I’m all for self-deprecating humour. I’ve used it often, to deflect bullying at school and later to charm my way into jobs. If it’s about you and your entertaining flaws, that’s your business but when in a lazy tactic to get cheap laughs, you scatter your performance with predictable and often, at best, dated stereotypes of your home town, it inevitably bores, hurts or angers those you’ve left behind. This happened noticeably with Billy Connolly as he lost touch with Glasgow and began to use images of the drunkenness, drug addiction and violence even then largely unknown to the vast … Continue reading Frankie! Self-deprecating humour is meant to be about yourself, not, lazily, about your former neighbours, your home town, your country

Other than Allan Sutherland, that BBC favourite but shy about his connections when on-air, Scotland Matters maintains a low profile on its membership, though we can see from its site comments and this 2017 email, it’s overlapping membership with a covert letter-writing group openly seeking to distort media coverage against the independence cause: Scotland Matters seems strongly associated with those regular commentators, Prof Pennington, Prof Stevenson and Jill Lax. There are no doubt many others skulking there. In the Guardian yesterday, we read: A Scottish anti-independence campaign group was given £46,000 from an obscure organisation that might have breached political … Continue reading UK Nationalist propaganda group funded by dark money

Returning every day for updates on the GMB refuse workers strike, BBC Scotland gives a platform only to the union and fails to inform readers of the scale of the offer previously made, fails to ask about their quick turnaround from acceptance of a higher offer than had been accepted by the GMB in Sheffield and fails to consider whether this was really a political stunt at the expense of members, to suit Scottish Labour’s do-Scotland-down-before-the-world agenda. How things have changed in the BBC’s attitude to industrial action in the years since 1975: A national dust cart drivers began in … Continue reading BBC Scotland in 1975: ‘Rubbish piled up in the streets causing a health hazard’

Lost it? A ‘huge majority’ is 58% of 1 001 sampled, based on a question which predisposes the outcome? If a woman requires an intimate medical examination after being sexually assaulted, do you think she should have the right to ask to be examined by a doctor who has been biologically female since birth, or should she only have the right to ask to be examined by a doctor who is legally regarded as a woman, regardless of that person’s biological sex at birth? That question only comes to mind if you and others in your circle think that it … Continue reading Finding what you wanted to find in the first place

In a report by BBC UK but unlikely to headline on Reporting Scotland or, if it does, presented in a way to implicate the Scottish Government, there is a harrowing tale of the DWP’s callous disregard of the terminally ill, based in part on Christine McCluskey of Dundee. Imagine if Christine’s benefits had been devolved to the SG? Imagine the faux compassion and rage from Sarwar and the others. After more than a decade the DWP’s brutality is the inevitable outcome of Tory Britain. In Scotland, as of Summer 2022, disability assistance for the terminally ill will be fully devolved … Continue reading An extreme case for leaving Westminster behind

BBC Scotland managed to report this with no mention of the UK Government’s responsibility for the safety of rail infrastructure leaving viewers to think perhaps that the SG is late in reporting for fear of getting the blame. Just after the crash on 14 August 2020, we saw James Cook attempt to confuse. On BBC Scotland’s The Nine last night, James Cook, repeatedly interrupted the Scottish Transport Secretary, Michael Matheson to say: Well, exactly! Well, that’s rather the point! Isn’t it. We hear that are these problems. In 2014, a report specifically mentioned this exact area being greatly affected by earthslips. A … Continue reading UK rail investigation into UK rail infrastructure will be late to avoid UK Government blame for cutting staff

After a week of no collections of refuse, in the midst of a huge conference, this is the best that BBC Scotland could find. Once more they foreground the GMB, a very modest march by their members and an even more modest display of ‘rubbish piled up on Glasgow streets.’ The ‘mass’ protest looks a bit less than the 1 500 employed in refuse and cleaning. That guy at the front is thinking about some of those no-showers. Wow! One in four bin lids can’t be closed after a week of no collections. Look at that street! I can’t see … Continue reading GMB disappointed in lack of littering by climate change protestors

You’ll remember the once great Wings over Scotland getting into a right tizz about the Gender Recognition Act and, on that basis, turning on the SNP and its leader with some pretty vitriolic attacks. More recently, the also great Scot Goes Pop, itself often a target of Wings, has been getting into a state over the same thing. They’re both way off beam on this. Former men who now self-identify as women (trans) are far far less of a threat to women than men who still identify as men (cis). These latter men in appalling numbers stalk, harass, rape and … Continue reading An odd distraction?

Things look a bit worrying if the polls are correct: Five polls in a row with a No lead but, two years before the 1st Referendum, support was only around 30% and then surged to 45% by the day. Why did that happen? Researchers at LSE, reported this in 2016: I explored this question in the context of the referendum for the independence of Scotland. Results based on experimental and survey data show that pro and anti-independence arguments did influence voting decisions in the campaign for the Scottish referendum, but this effect crucially depended on two elements: the share of … Continue reading ‘A one-sided persuasion effect’ is ours to grab

Around 50% of the UK electorate still approve of this man, above, despite a stream of sleaze surrounding him. This man, below, is unpopular, not because he’s too right-wing to be a Labour leader but because he seems weak and boring: Both leaders are firmly opposed to Scottish independence and only they can win: What’s the message for Scots? Continue reading Still the most popular main party leader in the UK Parliament!