OK, look, sometimes people mess up. We all have times when we mess up. We all have times when we make two or three bad errors in succession. We're human. #1/23
The @newsundayherald is one of the important institutions of Scotland's news media. Admittedly it's less important now as our new media develops, but it was a big win for #Yes when, in 2014, it nailed our colours to its mast. #2/23
However, there's two aspects to that decision: yes, @newsundayherald's decision to come on board helped the #Yes movement, but the #Yes movement repaid that with a substantial boost in sales for the @newsundayherald. #3/23
No one should expect serious journalism always to support uncritically one political view. Political views need to be critiqued and challenged for their own health. #4/23
But there are two kinds of challenge to a political view: one is friendly, intellectually honest, probing, surgical, intended to make the patient stronger; @iainmacwhirter is a fine practitioner of this. #5/23
The other, we see all the time in the kleptocrat-owned press in Scotland: dishonest, mendacious, deliberately distorting, belittling, intended to undermine and destroy. There's no question which side of that divide this picture falls. #6/23 5th May demonstration in Glasgow, cropped to show approximately equal numbers of unionists and independentistas.
After that; after the controversy during the course of the past week; after the torrent of people cancelling their subscriptions, the framing of the Litvinenko story did look like thumbing the nose at the movement. #7/23
Nevertheless, it's making a serious point: as we learn more about Cambridge Analytica, Leave.EU, and the Trump campaign, the interference by Russia in Western democracy looks increasingly malign. #8/23
Sometimes people mess up. We all mess up. @AlexSalmond messes up sometimes too, and his decision to host his programme - however independent it may be - on a Russian platform is at the very kindest judgement questionable. #9/23
has apologised for the picture, and so he should. The framing of the picture is atrocious, and the caption compounds the problem with dishonesty. The story of the day was not 'ugly confrontations'. #10/23 Sunday Herald May 6th front page.
Also, the claim that the picture was not manipulated is tendencious. No, there's no reason to believe it was photoshopped, but it was framed. It shows equal numbers of unionists and independentistas. #11/23
Nevertheless, everyone messes up, and apology is graceful. And @NeilMackay makes some good and fair points. #12/23

heraldscotland.com/news/16222188.…
We should all, given the overall tenor of the Scottish press, welcome an aspiration to "to provide balance, accuracy and fairness". #13/23
It was right to report the group of unionists giving Nazi salutes. It happened. It represents the very ugly core of Scottish unionism. While the numbers on the day were tiny, we know - and we need to know - that that ugly extreme exists. #14/23
It is, however, not reasonable to ask @theSNP to discipline the #Yes movement. Many independentistas are not SNP supporters - I'm not myself. #15/23
Abusive and threatening language and behaviour towards journalists doing their job is unacceptable. It's just as unacceptable from #Yes supporters as it is from Nazis. Don't do it. It's not good behaviour. #16/23
Cancelling your subscription to media which no longer appeals to you is a reasonable thing to do; speaking about it publicly is a bit petulant. (Yes, @bbcnews, I'm a bit petulant). #17/23
But it's time to draw a line, and bury some hatchets. There has been a synergy over the past four years between the @newsundayherald and the #Yes movement from which both sides have benefitted. #18/23
We need a serious press with "provides balance, accuracy and fairness". We need a press which is not afraid to criticise and probe our ideas, in order to strengthen our arguments. We need a paper which can't be dismissed by the BBC as a fanzine. #19/23
I think we all recognise that @NeilMackay, @iainmacwhirter, @foreigncorr1, @AngelaHaggerty (despite her awful faux-pas yesterday) are all basically decent folk and fundamentally on our side. #20/23
And if we all cancel our subscriptions, the @newsundayherald will be forced to join the other side in order to survive. Is that really what we want? #21/23
Folk made mistakes. We all got a bit heated. We had a stushie. But when the dust settles, the movement needs the @newsundayherald and the @newsundayherald needs the movement. Let's all be friends. #22/23
But, @NeilMackay, next week, dinnae thumb your nose at us. Just dinnae. Resist the temptation, hey? Surely, for the love of god and little fishes, you can find some front page lead that doesn't undermine the #Yes cause?

Pretty please?

#23/23

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More from @simon_brooke

Sep 23, 2018
Two things that I'm thinking about as very serious issues this weekend:

1. Do you remember how quickly the Soviet Bloc collapsed? We're all thinking about life post-#Brexit as sort of muddling through, business as usual, but I think that's unlikely. >>>
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It means there will be less food in the shops. It means the prices will rise. It means the poor will go without. It means there will be hunger. It means that social inequity will become even more stark. >>>
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Sep 2, 2018
I commented briefly, and carefully, on this tweet a couple of days ago. But it's been gnawing away at the back of my mind, and I'm going to try again. Thread. >>>
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It's precisely this issue - of how much, and how, you can criticise Zionism and the Zionist state - that is causing so much trouble for @UKLabour at present. >>>

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May 28, 2018
The #GrowthComission report (yes, I'm struggling to read it, too) says:

"3.88 Maximising frictionless trade and market access with the rest of the UK and with Europe is of critical importance to the performance of the Scottish economy in the short and long term."
This is almost certainly not possible, and absolutely certainly not in our gift. England and Wales (hereinafter #EW) seemed destined for a very hard crash out of the #EU. >>>
Given that that is so, there will be a hard border between #EW and any country which is in either the EU or EFTA. >>>
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Apr 27, 2018
Does a social system with entrenched privilege systematically breed progressively nastier people? I suspect it does, and I shall argue it. Thread: >>>
I used to believe that the reason the British elite are in general such noxious people was because our system of elite education is so bad; but I've begun to doubt that that's the whole story. >>>
Elites tend to breed with elites, in quite narrow parameters: people tend to choose mates from socially similar backgrounds. >>>
Read 20 tweets
Mar 7, 2018
We're going to face a decade of economic collapse - probably two. The welfare state will go - and because of Barnett consequentials, it will go in Scotland too. Civil dissent will be met with repression. >>>
In those circumstances, secessionism is just another form of civil dissent, like trades unionism, to be crushed. We saw it in the 1980s, we see it today in #Catalunya. >>>
I don't know whether you are old enough to have campaigned in the 1979 referendum, or lived through the industrial conflict of the 1980s. I am; I did. Thatcher's government was as hostile to nationalism as to the left. >>>
Read 4 tweets

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