The remedial class
We’ve written often about the contempt with which both the No campaign and the media regards voters, particularly in respect of their willingness to tell them even the most insultingly transparent lies in the assumption they’ll be swallowed anyway.
Allan Massie in today’s Telegraph may have set a new all-time record, though.
Oh boy. Do we even need to spell this one out?
Half of 11 is, alert readers may be aware, five and a half. The SNP currently has six MPs, the same number it secured in 1997 and 2005. Six is more than five and a half.
Furthermore, that’s six MPs out of 59, or just over 10%. In 1974, the party’s 11 MPs came from a Scottish total of 71, or 15%. And 10% is rather more than half of 15%.
The SNP’s vote share in the second 1974 election was 30.4%. Even in its infamous 1979 wipeout it got more than half of that (17.9%), and it also did so in the elections of 1992, 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010.
We don’t imagine that even many politics nerds will have a fingertip grasp of general election vote shares spanning the last 40 years. But anyone who’s going to be reading a Scottish politics article in the Telegraph in the first place is surely well enough informed to know that the SNP currently has six MPs. So we can only conclude that it’s their grasp of basic arithmetic Mr Massie thinks he can outwit.
It’s just as well he got his CBE for services to literature, not counting.
Was the first electoral boost not Winnie Ewing winning the Hamilton by-election in 1967?
daily politics have outdone allan
princess di hairdresser Nicky Clarke
“Scottish people don’t understand the economics”
so happy im bald
At least ~31% of the electorate wanted to vote SNP in 2010. That was the SNP UKGE VI 2009.
~11% feared a wasted vote though (FPTP) so voted Labour or Liberal to stop the Tories. It failed.
This is why 2010 recall is a problem. That and ~15% who voted Liberal (including SNP supporters) felt like f**kwits for doing so. So much so that they often lie when asked.
they just lie as if it was nothing just heard some pie on BBC saying UK tax payers investment in the UK oil Industry Wait What ???
This no doubt timed to coincide with the poshboys’ visit to Aberdeen (where I understand oddly we are not at our strongest).
Meantime I understand a respected UK and London financier figure is tearing into the UK lies to Scotland on oil and everything else on Al Jazeera. Anybody got a link?
How can we say this Mr Massie, it seems that the Scots like to send the numpties out of the country and keep the clever people here. So if that means we got rid of you we will hope that you remain away forever. I do hope that you get some sort of reward for doing what I assume you regard as your country down for another one, there is a name for that, but given you seem to think you are clever you will know that one.
Level of ignorance is outstanding as many people still believe that Scotland is a economic basket case with disproportionately higher public expenditure.
Also that the NHS is British and refuse to accept that the separate Scottish Health Service was formed in 1948.
“So happy I’m bald”
Decking priceless.
Mr Massie must have had the same arithmetic teacher as Mr Darling, who manged to inflate Scotland’s population by half a million or so. Then again Mr Darling is used to dealing with figures that end in lots of zeros. Like the UK debt he accumulated as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Is it appropriate to say “Alex Massie is a liar” and add that fact to the growing list of other proven liars amongst the Unionist ranks?
Or does Mr. Massie need to provide a back catalogue of blatant lies in order to get a nomination to the Liars Hall of Fame?
Just part of the car crash that is the UK media,of all colours!.
Massie is a fuckwit like Torchuil Chrichton and David Clegg and all the unionist controlled journalists
Well to be fair he did a history at Cambridge, so maths probably isn’t his strong suit 😉
Well to be fair he studied history at Cambridge, so maths probably isn’t his strong suit 😉
Apologies for duplicate post, we’re having broadband problems today at casa patronsaintofcats
Great work Reverend that’s the last time this joker will think about casually using a turn of phrase without checking his working out first.
BBC news, lets now go over to Alex Salmond talking live about North sea oil, it appears he is explaining how well off Scotland would be in terms of being one of the riches countries in the world, we don’t want to hear any of that positively stuff, lets now cut to a nobody, and continue talking Scotland down.
Ah, normal service is resumed.
On Morning Call this morning, the subject was whether David Cameron should debate face-to-face with Alex Salmond. Contributors were also asked which way they intended to vote in the coming referendum and from where they gleaned their information and facts about the independence debate.
Almost every intending YES voter stated they got their facts mainly from the online social media. Almost all the intending NO voters said they got their information mainly from the BBC and the newspapers. And for once those selected to air their opinions represented a pretty fair split between the two camps.
So it occurs to me that the debate seems to be between those seeking and then considering information and facts obtained online, and those ingesting the blatant and biased pro-union propaganda from the BBC and MSM.
To be fair, this is his dad, who I think has always been the more tribal unionist of the two.
Is there a point to this article?
Was writing it (or indeed reading it) a good use of time?
I think Allan Massie will simply say he didn’t literally mean “half as well”. That’s the way it seems to work in mainstream UK political commentary. You say one thing but actually mean the opposite when challenged.
It’s a bit like Cameron saying that Gideon was doing a good job of drawing down Britain’s level of debt, while it actually continues to increase.
The UK political bubble way down in London is in its own little universe.
The press in Scotland will never survive in its current form after Sept 18 2014.
The BBC will suffer same fate – and only NO side will miss them.
@GH
It’s not appropriate to say “Alex Massie is a liar” because the article’s about Allan Massie!
Norman Smith rebrands the bitters as ”Team Cameron” now. Love it!
Why settle for being the monkey, when you can be the organ grinder!
” Dave McEwan Hill says:
24 February, 2014 at 12:20 pm
This no doubt timed to coincide with the poshboys’ visit to Aberdeen (where I understand oddly we are not at our strongest).
Meantime I understand a respected UK and London financier figure is tearing into the UK lies to Scotland on oil and everything else on Al Jazeera. Anybody got a link?”
Might this be what you are looking for?
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2014/02/scotland-rocky-road-independence-20142141425307296.html
I’d also take issue with his assertion that it was oil which gave the SNP its first electoral boost. Surely that was the Hamilton by-election victory of 1967 which was due to concerns about Scottish jobs slipping away down south?
Link to election leaflet,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishpoliticalarchive/7195059166/
The first seat was won in 1946.
His attention should also be drawn to the home rule petition of the 50’s with over 2million signatures. A time when Labour supported Scotland in this regard.
OT
LIVESTREAM Today @ 7:30pm from Shettleston Juniors!
Jim Sillars, Bruce Morton, Donald Reid plus
MD Michelle Thomson and Ivan McKee from Business for Scotland.
http://new.livestream.com/IndependenceLive
So that’s Allan Massie? He doesn’t look like much does he? A sort of half deflated old weather balloon puffed up with his own self-importance and bigotry.
Fancy having to shave that toothless looking old face every morning. Knowing that he is a liar must make it a little difficult to look himself in the mirror. But I suspect that’s the reason that a lot of the male interviewers and reporters on BBC Scotland always look so ‘smudgy’.
15 years ago Holyrood rendered Westminster irrelevant in the bid to obtain independence. Perhaps Mr Massie may have heard of a little thing called the referendum. If we vote Yes independence will have been achieved solely within Scotland, Westminster ceding the right for Holyrood the determine our future.
Hardly the first boost for the SNP either.
@Awkwardboy
This is the Al Jazeera live stream:-
http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/
I went on a moment ago, and saw Cameron, then it switched to another item.
It will probably repeat.
Massie is usually challenged by superior intellects, the most recent one I recall novelist crime writer and fervent nationalist, Frederic Lindsay, alas, just before Lindsay’s untimely death last year.
He trounced Massie’s pulp fiction, and egregious errors, line by line.
@ faeriefromtheearth 3:03
I think that’s a bit excessive. How about we just build a nation so fucking brilliant that all these No voters will seek us out to shake our hands and thank us for defeating them.
@bookie from hell Says “so happy I’m bald”
PRICELESS!!!
fairiefromtheearth
I’m pretty confident we are going to go with a continuation of abolition of capital punishment.
We could put the cone of shame on them as in the excellent wee movie called Up 🙂
‘Massie Niblick” – An obsolete club type. Used to pitch.
Ouch! Sometimes my puns even hurt me.
If you think Massie getting his figures skewed is bad, check out the Guardian’s “economics editor” Larry Elliott for some blatant and outright scaremongering-cum-lies regarding an independent Scotland’s economic prospects. Despicable Better Together propaganda.
The “left-leaning” (ROFL!) Guardian – British Establishment to the core.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/23/scottish-referendum-salmond-independence-oil
fairiefromtheearth says:
HANG EM HIGH
Don’t be such a wimp.
Flog them to death with a bundle of 50 copies of the white paper, tar and feather them, tie them to the back of a number 33 Bus and drag them through the streets on a wet wednesday, hang, draw and quarter them, chain them to a railing in Morningside and force them to listen to endless repeats of Celine Dion overlaid with the collective speeches of Ian Davidson blasted at them at volume +11 for 16 hours on a loop while wearing barbed wire underpants, force feed them cold tripe and onions blended with jellied eels, and tell them if they do it again they’ll be severely punished.
The main strength of WoS is Rev Stu’s media analysis and this time picking up on a (probably casual) comment by Alan Massie demonstrates that journalists will be held to account – which should make for better journalism (though I’m being optimistic on this point).
Given that WoS roots out inaccuracies in journalism, I was disappointed at some of the remarks about Allan Massie himself. The ones about his appearance were unnecessary and irrelevant; the ones confusing him with his son were inaccurate as were the ones based on the supposition that he lives in England. As a long time resident of the Scottish Borders he has a vote in the referendum; as an authority on Scott and Scottish literature he’s an important voice in our cultural heritage; and as a Unionist with an intellectual capacity that Johan Lamont et all can only dream about he is a worthy debating opponent.
His mathematical acumen may be something else!
@Robin Ross
Seconded. (Re Alan Massie, above)
While I quite often found I could not agree with an opinion of his, I would nevertheless say he deserves respect as an opponent. I regret that he has not come out in favour of independence, and I would be delighted to see him (and a few other people – Malcolm Chisholm for one) come out in support of the Yes vote.
Helena Brown at 12.22 –
….it seems that the Scots like to send the numpties out of the country and keep the clever people here
On my first reading of this I took genuine personal offence but I shall await Rev Stu’s response given that he also lives furth of Scotland.
Alan Massie – great writer; pathetic wee Tory prick.
Thanks folks for posting about the politics show. They’re really pulling out the heavyweights now to give us a slagging. So Scots don’t understand economics? Who was that fellah from Kirkaldy, Adam somebody?