2016, the Scottish Government and the Media.

By Panda Paws

We live in turbulent times and it’s difficult to make accurate predictions about the future but I feel safe in saying that in 2016 the SNP will be bad. Peak badness should arrive at end of April/beginning of May to be followed after the Scottish General Election by a period of “one party stateness”. 

The mocking meme of “Snpbad” was denigrated by no less a genius than Magnus Gardham (well Leaksy thinks he’s a genius though he neglected to say at what since it patently isn’t journalism). Apparently we are wrong to criticise journalists’ partiality and to wonder if holding the government to account should consist of more than regurgitating opposition press releases and acting as the media wing of SLAB. As Bertolt Brecht once put it perhaps we should dissolve the people and elect a new one given our lack of appreciation for MSM.

No-one and no party is infallible but MSM’s constant nit-picking and misleading spin on the activities of the Scottish government means that roughly half the population wouldn't believe them if they told us Christmas day was 25 December so often has the SNP been accused, warned and criticised. If I were President of the World, once I’d sorted out inequality and war, I’d have mandatory training for all journalists reporting on Scotland where the first, and quite possibly only needed session, would be on the boy that cried wolf.

They accuse independence supporters of confirmation bias, seeing only what we want and expect to see, but they themselves have a big plank in their eye that leaves the motes in ours even more minuscule. In Saturday’s Herald we have former Labour MP John Robertson’s interesting (aka contradictory) comments that he is not a Unionist but he believes in the Union. His comments about SNP people are particularly noteworthy.

In case you'd never heard of him, this is John Robertson, the guy who didn't know whether or not he voted for war in Iraq and who doesn't like SNP voters.
Not a single one of them. He used to be an MP.

"They are not nice people, the SNP, all of them. I can't say anything nice about them because they certainly did not say anything nice about me. “

Luckily Mr Robertson is an easy-going chap.

"I am not bitter. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. I don't hold any animosity towards anybody or any side”

It’s an interesting kind of non-animosity that thinks ALL of your opponents are not nice people so I guess we are lucky that he’s not bitter!

Like most independence supporter I want a MSM that holds all parties to account without fear or favour where journalists analyse the news and inform us. Unfortunately “I want” isn’t “I get”. We have a situation where the SNP is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. 

The Queensferry bridge was “Salmond’s vanity project” and opposed by all other parties, including the Greens, despite it being known since the time of  John Major’s government that the old Forth Road Bridge would not be able to cope with increasing traffic by 2015 at the latest. But when the bridge needed to be closed, was the SNP congratulated for its foresight in commissioning a new one? Well I don’t need to answer that do I.

The SNP are a competent government and whilst I don’t agree with all of its policies, they are miles ahead of the opposition. As much as I rate Patrick Harvie as a politician (though he was wrong on the new bridge!), the Greens have a way to go before than can be an official opposition. However it insults those who have lived under totalitarian regimes to describe Scotland as a one party state.

A one party state is one where the opposition is suppressed, not one where they are so incompetent that few in their right mind would want to vote for them. The Unionist parties really need to get their act together and come up with intelligent, cohesive policies that are based on something more sensible than the opposite of what the SNP says. As it is we are stuck with an immature democracy with a biased, establishment media that fail in one of their primary roles of holding the government to account.

Until then it’s “SNPbad”.

THE NOBLE LORD AND HIS FEE PAYING FARCE

 

George Foulkes‏@GeorgeFoulkes

As we face further major cuts in Council schools might be worth checking where the SNP Cabinet send their children

Some time ago the Noble Baron Foulkes of Cumnock blocked me from receiving his Tweets...a badge of honour for me. I had pointed out to him that there was something slightly ironic about a Labour Aristocrat. He failed to see the amusing side of that.

Anyway, I'm obliged to Rosanna Cunningham for re-tweeting the above beauty and giving me the opportunity to see what I otherwise would have missed.

Irony doesn't appear to be a word in his Nobleness's dictionary, for not only is he a Peer of the Realm, but the daft old bugger himself went to a fee paying school in Herefordshire, to-wit the independent, fee paying The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hertfordshire (Motto: Serve and Obey...well, the ultra loyalist took that to heart.)

Really, people who live in glass houses should try to remember not ever to throw stones. Otherwise we all laugh at them.