I phoned the Channel 4 Newsdesk to report a story. It went like this:
Male Voice: Hello Newsdesk
Me: Hello is that Channel 4 News?
Male Voice: Yes, how can I help you
Me: I want to report a story
Male Voice: Well there’s not much time left the news is about to go out
Me: It is quite a big story
Male Voice: Well run it by me
Me: It’s about a totally corrupt journalist named Alex Thomson who claimed there was a riot in Glasgow today when no such thing happened
Male Voice: Oh
Me: Are you interested?
Male Voice: Well, obviously I know who Alex Thomson is
Me: Are you interested?
Male Voice: Well I can put you through to viewer complaints….
[Click – goes to answerphone]
I phone back
Female Voice: Hello
Me: Hello. I was talking to someone about Alex Thomson invention of a completely untrue story, and I seem to have got put through to an answerphone
Female Voice: I can put you through to viewer complaints
Me: No, that’s the answerphone
Female Voice: Well, then the editor will hear what you say
Me: Really? Does the editor listen to the answerphone?
Female Voice: Yes
Me: The editor listens to every comment left on the answerphone
Female Voice: Yes
Me: So how many comments per day are left on the answerphone?
Female Voice: The editor doesn’t listen to the answerphone, they get the comments typed out
Me: So each and every message is typed out separately and the editor reads them all
Female Voice: No it’s a summary
Me: Alex Thomson was lying about events in Glasgow to try to influence an election. I want to talk to your superior.
CLICK put to answerphone
This is a picture of the actual scene, exactly as I described it earlier today. Alex Thomson should be sacked. he is a disgrace to journalism.
Thanks to Wings Over Scotland for the picture.
YES.
Res Dis
Either that’s a photoshop, or Clerkin has a shrunken head
It was a press event, purely and simply.
Else why wheel in Izzard, who has more connection to Aden than he has to Scotland (he once played piano with Midge Ure at the Edinburgh Festival), and is proposing to stand as Mayor of London???
Also borne out by the fairly substantial press pack – obviously briefed to be at this epoch-making rally of, say, three dozen Murphyites, and pretty near outnumbering them.
Pity the Labour official whose job it was to bring the eggs got held up in traffic…
*pffft* being the appropriate response.
Craig here is exactly what went on a St Enochs in Glasgow.
Filmed in HD
Check it out.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t8XR92wZlGs
Its a location near the Scotia bar and probably the Glasgow MI5 building.
Conveniently enough for Jim,some would say..
Interesting piece by Peter Geoghegan in the Irish Times: Britain lurches towards zombie union as Northern unionists [i.e., unionists in Northern Ireland] look on: Northern unionists are increasingly worried about the political journey many Scottish brethren have embarked upon.
Just watched the video posted by [Melanie McKellar] in an attempt to verify the picture in the Herald, and shared by [Resident Dissident], because it looked at bit iffy to me.
Unable to find footage that confirmed or invalidated?
And another photoshopped picture I presume – the one below where Jim Murphy is holding up a Red Tories Out poster – it must have been Jim because according to Craig there were no protestors near by.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/04/eddie-izzard-jim-murphy-glasgow-rally_n_7203100.html
Iain Orr
You asked for thoughts and I should like to advance one in the form of a question to you.
Do you believe that matters of national defence – in this case, Trident (but there could be other cases) – should be determined by Parliament or by a national referendum (which I imagine you would wish to be a binding referendum)?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Without wishing to distract from that question, I cannot resist
1/. asking you whether there are any precedents anywhere for defence matters having been settled by referendum;
2/. suggesting that had there been a referendum in the mid to late 1930s on whether the UK should rearm in response to developments on the Continent, the response might well have been negative (the Oxford Union “King and Country” debate refers). And no doubt the Mackys, Republicofscotlands, etc, of the day would have said “spend the money on increasing unemployment benefits payments instead”.
I suppose the next claim will be that Sean Clerkin and his Scottish Resistance friends are MI5 – well they did refer to Quislings in the Youtube video they posted and linked too already.
“Either that’s a photoshop, or Clerkin has a shrunken head.”
After having seen a repeat of the clip on tonight’s Channl 4 News, I can unequivocally say that it IS a photoshop.
That image looks like a very wide angle lens with the right side cropped away.
However, Clerkin seems inexplicably free of the lens distortion that affects everything around him.
“2/. suggesting that had there been a referendum in the mid to late 1930s on whether the UK should rearm in response to developments on the Continent, the response might well have been negative (the Oxford Union “King and Country” debate refers). And no doubt the Mackys, Republicofscotlands, etc, of the day would have said “spend the money on increasing unemployment benefits payments instead”
_______________________________
My plan would’ve been to sell off Buckingham Palace,and re-invest the cash back into the communities and its people.
Im sure old droopy chops,wouldn’t be short of a bed of two to lay down her weary head.
Is Murphy addressing (a) The public (distributed thinly and randomly around him)?
(b) His supporters (drawn up in phalanx behind him)? or (c) the Press, who are facing him and pointing mikes and cameras at him)?
OK, it;s a Press event. The supporters are just there for effect. No effort has been made to attract a crowd of concerned electors. This is PR.
What did Murphy say to the various editors whose hacks are here represented?
I’ll have Eddie Izzard with me?
(in Scotland the response is ‘who he?’)
OR
Remember the egg thing during te referendum campaign, nudge, nudge?
(Editor sees angle immediately)
AND
I’ll have Eddie Izzard with me..
-who he? Oh yeah, deeply loved English lefty icon. Great story for the nationals, thanks, Jim, see you there.
“However, Clerkin seems inexplicably free of the lens distortion that affects everything around him.”
The wider the lens angle the smaller the depth of field that is in focus – given that there are similar photos from other photographers I very much doubt that the image has been played around with.
The idea that we’re still back in the 1930’s has already led to all sorts of disastrous decisions. When can we get the idea into our heads that there is no longer any totalitarian threat. Russia is no longer totalitarian. China is doubtfully so, and shows no sign of wanting to expand beyond East Asia (except insofar as it wants to ensure its energy supplies). Perhaps Islamist fanatics can be called totalitarian, but there is no danger of their doing anything outside the Middle East besides isolated terrorist incidents.
The true totalitarian threat to Western democracy now comes from within, from the true believers in the surveillance state and free-market dogmatism. Cutting military expenditures will reduce — not foster — that threat.
Well, my reference to the rearmament debate in the 1930s was really just a bit if background to the question I put to Iain Orr.
But I can see that it provides a good opportunity for a diversion.
Pour mémoire, my question to Ian Orr was:
“Do you believe that matters of national defence – in this case, Trident (but there could be other cases) – should be determined by Parliament or by a national referendum (which I imagine you would wish to be a binding referendum)?”
but of course anyone else should feel free to give his opinion as well.
Lysias?
That classical scholar Enoch Powell (1st class Honours in Greats from Oxford) was very much opposed to referenda, believing that they were incompatible with the notion of the sovereignty of parliament.
But it’s true that he didn’t hold any “higher degrees” in the subject 🙂
Melanie McKellar 4 May, 2015 – 7:42 pm
Thank you for the Quisling report. The answer was clear as Clerkin said, as Nicola Sturgeon said, they were not representing the SNP. He told the persistent reporter that he was there on behalf of anti-austerity. When asked if he was a member of the SNP we repeatedly said that it was irrelevant, hwe was not there on behalf of the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon has said the same thing.
This is what political scuffles look like. It says so beneath the video.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/apr/08/ukrainian-mps-brawl-parliament-video
Correction
Melanie McKellar 4 May, 2015 – 7:42 pm
Thank you for the Quisling report. The answer was clear as Clerkin said, as Nicola Sturgeon said, they were not representing the SNP. He told the persistent reporter that he was there on behalf of anti-austerity. When asked if he was a member of the SNP he repeatedly said that it was irrelevant, he was not there on behalf of the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon has said the same thing.
This is what political scuffles look like. It says so beneath the video.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/apr/08/ukrainian-mps-brawl-parliament-video
Habbabkuk @ 8.06 pm: You ask sensible questions and make one false assumption. Your false assumption is that I would wish a referendum on Trident to be binding. I will explain that in a later comment here (the snooker is getting rather exciting and it will take time to set out my views both on Trident and on referendums generally) . Meanwhile, I would be grateful – so that I do not make false assumptions about your own approach – for your views on a referendum about the UK’s relations with the EU: Should that be the subject of a referendum? How should it be worded? Should it be binding?
Resident Dissident
“The wider the lens angle the smaller the depth of field that is in focus”
Actually the exact opposite is true. Not that the depth of field is in any way relevant to my point.
Where were you on this day in 1979?
Who remembers?
I do.
Phil
You are right – I should have the nearer the focus distance – if the focus distance was near which is likely to have been the case since the photographers were near to Murphy the depth of field would have been limited regardless of the lens angle. Take a picture of a flower close up – and the flower can be in focus while everything nearby is blurred, which just emphasises the effect.
A man is to appear in court over an alleged assault on the son of a Conservative Party candidate.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-32581810
Mr Goss
Get your eyes tested – the man in the Scottish Resistance video, who pointedly would not answer if he was in the SNP (which suggests that he is), was not Clerkin – who has more hair. But at least you can tell the difference between combine harvesters and tanks and know all the videos of MH17 were not faked!
Evil Unionist assaulted by, er, evil Unionist shock horror!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/labour-candidate-manhandled-by-tory-activist-as-she-questions-boris-johnson-on-the-campaign-trail-10222221.html
In other news, nationalism prime cause of cancer, says English-born Caithness crofter.
Labour councillor – trial for assaulting referendum voter to be heard after election.
“In other news, nationalism prime cause of cancer, says English-born Caithness crofter.”
You really are a nasty little shit aren’t you.
Iain Orr
“Meanwhile, I would be grateful – so that I do not make false assumptions about your own approach – for your views on a referendum about the UK’s relations with the EU: Should that be the subject of a referendum? How should it be worded? Should it be binding?”
___________________
I am not quite sure what my views on such a referendum have to do with the question I asked you, which was about referenda on defence policy and, specifically, Trident.
But, as a courtesy, I shall answer.
The answer is no, it should not be the subject of a referendum (the experience of 1975 explains why); your second and third questions therefore fall. It should be a matter for Parliament.
I do hope that when you answer my question you will concentrate on the nub of it and not spend too much time on whether it should be binding or not (I would just say that if it were not be binding then the final say would remain with Parliament – in which case, why bother).