Best Scot at Westminster
After the Herald’s Scottish Politician of the Year Awards we held a Friday night competition on Twitter asking ‘Can anyone name a single thing he’s done for Scotland?’
There were 22k views of that tweet and the answers included:
‘500 brace of grouse and a couple of beaters’ @haikuthenoo
‘He sells Xmas trees in Dumfries and Galloway’ @linuspoint
‘Jack shit’ @gaf_young
‘Farted auld lang syne’ @KonovMaureen
‘Given Edinburgh a building to focus protests on’ @crgn
‘Is fuck all a thing?’ @fundilymundelly
etc etc
Followed by quit a lot of No, Nada, Zilch, Nothing.
The only thing that anyone (such as @anne_mummag @TedOakley) could agree that he had done was to block the GRR bill.
So – whatever your view on that – the only thing anyone could come up with out of over 20k readers was that Alister Jack had overturned legislation passed by a majority with cross-party support in our devolved parliament.
I suppose the question remains whether the Herald does this as a joke, a provocation, for clickbait or their panel genuinely believes this? Hard to say what is worst.
He oversees the +/-60% of legislation that Holyrood is responsible for, but can’t be bothered with and offload onto the Scottish Office through the Sewel convention?
Satan your incessant, inane commentary exemplifies the old adage – ‘empty vessels make most noise’ even when they use a dumb name like Satan.
The question is “best” for who? The Unionist ruling class is the only plausible answer. For a serious, supposedly informed newspaper this is embarrassing, and shows how badly served we are in Scotland by our media.
I am in absolute agreement with you Richard. I cannot express my astonishment and dismay when I read that Jack had won this “award”.
As a reader of The Herald for approaching 60 years I am, to say the least, pretty disgruntled by this.
He’s kept Scotland in her proper* place for another year, and for that he shall be highly praised. Stout fellow!
*subservient, divided, humiliated, empoverished, dis-empowered, de-skilled, anxious, cold, skint, hungry, addicted…..
Maybe they just got the names mixed up? Who won cold-turd-of-the-year?
Jack is the government’s representative in Scotland as opposed to being Scotland’s representative in government. While he is a prime example this is an almost inevitable development when Westminster and Holyrood have different parties in power. Post devolution you really need to wonder what meaningful role the SOS for Scotland has?
Jack exemplifies the ‘token Scot’ in the cabinet whose primary role is to keep the natives under control. He is from landed ‘gentry’ stock and any cursory reading of Scottish history will show that he is the latest of a long, inglorious line of these types who basically have little in common with the majority of their fellow Scots.
Or what possible reason could ScottishPower have for sponsoring it? British awards tend to be useful red flags. Wikipedia says Jack went to Glenalmond, which doesn’t seem to have featured in the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry yet, despite stuff like this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-36311483
Of course, the word ‘Scot’ is ambiguous in this context, and the Herald may simply mean ‘the Scottish Establishment’.
It’s trolling .
The Herald stated that Scottish Secretary Alister Jack was nominated for Best Scot at Westminster “after testing the boundaries of the devolution settlement with a veto on Holyrood’s gender reforms and contesting the deposit return scheme.”…
A newspaper whose distribution is in Scotland that has a panel that awards a UK government minister, who happens to be Scottish but who works for another government outside of Scotland , and whose job for that other government is for him to do their dirty work to try to keep Scotland and it’s government/parliament in check……thus apparently the award of “Best Scot at WM” and the reasoning behind HOW he won ……makes the award MORE about WM than about him being a Scot.
The reason for his award and him ‘winning’ it via The Herald (and panel) demonstrated whose side they are on…..but then we already knew that did we not…….as “provocation” (Sh*t stirring) is their modus operandi on most Scottish political stories is it not.
Some of their other ‘winners’ and ‘nominees’ are also in some cases questionable but yet predictable in their nomination and the reasons behind them being nominated and too, in some instances, winning……but that is also part of the “provocation” and trolling ……..Jackie Baillie winning “Scottish Politician of the Year” will in itself not boost Labour’s chances in next year’s GE but I guess they think every little bit helps….and we all know why she was nominated and then won……though many of us obviously disagree with both her nomination and eventual win in this category and do not concur with the panel that her (small) ‘victory’ was either appropriate or well deserved.
Just another sadly predictable day in the output we get via the negative and Pro UK ‘Scottish’ MSM who also work on behalf of another country’s government to keep both Scotland and it’s government/parliament in check and in their (non) Union……I assume Liz Truss was both nominated and WON in the category ‘Best Tory PM in the UK’……or would Jack’s favourite Boris Johnson have won that…..LOL
Not-my-real-name ….. just to say “you nailed it”