7 thoughts on “For the Tusosauruses who refuse to tweet!”

  1. Reporting Scotland this evening was an anti Scottish Government propaganda exercise.

    The headline was the death of a former Rangers player from motor neurone disease. While this is a story that was worth including in the bulletin was it worthy of being the lead.

    Then followed stories about the review into hospital building announced by the Health Secretary, which gave the opportunity to repeat the tales you tweeted.

    There was a story of the growth figure for the previous quarter, which showed a drop, but it was headed “Scotland on the brink of a recession”. Since a ‘recession’ is defined as two successive quarters of falling growth, then every quarter of falling growth which succeeds a positive quarter is on the brink of a recession – except that it is rarely reported as that. The issue of a recession is usually raised when growth has been on a downward trend, and then goes into negative. The first quarter of 2019 recorded the highest ever growth.

    There was a piece on the fifth anniversary of the 2014 referendum, with heavy initial emphasis on NO having won.(The phone in this morning was about Indyref 2 which was headlined ‘Do you have the appetite for it?’ This was repeated many times – no other phrase was used. This was dogwhistling for ‘there’s no demand among the Scottish people for another referendum.’) As was common in 2014 all three unionist parties were quoted as against a solitary SNP voice, with, as usual, the Greens ignored.

    They are clearly going into campaign mode.

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    1. I had had some second thoughts about this, wondering if I was seeing conspiracies where none existed. However, when I turned up at one of our volunteer gardening groups this morning one of the members spontaneously started talking about the panic that is in the political class and their running dogs in the media. He used to vote LibDem and is horrified by the announcement that the party, if it formed the government would simply annul Brexit. Now, I voted ‘Remain’ and would do so again if I got the opportunity, but 17.4 million people voted ‘Leave’ for a variety of reasons. Some have changed their minds or died in the interim, but, they expressed a in a referendum and we have to take cognisance of that.

      Interestingly, since he knows some Tories, he expressed amazement at the vituperation Ms Ruth Davidson has been receiving from some – ‘traitor’, ‘she should just keep her mouth shut’, and allusions to her sexuality. I think the COLONEL was, substantially.a media creation, but, she did have a number of principles, which, in the end, she adhered to and the fact that she was open about her sexuality is to be admired, whatever her socio-economic beliefs.

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      1. Doing well thanks John, always struggling for time these days for keeping up to date with the world it seems. Then I got sucked into the riveting drama of the Supreme Court action these past 3 days, absolutely fascinated by the bits I managed to listen to, that Lord Pannick is top class entertainment (aparently he’s 63! Looks much younger), and oh the beating Lord Keen got, even saw some of the dramatic grandstanding (shock horror) of Aiden O’Neill yesterday – I noted that he’s a QC of both English and Scots law, and his unusual performance – I mean, he TOLD OFF one of the judges! – should perhaps be seen in the light of him being perhaps more QC-ish than normal. I missed this mornings presentations, but they were reported to be good so might try and catch up with some. I just love that civilised slagging match atmosphere. Obviously I don’t actually have a clue what’s going on, but there are some good commentators to get the gist.

        I like your new blog site btw, and great that you are still keeping up with all the good work that you do. Too many articles for me to keep up with though, I’m still trying to find the one I planned to reply to Ludo on!! (Though that’s my incompetence, not your articles, at fault)

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    2. ‘So, journalists who spend their whole time in Westminster or with political parties, focus on party-political Brexit, or whether a leader will survive, or what the voting numbers are among MPs. Rarely the substance.’

      The interlocking elites of Chomsky’s model? The Westminster bubble?

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      1. You do not need to go as far as Chomsky. You can find a construct which emanated from your ‘ain midden’ aka UWoS, where Walter Humes spoke of the ‘policy community’ in his 1986 publication, “The Leadership Class in Scottish Education”

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