they can’t stop themselves.
Funny that – I throw pots.
@muttley79
Terrible what is happening…
link to twitter.com
link to haaretz.com
@Cuilean
Polls did not foresee the two Obama victories. Polls were wrong over Kinnock’s expected landslide. Polls were spectacularly wrong in the last two SNP wins in 2007 and 2011.
Where are you getting all this?
It was universally predicted that Obama would win in 2008, and almost all surveys pointed to him being re-elected in 2012.
A modest Labour win was predicted in 1992 – not anything like a “landslide”.
In 2007, the polls were about right. If anything, they overstated the SNP: YouGov on the day before the vote had the SNP at 37% in the constituencies – they got 33%.
It’s true that the magnitude of the 2011 result surprised the pollsters. But they weren’t “spectacularly wrong”: they all had the SNP winning in the last month, and winning comfortably in the last week or two.
Rather than just claiming that the polls are all lies, we should be realistic about our current position, which is probably: behind, but close. You should have a look at the Scot Goes Pop! website, which examines the polls in a rational and sober way from a Yes perspective.
Keaton: they all had the SNP winning in the last month, and winning comfortably in the last week or two.
I don’t recall that at all. (You’re right about the others.) There was a general assumption Labour would return with a reasonable if reduced majority.
I always thought Grayson Perry sounded like Paula Rose…
@keaton
Prof Curtice maintained that a poll showing the SNP ahead around two weeks before the vote was ‘rogue’. He then attempted to obfuscate as the polls shifted towards the SNP in the final days.
The point that is being made is that the MSM is telling us that polls now are definitive, unchanging , absolute. Clearly an absurdity based on what happened in 2011.
Get out there and talk to people – then come back here and tell me we are not winning. Go on.
@ Brian – I gave him many tips – how to be a lassie.
As I have mentioned before the Sunday Herald`s pro independence stance is garbage as evidenced by the stories it produces and I have ceased buying it.
Training Day: The point that is being made is that the MSM is telling us that polls now are definitive, unchanging , absolute
Similarly for Obama’s first run at the presidency; he was faced with a universally hostile establishment press and media. They treated him as if a rookie who could write and speak eloquently – ‘inspirational rhetoric won’t do it’ – but not presidential material.
Anti-establishment Campbell got the same sort of treatment today. An amateur. The establishment’s professor got respect.
Nana Smith,
Ah, Thurso’s efficient electioneering.
On receiving a mock-handwritten bit of gumpf exorting me to vote for for him, I wrote back pointing out that it was unlikely as my house is not in his constituency. I did not receive an answer!
I still get electioneering stuff from him though.
@Grouse Beater
@Training Day
Google “2011 Scottish election polling” for a Wiki page which has all the polling in the run-up to the election. The last poll to have the SNP behind on the constituency vote was TNS-BMRB on the 27 March, which had a 38/37 split in Labour’s favour. Every single poll after that had the SNP level or ahead.
It was still very dramatic for the polls to shift so quickly and so emphatically. But clearly, many remember the turnaround as being much more sudden than it was.
@ geeo 7.42
About the Hillsbrough disaster.
My daughter researched it during uni [Events Management]and I
proof read her stuff.
So here is another way of looking at it
There is an expectation that the people attending the event[fans]
will comply with instructions,in consenting to this the fans have in return the expectation that instruction givers [police] are required to have considered and planned for all reasonable situations.
This planning also should include the approach to the event.
When it became apparent that the arrangements outside had not worked, yes, the gate being opened seems to have been the solution [nobody died outside] again, there is the expectation that if this action is taken, then you should as a fan have the reasonable assumption that, in such a tightly controlled situation if the tunnel was a no go area there would have been, at the very least, staff of some sort to block it.
So looking at it from this point of view it seems that the fans did not do anything other than comply with their side of the “contract” IE agree to be instructed.
Not to think for themselves but to just to reach their objective as their safety was “taken care of”.
Events of this kind could not take place without this cooperation,and if everyone who attends an event of any size thinks about it, then they will see for themselves that they too give up their autonomy in many ways.
What has this to do with an Independence blog?
Well, IMHO, it can [from the above point of view] make you think about how consent is implied/given/gained, but,also caution you that if the people you allow to instruct you are not competent ….. Well!
RIP THE 96
I’m still buying the Sunday Herald as it is still the only paper officially endorsing independence.
I don’t care if they are partly doing it just for sales, and I don’t expect it to turn into a one-sided party political leaflet for the SNP.
Having read the 2 articles, the Stuart Campbell interview is indeed pretty bad, focusing almost entirely on controversial personal attacks – but that just reflects badly on the interviewer.
There is one small quote about the referendum – not zero.
In the case of a no vote, “The psychological damage to Scotland as a whole would be enormous”.
I think what will stand out for most readers is the highlighting of a popular site with an opinionated editor.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I think most people understand that the ‘official’ campaign wants to be squeaky clean.
By contrast, the Tomkins interview deals more with the actual indy debate – but his main arguments just sound extremely weak.
Someone for whom multiple identities feels ‘natural and normal’, and with a Jewish American wife and kids would suddenly would have a problem adjusting to a newly sovereign Scotland ??
Doesn’t make much sense to me.
And a vague hope about discussing further devolution and devolving income tax. How exciting is that..
If I were a new reader, I would actually want to check out Wings, and give the other guys site a wide berth.
Well, I can predict this for Hutcheon: he’ll never get ahead of Campbell so long as he’s kicking him up the arse!
I am having difficulty with some of this. The Sunday Herald runs about four or five YES features to every one that is non supportive, its editorials are in favour of YES, its letters page is hugely in favour of YES, it has declared for independence and this is somehow “tricking ” us.
How does that work?
PS The words that may have been damaging to Tony Banks were freely uttered to a journalist – by Tony Banks. It would have been a sad and sorry excuse for a journalist who didn’t report them.
I found Banks’ remarks absolutely appalling and I wouldn’t allow him to represent YES if it was up to me
Keaton at 7.24. Exactly. There has been no NO supporting article in the Sunday Herald. The stuff today in the Rev Stu article is ungenerous but entirely ineffectual but will lead to more people reading Wings. The Tompkins piece by Judith Duffy is anodyne and unremarkable and makes no case whatsover for a NO vote and it concedes that NO is not in the bag.
I think it’s a mistake to regard it as simply a Unionist slant. It’s not just an independence problem with Paul Hutcheon. I’ve noticed it when he’s written about topics that I personally know in depth. He picks and chooses elements to make a sensationalist story that bears no relationship to the truth and leaves out parts that would give a balanced picture.
Generally if I read any of his work (a mistake) I do so convinced from the start that the truth of the matter is totally different.
-It’s not personal Stuart, it’s just gutter journalism at it’s worst (I use the term ‘Gutter’ to differentiate from ‘Tabloid’ can be good straight simple explanation, he fails that test)..
It’s decided then. The Sunday Herald, in spite of its claims is, at best, a half hearted supporter of independence and at worst is trying to fool the public about it’s true allegiance. It was well before reading this article that I came to that conclusion.
I think Hutcheon comes into the same category as BBC Scotland’s investigative journalist who goes by the name of Mark Daly, the shadowy little crater who was snooping around the Rangers situation trying to dig dirt.
I heard Sarah Smith the other week defending BBC Scotland about their reporting on Rangers FC, claiming it wasn’t the BBC’s fault when the media was getting blamed for exacerbating the situation Rangers is now in. If nothing else they were stirring the pot.
Chic, ya beauty, that animated GIF is superb 🙂
JWil
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Here is today’s Sunday Herald
No political coverage till a good article by prominent YES supporter Patrick Harvie on Page 7
Next political coverage full on attack on UK government on pages 12 and 13
Independence supporting article page 14
Fierce independence supporting article by Iain Macwhirter on pages 15/16
Far from generous article on Stu by Paul Hutcheon on page 16 but in fact will probably enhance Stu’s profile greatly.
Ineffectual article around Adam Tomkins which provides no reasons to vote NO on page 17.
Whole page article fiercely supporting independence by Ian Bell on page 18
Report by Paul Hutcheon on disagreement in the Reid Foundation on page 20. Entirely factual
Page 20/21 – thoughtful piece by Russell Leadbetter carrying a variety of young people’s views on independence and article headed “Austerity damaging to Scottish business” by Business for Scotland.
Page 23 Article very critical of anti independence Highland Council
Savage attack on BBC fronts Alan Taylor’s Diary on page 27
Page 29 Paul Hutcheon does in UKIP in Scotland.(Quotes from Alyn Smith SNP MEP)
Page 30 Vicky Allan slams into Cameron’s Tories.
Page 38. Editorial hugely supportive of independence but suggesting bickering should be toned down during the Commonwealth Games.
Page 38/39 Huge headline “Only a YES vote can protect healthcare”. Every letter supporting YES in readers’ letters.
Page 40. A warning in the business section about Quebec and what similar we may be hit with before 18th September.
I am beginning to think that some respondents here are commenting on the Sunday Herald without reading it or perhaps Dunoon gets a different one from everywhere else. The one I got hugely favours independence.
@Dave McEwan Hill
Anyone who thinks the Sunday Herald is “a mishmash of extremist Unionist propaganda” isn’t going to listen to reason. Some people here don’t want an even-handed newspaper, they want Newsnet Scotland in print form.
Grouse Beater, if you don’t believe anyone else about the 2011 polls, believe Stuart.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Note the date on that article.
I just re-read a forum thread where I was very active at that time, and it’s there in my own words too. A combination of euphoria and disbelief on about the same date. I think the disbelief was so strong I sort of blanked it later.
link to forums.randi.org
I can’t argue with my own typing.
Hi Morag Graham Kerr.
Now those links were a rather interesting read!
Ta!
Dave McEwan Hill & keaton,
How much do you think has been Rev. Stuart Campbell’s contribution to the Independence cause?
How much do you think has been The Sunday Herald’s contribution to the Independence cause?
Your ‘Yes supporting’ Sunday Herald has insulted “troublemaker” Stuart and promoted Tomkins in a direct comparison. There is nothing “even-handed” about it but pure anti-Yes bias.
If it was simply a pro-No article on its own, it would have been a different matter.
If Yes supporters stop buying the Sunday Herald, will it stop ‘supporting Yes’ and show its true colours?
Let it ‘support independence’ if it wants to at its own expense. We can reward it AFTER a Yes vote.
McEwan flogs a dead horse: I am beginning to think that some respondents here are commenting on the Sunday Herald without reading it
You keep avoiding the issue and posting repetition – the piece on Campbell was an unwarranted demolision job. Why?
Try answering that and you might be taken for more than a Herald apologist.
I can assure you, if a No vote the SH will revert to type – ‘No was the right decision.’
It’s all there in the equivocating editorial – ‘Some staff are against independence.’
Aye, right.
Might as well get your escape hatch ready now.
I did not buy my Sunday Herald YESterday in protest.
I thought the Sunday Herald yesterday was overall very poor. The article about Stuart was the first thing I read, and it was apparent it was an attempt to kill the message by killing the messenger. A hatchet job by Paul Hutcheon, the description of The Rev as “…an IT-literate troublemaker” says it all.
Bye, bye Sunday Herald. Our affair has been brief.
I applied a few weeks ago to become a Glasgow Cooncil to become a Polling clerk on Sept 19, to be told that the positions were all full (By whom?
I base that on my own experience as polling clerk in the 70’s where all the clerks were Labour, plus one CPDG. They assumed I was Labour showed me how to stamp the ballot papers in the quiet periods, then rule off an equivalent number of names and addresses at random on the roll. If someone came in to vote and their name was already ruled off they just ruled off another one. It is hard for the voters to notice looking upside down. They all assumed I was voting Labour because I told them I was a socialist. I had a friend doing the exact same in another polling station. Twice we acted as polling clerks, with the exact same routine.
@Dave McEwan Hill
On the face of it, if there are mixed opinions on this forum about the exact position of the Sunday Herald, among YES supporters who have been glued to the commentary on the independence referendum for a considerable time, then I do not know what the general public, who are less well informed will make of it.
Ref: Donald Anderson’s post about polling clerks.
These jobs are hard work, but, they pay well and there are a lot of regulars who do it in election after election. A lot of them are council employees. I have one daughter who works for the Cooncil and she is an election regular, and a Yes voter.
So, I would expect vacancies to be few and far between and much-coveted. There may well be a degree of having to have the right political affiliation in getting a cooncil job, but, that’s life.
Have faith, I think Yes will win, in spite of any BT dirty tricks campaign – but – I’m not taking it for granted.
Anent the Sunday Herald and Herald criticism. I know Richard Walker the Sunday Herald editor personally, and I am sure he is a Yes supporter. However, he has to answer to his corporate bosses in the USA and, mosst-assuredly, not all his staff are Yes men and women.
However, I do feel that Richard, and his opposite number Magnus Llewellyn at the Herald are both better suited to life as a Number Tow rather than a Number One. Richard, most-assuredly, is one of the finest production journalists in Scotland.
The going rate for a polling clerk is £300. When I did it, it was £30.
I once followed ballot boxes being taken by black cab From North Woodside to the Levin Hall count. We lost it, he knew we were following and vanished for over and hour. When the boxes finally arrive, it was as though someone had lifted most of the SNP papers out of the box. This was a Municipal election where the SNP had most of the votes in Glasgow.
@ Donald anderson
The polling Clerk/counters etc. posts (in Glasgow at least) are generally offered to council employees, I did polling clerk a couple of times back when I was an employee as did a number of my colleagues who you would be very hard pushed to call Labour supporters. I think it would be extremely difficult to pick and choose who got those jobs by political leaning at least in the dept. I worked in.
I worry more about the journey from poll to count.
When I read the interviews, I have to say “hatchet job” wasn’t the first thought that came to mind. I rather got the feeling that Stu was being painted as the enfant terrible of the Yes campaign, and publishing the Wings stats only seemed to serve the point that this was a controversial but beloved site and therefore not to be missed.
On the other hand, I agree that the two interviews had comepletely different angles to them, making them difficult to compare. One was about the man, the other about the opinions (because the character isn’t interesting?) and this does seem a bit unbalanced.
But the Tomkins interview was hardly the “love-in” that some have described – comparing his blogs stats with Wings’ was hardly favourable, and the comment about the pro-union internet space being “hardly crowded” I think paints its own picture. Summing up about two-thirds through, she decsribes things as “so far, so predictable”.
So we have one guy who is controversial, outspoken with hundreds of thousands of followers, and a No guy who is predictable with a just a few thousand readers. I think this was indeed unbalanced, but not against Stu. If I were undecided, I know whose blog I’d be keen to read first!
@rock
Totally agree with you. The pro-independence movement has managed just fine up until now against a tidal wave of media bias, black propaganda and psychological warfare. This so called free media are an embarrassment to themselves, democracy and their own profession. I must be so depressing being a journalist these days.
I have bought and read only one copy of the SH. The articles were well written and quite balanced (I think).
I think the SH is only covering the Heralds back. If it’s a yes vote then the daily will crow a few months later that The Herald was the only Scottish newspaper to support independence.
johnny come lately,
“This so called free media are an embarrassment to themselves, democracy and their own profession.”
Their lies have been found out and exposed like never before by the efforts of Rev. Stuart Campbell and those who read and comment on his excellent articles.
They thought they were invincible and have been caught completely off balance by the internet and our Grassroots campaign. They are now attcking Stuart like vicious dogs on a chase.
The Sunday Herald is giving token support to independence only to take advantage of Yes voters. It is not doing it for Scotland, it is doing it for itself.
Don’t buy the The Sunday Herald for its fake ‘Yes support’.
I must admit I didn’t see anything wrong with the article.
I might get my conservatory upgraded!
@liz g.
Thanks for that liz, that was certainly a different take on it.
Very interesting perspective,
and i agree with most of that analysis of how crowds behave etc.
The only issue i would have would be the fans outside the gate, i have been in a crowd surge at a football match when there was a load of latecomers, they were pushing shoving as seen at hillsborough but on a much smaller scale obviously.
It was very dangerous, i got a couple of cracked ribs and there were a few other injuries as well.
I asked the police why they did not open the gate to ease the crush and his simple response was”crowd safety”.
I never blamed the police for my injury, i blamed the idiots who couldnt simply wait a few more minutes.
Perhaps that incident prejudices my take on the incident about opening the gates at hillsborough.
Take issue is maybe too strong, but your post is certainly one i will be taking into my next discussion about that tragedy, if thats ok by you..?
Just a small detail in the article caught my attention: Tomkins wife is ‘Jewish and American’ and lives in Scotland, but somehow he would find it impossible as ‘English and British’ to live in an independent Scotland.
Go figure.