A Master Class in Labour Spin

Saturday, 17 March 2012 01:30

33 Comments

The following is a story which was published in Hebrides News Today on the 2nd of February 2012.

Highlands & Islands Labour MSP, David Stewart, has accused the SNP Government of playing fast and loose with the Air Discount Scheme by excluding business, public sector and charities from the scheme.

The scheme was introduced by the Labour-led Scottish Executive in 2006 to address the social and economic disadvantage suffered by communities across the Highlands and Islands as a result of the high cost of accessing lifeline air services.However in April 2011 the Scottish Government cut any and all work-related travel from the Air Discount Scheme on the pretext that it was following demands from the European Commission.

Tommy Sheridan – Yes to independence, No to Murdoch

Friday, 16 March 2012 07:20

142 Comments

I’m so pleased to learn from various articles, magazine contributions and personal conversations that I am not the only one furious and confused by the First Minister’s apparent love-in with one of the nastiest and reactionary business moguls on the planet.

I am referring to the ill-judged decision of the normally astute Alex Salmond to not only contribute a tame and slavish column to the first Sun on Sunday in Scotland but to then follow that up with the now infamous tea and caramel wafers get together with Rupert Murdoch a week or so later.

It’s more than headlines that have to change at BBC Scotland

Thursday, 15 March 2012 07:33

183 Comments

By G.A.Ponsonby

So BBC Scotland has decided to correct the errors contained in an online article it published on Saturday.

Fully two days after one of the most blatant pieces of politically motivated articles ever published by the state broadcaster appeared as the number one story in Scotland, the corporation quietly removed the offending fiction and replaced it with fact.

She’s just been re-arrested, but will she ever receive a fair trial?

Wednesday, 14 March 2012 07:48

14 Comments

By Kenneth Roy

I was talking on the telephone a few days ago to one of the villains of the Leveson inquiry, a man of whom a columnist in the Daily Telegraph wrote that she did not understand how such a person could live with himself. Sometimes it amazes me that columnists in the Daily Telegraph, writing the cruel things they do, can live with themselves. How much does this woman know of the case, or is she simply a regular supplier of that addictive drug, loose emotion?

They Might Be Giants: Social Justice and the Forgotten Scotland

Sunday, 11 March 2012 18:00

15 Comments

By Gerry Hassan, The Scotsman, March 10th 2012

A new vogue has swept across the globe: concern about inequality.

From the Davos World Economic Forum to Occupy Wall Street, from Barack Obama to David Cameron and Ed Miliband, there is an acute awareness of this issue, from talking about the superabundant wealth of the top 1% to the constant political chatter about ‘fairness’.