Simple Simon

media-bias

Have you showered yourself in money this rainy morning? Did you have a refreshing bath in freshly subsidized dosh this a.m.? Simon Heffer thinks you did you ungrateful dolts:

“Over the next 12 months, it will be distressingly hard to avoid Scottish voices on TV and radio droning on about whether or not Scotland should vote in a referendum to leave the United Kingdom next year.

To make matters worse, it is increasingly a debate from which the English, who as taxpayers send a hefty subsidy to Scotland each year to keep that country afloat, are willfully excluded.

In a true democracy we, too, would be allowed our say, with a vote of our own next September, since there are two of us in this particular marriage.

Since the mid-Nineties I have been convinced that England and Scotland would benefit from a divorce, or at least from a trial separation. Many Scots don’t much like the English and appear ungrateful for everything that England does for them in showering them with money.”

He concludes: “English money is propping up the most welfare, drink and drug-addicted nation in Europe.”
Read the whole lovely diatribe of reason here.

You might think it unfair to pick on the Heff and the (Hate) Mail which regularly trots out its barmy obsession with gypsies and single mums as the root cause of all of society’s evils. The truth is you can scan across the broadsheets for similar seething coverage and frothing at the mouth copy any day of the week. Try the Torygraph here – or here or the cheerleaders over at the Daily Express – the always lovely Rod Riddle in the Times – or even the poor old Yorkshire Post.
And don’t forget the wonderful Guardian and the delightful Economist.

Other examples of such delights are welcome.

 

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  1. You would never see a Scottish paper or a Scottish person on TV talking about the English the way that seems to be commonplace for the English papers and many on TV (HIGNFY for example) to talk about the Scots.

    Yet it’s the Scots who are constantly accused of being anti-English, with the likes of Heffer left unchallenged.

    I wonder what Andrew Marr has to say about all this?

    1. Abulhaq says:

      Racist stereotyping is thematic in press coverage of “Scottish affairs”. The attitude is little different from the imperial Great White Queen mentality that wagged the finger, the sword and gun before the conquered, for their own good. We seem to be the last colony, complete with quisling apologists for continued physical and psychological captivity. The “nationals” skate on very thin ice coming close to the Der Stürmer type cartoons, Salmond is the usual crude target, and herrenvolkisch rhetoric which suggests “alone” we would soon be pleading to return to Britannia’s withered paps. As George Gunn points out below with the likes of Ayr’s Wellington School Megabrit Kirsty giving that scunnert look of haughty disdain she reserves for the lesser breeds we might as well get back to our caves, paint our faces blue and over an abernethy biscuit and wee cup of tea dream of kicking the bastards where we know it really hurts. A BIG YES should do the trick!

  2. I’m American. This pisses me off. It’s very GOP Republican party talking about how ‘less than’ everyone else is. Asshats…

    1. Macart says:

      Welcome McHooHaa

      This chap Heffer is of the type who are likely to believe Americans celebrate separation day on July 4th. We tend to ignore folks like him for the most part. Just point and laugh, we do. 😀

    2. David Myers says:

      Asshats? I like this word 🙂

  3. George Gunn says:

    Dear Mike, the English media don’t understand what is going on in Scotland but then they don’t really understand what is going on in their own country either. In the Mail and the like you could as easily slip in the word/term Jew for Gypsy, immigrant, single mother etc. The Scottish papers are all solidly “British” as is the media generally and as you pointed out earlier – witness the car crash of Newsnight with salubrious Kirsty barely managing to hide her contempt – and as a result we have little hope of a reasonable media debate about this. It is also faintly comic in a venal sort of way to hear Prof John Curtice (?) swear blind allegiance to the opinion polls as long as they downplay the Yes vote. Who commissions the polls supplies the answers they pay for. Am I the only one who thinks that Scottish Labour have swallowed some mad pill as we had the “something for nothing” Lamont going on in Parliament yesterday about something (or a nothing) she has discovered called “socialism”. I await with great interest to find out if she has actually knows what that means. Where and when, I wonder, will British hysteria end and Scottish reason begin? On the BBC? September 19th 2014?

  4. Murray McCallum says:

    Who exactly are we better together with again? If we really are a family, it’s pretty dysfunctional.

  5. Andrew Morton says:

    I found this at the foot of the Comments section,

    “Libellous and abusive comments are not allowed. Please read our House Rules.”

    Libellous and abusive articles on the other hand . . .

    1. Yes, the irony of that wasn’t lost on me either.
      I’m not an advocate of casual violence but I would be prepared to compromise on this odious little fascist.

  6. Macart says:

    The Mail, right wing so you don’t have to be.

    I’d rather not read the bile of Mr Heffer, seen too much of it for one lifetime already from many just like him. Still and all you can’t help but feel that the right wing press are lining up their excuses for the failure of the UK in advance of next September, never once wondering or owning up to what part of the guilt they bear. I’ll not shed any tears for leaving behind the greater part of UK media influence on the Scottish electorate.

  7. John Souter says:

    Heffer is a charlatan – he knows the truth but chooses the fill his belly through lies.

    He and his ilk form the paradigm of the modern ‘news’ machine; bought line, paragraph and article by the monthly pay cheque.

    Serial liars with the integrity of Lord Haw Haw.

  8. Charles Patrick O'Brien says:

    I left this comment on the article;The article does not comply with your comments rules.I see racism in its purist form.I read blatant lies subsidy! please supply the figures remember assertions are not facts,simple insults about us Scots and our first minister shows that there is nothing in Westminster,and I say Westminster NOT England nor the English,for we common men and women have a fight for democracy as I think England can become a democracy if they awaken to see the con-job that has been done on them for centuries.While Scotland is united with England Westminster can still play one against the other and use one,usually the Scots, as the scapegoat.There is not a democracy while there is a monarchy,as they are opposing forces,it should only take a few minutes to think it through.

  9. Juteman says:

    I wonder how No voters feel when they read articles like this?
    Anyway, he’s a lying bastard. I pay for my own heroin and deep fried Mars Bars.

  10. Ken MacColl says:

    If you live in Scotland and choose to read the “Scottish” edition of a London daily you will be spared such extreme bigotry as Heffer exhibits here. The Mail pays people in Scotland to “put a kilt” on its Caledonian edition to edit out the nastiest aspects of its output and change constant references of England to Britain to mollify Scottish readers. Why they should bother with this is a mystery as surely anybody reading their sort of mince has already surrendered any critical faculty.

  11. bellacaledonia says:

    Yes Scotland have issued this useful rebuttal:

    In a piece for the London Daily Mail which did not appear in its Scottish edition, commentator Simon Heffer expresses the view that he hopes Scotland becomes independent. Thanks for your support, Simon.
    Unfortunately, but not altogether surprisingly, Simon makes a number of spectacular factual errors in claiming that Scotland’s independence would save the rest of the UK money. In the interests of accuracy, and in keeping with the enhanced social union that will exist after Yes, we would like to extend an open invitation to Simon to visit the Yes Scotland HQ in Glasgow for a briefing – that way we can help him, hopefully, to become better-informed about the issues. In the meantime, here are some quick corrections for Simon to reflect upon:

    1. “I believe that an independent Scotland would soon find itself unequal to the struggle of self-government, because the English money tap would be turned off. Its people would have to work, or starve.”

    In fact: The employment rate is higher in Scotland (72.4%) than the rest of the UK (71.6%). The increase in people using food banks shows that it is Westminster policy that is leading to food shortages for families in Scotland.

    2. “The Scottish nation as a whole, thanks to English taxpayers, has never had it so good.”

    In fact: Mr or Mrs Average Scotland generates £99 of wealth for every £100 of wealth generated by Mr or Mrs Average Britain, excluding oil and gas (if we include oil and gas we generate £118 for every £100 in GB). And yet, Mrs Average Scotland has just £85 of wealth for every £100 of wealth for Mrs GB.

    3. “English money is propping up the most welfare, drink and drug-addicted nation in Europe.”

    In fact: In the most recent year, spending on welfare in Scotland was on average £60 a head higher than in the UK, but Scots contributed £1,700 more per head in tax.

    4. “Nowhere is public spending per head higher in the UK than in Scotland.”

    In fact: Spending per head in London is often higher than in Scotland, and that’s even before we include the hidden subsidies through so-called unidentified spending. A report by the London School of Economics found that: “Expenditure per capita in London is 18% above the UK average as a result of both the concentration of expensive public infrastructure and concentrations of relative depravation”.

    5. “It is hard to compute exactly how much the Scots cost the English.

    In fact: The UK government has provided the figures. They show Scotland more than pays her way and, over the past 30 years, it is the rest of the UK that has cost Scottish taxpayers – our finances have been healthier than the UK’s by £19 billion.

    6. “some Scots labour under the misapprehension of how much of the territorial waters would belong to them . . . In reality, the English-Scottish border runs south-west to north-east, and that line would not put all oil and gas under Scottish ownership.”

    In fact: Research by academics at Aberdeen University use the boundary line suggested by Heffer and this puts around 90% of the fields and revenues in the Scottish sector.

    7. “The only question is: when these ‘independent’ Scots eventually see sense and want to rejoin the Union that flourished for 300 years, will England want them back again?”

    In fact: Over 50 countries have become independent from Westminster, not one of them has ever wanted to go back.

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