There’s something very worrying about the state of the press when a newspaper can basically make somethng up, and other news outlets keep repeating it despite knowing it’s false.

Perhaps, and much more believably, Nicola Sturgeon’s comment was that she wished “Cameron would **** off back to Westminster.”

It seems rather more likely that somebody with an agenda managed to place it in a plausible enough way that it was believed to be true – see my previous post…

The “Ed Milliband is not prime-minister material” part is believeable, but even if that was said (which it sounds like it wasn’t) it’s a stretch to turn that into SNP favouring the tories.

There’s something very worrying about the state of the press when a newspaper can basically make somethng up, and other news outlets keep repeating it despite knowing it’s false.

I thought they were pretty clear that they were reporting the content of a memo, are you saying that the memo does not exist?

There’s something very worrying about the state of the press when a newspaper can basically make somethng up, and other news outlets keep repeating it despite knowing it’s false.

Another thing we agree on Ben Hacked Off

I thought they were pretty clear that they were reporting the content of a memo, are you saying that the memo does not exist?

Yup!

This Is word for word on how the BBC “reporter” James Cook broke this story on national TV. Read the transcript to how investigative journalism and BBC reporters get their hearsay.

“A report in tonights Daily Telegraph citing a memo apparently written by an unknown British Government civil servant dated 6th March, reporting an apparent conversation with the French Consul General, in turn reporting a conversation with the French Ambassador to the UK who was supposed to have said that when he had an alleged conversation with Nicola Sturgeon that she confessed she would rather see David Cameron as PM”.

Also

https://storify.com/theSNP/telegraph-and-the-scottish-labour

@fnf The SNP have the mandate to vote on what they want in Westmknster as that’s the system we have right now and they will be elected in May on that basis. I don’t like it and I think it’s incinsistent with the Holyrood parliamentary powers but thats the way it is right now.

The more anti Scottish feeling the SNP can stir up down South the better for them as it may sway more No voters in Scotland into the Yes camp. Obviously as a Better Together supporter I hope that 5 years of irrelevance for all those SNP MPs will pursuede people back to Labour and keep the SNP focus on Holyrood. Sadly we’ll have a bunch of MPs drawing salaries and doing very little and the probably receiving their £50k resettlement payments, hopefully the rules are such you can’t get them twice or we’ll see Salmond with his hands in the till again

Where is the mandate? Answer the question ffs! The Tories had no mandate in Scotland so where is the mandate for the SNP in the rUK?

Well the obvious point is if the Tories can “Rule” over Scotland then the SNP can “rule” over rUK as its all perfectly reasonable behaviour in a Union

You finally seemed to have realised why its unfair that a party that has no representation or interest in your country ruling over you is unfair. if you object to this may I suggest you try and leave the union and start a campaign 💡

Agree that the Tory spinning of Sturgeon is petty politics and obvious troll is obvious.

@the gray even I would vote SNP if i had the chance. Labour are awful and yet i will still end up voting for them as they are not the Tories

@the gray even I would vote SNP if i had the chance. Labour are awful and yet i will still end up voting for them as they are not the Tories

+1. Not sure where this idea comes from that English voters will not want the SNP influencing or voting on UK policiies. Maybe in the south east, but up here in the north I suspect lots of people voting for labour will be hoping the SNP wipes the floor in Scotland and we end up with a SNP/PC/Green supported Labour minority govt. In fact is there any likely scenario where the tories/libdems will win enough seats to stop this happening?

Yup!

Etc.

But all that stuff seems to claim that the memo was wrong, or that what the memo claims was said was never said, not that the memo doesn’t exist

So, do you accept that the memo exists, or not?

The obvious difference is that 36% of the Scottish population voted for the current government.

Right so the SNP do have a mandate in the rUK and the reverse side of that is that the Tories do have a mandate in Scotland, in fact more of a mandate with their one MP. So I guess sturgeon was talking nonsense here.
So Sturgeon talks nonsense and Alec Salmond certainly does with his never going to happen currency union, immediate memebership of the EU and oil revenue driven economy. Just why are people voting for the SNP then?

It is laughable that the SNP can’t wait to be part of the broken Westminster system.

jambalaya I agree.

The “Ed Milliband is not prime-minister material” part is believeable

A classic example of accepting meaningless Tory rhetoric and point scoring.

WTF is “prime minister material” other than a party leader whose politics you agree with ?

Ed Miliband is every bit as much “prime minister material” as John Major, probably the most uninspirational senior politician of modern times, was.

So what made this man “prime minister material” ?

And just as a reminder he managed to remain prime minister for 5 years, during which time Britain was engaged in a major war with international allies, experienced the second highest levels of unemployment since the end of WW2, and the worse crises in the construction industry in history, before he was defeated in a general election and slipped into almost complete obscurity.

Some spinning as most of those are for Lib dems who are the minority party and the policies are largely Tory Its also still less than the % who voted labour – interesting eh

That said not an unreasonable point made there but i am not arguing that this is fair I am arguing that shit happens in a union so you either accept the union is fair or unfair. I go for unfair and it seem to me many Unionists are now getting the Scottish view now it may be unfair against them

YMMV

Faster can we deal with what you say/think?
The argument remains Dave has no mandate in iS she has no mandate in rUK the union allows it [ as they are not separate countries and the winner rules them all] so they both have a mandate or dont depending on which way you wish to argue

IMHO it just highlights why its unfair.

She is being as hypocrtical as you are becaus ethe union rules allow it

JY I agree shit does happen in a union but the arrogance and hypocrisy of Sturgeon is sickening. But on the other hand all parties talk crap to get into power and what really counts are policies.

I thought about just posting the Tory figure (actually not that far behind the Lib Dems) but didn’t think I should deny you the opportunity to point that out 😉

Its also still less than the % who voted labour – interesting eh

Indeed. Interesting that the Scottish Labour vote was only 2.5 times the Scottish Tory vote. If the Tories had 17 seats in Scotland would there be the same accusations that there was no representation?

Of course even the Scottish Tory vote is rather higher than the English SNP vote.

I don’t like the SNP as I’ve stated. I dont trust them as being a separatist party they have no real interest in the well being of the UK as a whole, and will do what they can to further their core aim.
However, if they form a coalition or confidence and supply arrangement with labour I have no problem with that – so long as they are not allowed to decide on policy that only affects English voters as those areas are devolved to Scotland and Wales.
Should they restrict themselves to areas reserved for the UK Government then its not a problem, but Ms Sturgeon has stated that the party will no longer do this. That’s the problem right there, MP’s passing law and policy on an electorate that had no opportunity to vote for those MP’s and whose policy decisions will not affect their constituents.
The Sooner this is resolved by Independence the better, as I can’t see any other way past the problem.

A report in tonights Daily Telegraph citing a memo apparently written by an unknown British Government civil servant dated 6th March, reporting an apparent conversation with the French Consul General, in turn reporting a conversation with the French Ambassador to the UK who was supposed to have said that when he had an alleged conversation with Nicola Sturgeon that she confessed she would rather see David Cameron as PM”

No I dont accept the memo exists.

spin machine in overdrive

Project fear v.2

Both Labour and SNP have ruled out a coalition so they can’t proceed with that option (without having misled the electorate). The individual vote by vote arrangement might happen though but I can’t see how your expectation that they can’t decide/influence English policy can be met without a change in the law. And if Labour are relying on SNP to get policy through then why should they change the law to throttle that ?

It is laughable that the SNP can’t wait to be part of the broken Westminster system.

So did you expect them to just go away and sulk in the corner after losing the referendum? You can’t campaign for Scotland to remain in the union, and then when you win, complain that Scottish politicians have too much influence and then tell them that they have no business meddling in affairs outside of Scotland. If that’s what was preferred, you should have supported independence.

Yeah, because politicians wouldn’t ever do something they’d pledged not to do.

..and there lies the rub.
Labour will use SNP MP’s to push though a policy, English voters will feel aggrieved that this policy is not applicable to Scottish voters and increases ill feeling towards Scotland and the SNP, resulting in an anti-English backlash in Scotland and increasing the percentage of Scots wanting to vote for Independence. Enough of that and the clamour for another indyref becomes irresistible.
A win-win scenario for the SNP.

So did you expect them to just go away and sulk in the corner after losing the referendum? You can’t campaign for Scotland to remain in the union, and then when you win, complain that Scottish politicians have too much influence and then tell them that they have no business meddling in affairs outside of Scotland. If that’s what was preferred, you should have supported independence

Just because some wonk in Westminster claimed to support the Union doesn’t mean the electorate also did. We were never given the choice. I wanted Scotland to leave because of where we now are.

Oh yes, can you imagine the horsetrading that would occur for each UK budget.

I guess everyone’s forgotten how the Treasury leaked RBS information to the BBC just prior to the referendum…

The Inde says Nicola has asked for an inquiry, and the French consul general has denied the words used.

Forming a government consisting of an arrangement which was explicitly ruled out during the election campaign would be a step too far IMO.

The broadcast doesn’t seem to have had much impact. But then nothing has for months. It looks to me like apathy.

I’d agree with that actually allthepies… Running on a no-coalition platform then forming a coalition would be wrong. That’s not a government policy, that’s a policy about government. Course, there’s a lot of room to maneouvre there, “We’re not a coalition, we’ve just agreed to support each other on all these things”, you could end up with a very strong supply & confidence arrangement that would look very much like a coalition.

Re this “news” story. Comes down to 3 things IMO…

1, the Telegraph’s failure to factcheck it at all seems telling. As’s been pointed out they managed to get political opponents to comment but didn’t attempt to contact anyone involved with the story- Sturgeon, the Scottish Government, the Foreign Office or the French consul, any one of which would have refuted it. I think they knew fine well what’d happen if they did, and so chose not to, they know mud sticks.

2, the question of whether the memo actually exists. There’s no question the Telegraph and others have acted dishonestly. But does the false story start there or does it start somewhere in Westminster? That’d be a whole other story, it goes from press dirty tricks to government dirty tricks.

Personally I don’t think it exists- it’s all about what he said she said bullshit, to quote the great political commentator Durst. Considering the Telegraph’s integrity there’s no need for a conspiracy, they’d happily make it up from whole cloth.

3, the way the media cover it and the way other politicians handle it. The Telegraph is still running it as the lead story despite knowing it’s false (and still retweeting, and deleting comments from the website that correct it- so it’s not like they’ve all gone home for the weekend). So obviously they want to run the lie.

Other outlets are running with it. Ben points out how the BBC’s chosen to cover it. We don’t expect unbiased reporting but here you’ve got a refuted lie being reported over and over. I don’t think anyone can reasonably claim there’s no press bias here.

And it seems Milliband gave an interview on these “damning revelations” today, when it was refuted last night… I don’t see him or any of the politicians who’ve commented issuing retractions or clarification.

Oh OK, let’s have a 4th. People tend not to mind too much when the lies are about someone they don’t like. But do you think it’s ever thus? The office scumbag lies about your colleagues to your face; you must know they lie about you to everyone else. This is the same. Don’t be too cheered that today’s lie is against someone you don’t like.

I thought they were pretty clear that they were reporting the content of a memo, are you saying that the memo does not exist?[/quote]The Foreign Office are now saying that they have no record of the memo…..

[video]https://youtu.be/pzsAVZC6Ry4[/video]

2 mins in

exactly – pragmatic politics (kind of like the most recent infamous example of pledge breaking). Particularly given fixed terms, do you expect them to get nothing done, or will there be horse trading to get enough people in the right lobby? Easy to say you’re not going to have a coalition and then get your non-coalition partners to support you.

Can we just leave the stupid story now? Surely I’m not the only one who had a giggle about how it was all a bit Chinese whispers even before it was refuted by those involved. Did anybody with any sense ever give it any credence? The only question is who is ultimately going to benefit from it…

The Telegraph are looking pretty stupid over this – even if they’ve been someone else’s bitch on the story the should have at least done some basic checks before publishing something so potentially politically damning. Proper gutter politics.

If the Telegraph is looking pretty stupid how is Milliband looking? He’s jumped on it too.

If the Telegraph is looking pretty stupid how is Milliband looking? He’s jumped on it too.

He already looked stupid.

Maybe that was the whole point behind it?

I think it was a clever Tory double-bluff to strengthen the SNP and assure the Labour seat loss in Scotland.

LOL the nationalists aren’t happy about this!

LOL the nationalists aren’t happy about this!

Most nationalists I know think it’s hilarious.

Anyhow, back to the debate:

😀

How is the Telegraph looking stupid ? They posted a story Strugeon and French Diplomat have denied but supposedly they have a Foreign Office memo as the source. It’s very believable the SNP would have said such a thing.