IN young, fresh days in posh recording studios under Marble Arch, my manager gleefully slammed a newspaper on the desk, jubilant that one of his other bands had done some “anti-social” act and found themselves as front page news.
He announced, “that’s 500,000 more sales”. If he were still alive he would still be telling me that you need to be front-page news to sell.
I admire John Swinney and Kate Forbes and I know they are very competent people. I know it has been the summer holidays and all. There is only one item to admire Boris Johnson for – his ability to ride the front pages.
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The top stories on thenational.scot as I write are:
1) Scottish Government ‘left with no choice’ but to end universal fuel payments.
2) Lesley Riddoch: Electricity highway.
3) Watch top economist expertly debunk GERS.
4) Revenue boost helps fund health and welfare spending.
5) We find the English could not make Stonehenge without us Scots – they needed a lump of Scotland.
6) Bringing up the rear, John Swinney excusing the inexcusable Angus Robertson meeting with an Israeli diplomat.
Who is running the SNP media? Who is running the Scottish Government media?
If I were still young enough to be doing those kinds of jobs, my aim would be to have John and Kate as the top story every news cycle. They would not be kowtowing to Rachel Reeves but shouting out to Scots who unbelievably still support the Union that Scotland does have a choice, it has a choice to become independent.
Maybe the pensioners of south-east of England can manage to keep warm with global warming but it seems to me, as a Scottish pensioner, that it is getting cooler here, perpetual autumn, where heating is needed sometimes in July. Have we learned nothing from the oil? Cheap pylons through the heart of Scotland and expensive underground-undersea links to connect oor green energy to England. The oil might run out but there is little chance of running out of wind.
Thank goodness for Richard Murphy’s clear and precise dismissal of the ridiculous GERS figures but fancy the SNP spinning that nonsense, when oor government should be shouting from the rooftops that we could be doing so much better for all Scots. There should have been some of those trumpeters in the fancy tabards, like when the Keeng got is new bunnet, to fanfare this headline: “Revenue boost helps fund health and welfare spending”. “HEY LOOK, SCOTLAND, THIS IS WHAT WE CAN DO WITH OOR HAUN TIED A HIND US.”
Oor leaders, indeed all of us, should, as Humza said on stage in Edinburgh not a year ago, “inspire people” – constantly, on the front page – with what we would do if the Union was dissolved.
I will never defend Johnson (in fact I wrote critically of him doing this), but he did have that way where anything he was asked about, by any journalist, his response was “Oh I don’t think that is what the public want to hear about, they what to know is xyz.”
What I would like to see and hear is our SNP Government getting on with the day job and constantly showing and telling us what would be possible with the removal of the straitjacket of devolution and the full powers of independence and how that would benefit not only we Scots but how the population of England would benefit too.
Some years ago I did suggest that a series of articles on what England would gain if Scotland were independent could be a jolly good thing but then they could not build Stonehenge without us so maybe that was too tall an order. I bet there are some noses out of joint down in Cardiff just now.
Cher Bonfis
via email
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