scotlandisdifferent

Response from BBC Scotland: "We couldn't be arsed. Now go away." And this from an outfit that is still recovering from the public relations disaster of messing with Wings Over Scotland's YouTube channel! Oh, well. Mr Ian Small Head of Public Policy BBC Scotland 40 Pacific Quay GLASGOW G51 1AD Dear Mr Small, I'm offended by the enclosed response that I've received from the Editor of "Reporting Scotland", and I think you should be concerned about it too. It's a public relations disaster: she hasn't been sent half the information (two charts), she refuses to read the other half (online supporting data), she makes a cheap jibe at my using the wrong name for the UK-wide broadcaster, and she ignores the main question (which was "Please explain your policy"). In an article in The Scotsman on 20th August, you wrote, "We want to engage, constructively, in dialogue with those who question our journalism or are suspicious of our decision-...

BBC Scotland undermines the independence movement by playing down public support for the SNP. SNP support is massive. Seven out of every ten Scots who are members of political parties are members of the SNP; and in the 2018 Holyrood election, the SNP won half the votes and took all but half the seats: This makes the SNP virtually as large as all the other parties put together, and leaves them fragmented and scrabbling for scraps from the table. So how much time did Scotland's party of government get allocated in BBC Scotland's recent pre-conference interviews with leaders? That's right - the SNP, huge in terms of membership, came third in inteview time. There's an enormous discrepancy there. And if you thought that, despite the shorter time, the treatment would be even-handed, then think again: Massively more interruptions, and massively more hostile comment from the interviewer, for Ian Blackford than there was for Ruth Davidson. There are those who say that this is ju...

Here is the text of a complaint I raised with the BBC on 29th August: I write to complain of bias in tonight's BBC Two Newsnight programme on the resignation of Alex Salmond. There were two interviews in this programme. The first was a factual statement of background events by your correspondent David Grossman, and the second was a highly coloured rhetorical piece by David Clegg claiming that Salmond's resignation had split the SNP apart. Where was the third piece, claiming that the resignation was a shrewd political act that takes the pressure off Nicola Sturgeon? You gave only one side of the story - that's the first point I want to make. The second point I want to make is that you ignored what surely is an even more startling and newsworthy aspect of this story, which is the speed at which the crowdfunder raised the money. By 10.30pm, when you went on air, the appeal had raised £32,000, or 64 percent of the £50,000 which it was asking for over 28 days. Not to have includ...

RECENT CONVERSATIONS and internet posts have left me with the feeling that the independence argument is in fact won, and the ice-sheet of No that's been stifling the hopes of younger generations is beginning to crack and break up. First up is the dog-walker, whom I reported on earlier , who had a visceral hatred of nationalists because of what they were doing to the country he loved. Leaving aside the question of why loving one's country isn't nationalism, this man is trapped in circular, content-free thinking: - I love my country. - How do we know you love your country? - Because I want it to stay in the UK. That's where it belongs. - How do you know it belongs there? - Because it does. And I love my country. This isn't political or social thinking, this is emotional masturbation. And the problem for these people at the high end of the No scale is that, when faced with facts or concrete thinking, they have nowhere to go: they can only retreat into vitriol. There...

This claim turned up in comments on The National yesterday, from John Stuart Wilson. Since it's based on data, it needs to be taken seriously: Our largest on-shore private sector employer is the finance industry. It accounts for, directly and indirectly, 1 in 12 jobs. It doesn't want to be located in a foreign country from 90% of its customers. (Ask yourself: how many local authorities and SMEs currently send their monthly pension scheme payments to Belgium to have them managed there?) And it will not accept the loss of a LOLR [lender of last resort] backstop. So independence will cause major job losses in Scotland, as these firms relocate to the rUK. However, there are a few points in the above claim which are not clear: - the Scottish finance industry employs 160,000 people, out of a labour force of 2.6m. This is 1 in 16. Where does the writer get his figure of 1 in 12 from? - the UK-wide finance industry employs about 2m people, out of a labour force of 32m. So the Scottish...

Dear Seymour, You won't know this, because you decamped to Europe after the Brexit vote, but between the Byres Road and our house, in Glasgow's West End where you and your wife courted by dreeping aff back-court walls, there has now opened a CHURROS BAR to speed the weary WestEnder on his homeward walk from the boozerie. The prices are extortionate! Ten fried doughnut sticks (two portions, five sticks each), wee pot of chocolate sauce, plain cardboard-box kerry-oot ("Sorry, guys, we're closed for eatin' in, it's nearly ten o'clock") - the price for this is NINE PRE-BREXIT SMACKERS, would you believe!? That's nine Maybot vouchers as we speak, or fifty-seven Maybot vouchers by the time we get to next week, and three thousand two hundred and fifty-six point three Maybot vouchers by the time we leave the European Union. Not a problem for us, because we're old and rich - one of us is nearly in the grave, and as for the other one, I'm not always ...

Wow, this needed to be said, and here it is! This is a statement on the Catalonian referendum issued on 25th October 2017 by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. I show the link above, but I quote the statement in full anyway at the foot of this post. The statement makes four main points, exposing the logical fudges used by those who support the Spanish government. These points are also highly pertinent to the Scottish situation, and we need to think of ways of addressing them. The four main points are: The right of self-determination belongs to the people, not the state, and the state cannot take it away. The right to self-determination overrides the principle of territorial integrity. Using force, making a referendum illegal, and annulling autonomy violate international covenants on civil and political rights. Dialogue and negotiation are the way forward. The constitutional settlement for Scotland violates the first of these four points: we can...