An audio recording of Wee Ginger Dug's blog post on 15/04/17, titled 'An Easter Homily' - weegingerdug.wordpress.com/...ly/Content & image copyright Paul Kavanagh (Wee Ginger Dug), read by Sarah Mackie. FREE to download!You can find weegingerdug's blog here - weegingerdug.wordpress.com/Wee Ginger Dug's twitter: @weegingerdugIf you’d like Paul and the dug to...

The chap in the picture below holding a placard with his name on it so that he doesn’t forget it is Scottish Conservative MSP Jamie Greene. He could probably do with writing a few other things on there too. That’s because he’s the Tories’ shadow minister for “Technology Connectivity, Digital Economy & Broadcast”, but today […]

There’s a very interesting blog by Douglas Fraser on the BBC website today, pointing out just how vague and non-committal the “announcement” by defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon regarding the long-awaited order of a number of Type 26 frigates for the BAE shipyards in Govan yesterday was. It might explain this extraordinary interview Fallon (alongside […]

The Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act [OBFA] is headline news again.  Opposition MSPs are apparently to gang up ‘Edinburgh Trams’ style to vote against it. By the time you read this the Scottish Greens will either have…

November has begun, which means the official commencement of the annual season for opinion articles about poppies. Although like Christmas, poppy-shaming has been starting earlier and earlier every year. Poppy shaming now starts so early that it has managed to go back in time and now starts before the actual start of WWI in 1914. […]

Old media and new media spoke with one voice in Scotland today: But for once it was the dead-tree press that held the moral high ground. Labour MSP James Kelly today published the responses to his consultation on the repeal of the Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act, which poll after poll has consistently shown as one of […]

Back in May we wrote this: The prediction duly came true, as most of ours do. Sometimes we hate being right. Because today in Parliament this happened: The assertion of Lib Dem MSP Mike Rumbles that a second indyref bill legislated by Holyrood without first having been sanctioned by Westminster would be “universally recognised as being outwith the […]

We realise that there’s some stiff competition for that accolade, even if you restrict it solely to things said by Kezia Dugdale, but this needs preserving for posterity. A couple of questions do spring immediately to mind: (1) how does every country on Earth that isn’t Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland do it, and (2) given […]

Later this month Vagabond Voices will be publishing the second volume of Barking Up the Right Tree, an anthology of my articles for The National newspaper. The book is due to be published on 31 October, but if you place your order beforehand, there’s a special offer of £1 off the cover price and free […]

The UK’s decision to leave the European Union has, it seems fair and uncontroversial to say, thrown Scotland’s Unionist parties into something of a spin. With all of them having campaigned for a Remain vote, all are now faced with the unsquareable circle of operating in a country that voted to stay in both the […]

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the TalkRadio website, about Scottish Labour's curious journey from being officially undecided on whether to support a second independence referendum on 24th June, to being dead set against it now that all the reassuring facts about Brexit have come to light.  You can read the article HERE.

Let’s all be nice. Let’s all be beacons of tolerance, understanding, and empathy. Let’s bend over backwards to appreciate the points of view of others. Let’s receive anger but send out love. Let’s preach peace and civic responsibility. Let’s never utter a harsh word. Let’s not slag off James Kelly MSP for being the most […]

Here’s David Mundell on Sunday Politics earlier today: It’s a pretty uncomfortable time. But it could have been a lot worse. Andrew Neil let Mundell get away several times with saying that Scots voted in 2014 while knowing that they’d subsequently be getting a referendum on EU membership. But as we’ve clearly established previously on this site, […]

There was a rather comforting predictability about the headlines the Scottish media greeted the first day of the SNP conference in Glasgow with. Unsurprisingly, the Express’ lead story was a piece of fabricated drivel based on alleged quotes from an unnamed source claiming that the Scottish Government would resign in order to force an election and […]

Alert readers may recall that three years ago, the No campaign issued a series of dire warnings that independence could cause supermarket prices to rise: Thankfully, by staying in the UK and therefore leaving the EU, Scotland etc etc.

It’s Siobhan again, readers. Ever since Scottish Daily Mail political editor Alan Roden jumped ship to go and rearrange the deckchairs for Labour, his former paper has very noticeably toned down its hysterical “SNP BAD” content. We can go through the Mail for days on end now without finding some ludicrously distorted misrepresentation or screaming […]

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Watching May in action is like being transported back in time to the Thatcher era. We’ve got a female prime minister who’s channelling a matron with a lubeless enema, and we’ve got a Tory government that blatantly doesn’t give a toss about what Scotland wants without even bother to hide it with a veneer of […]

The UK’s Brexit plans are starting to make CoCo the Clown look like a serious minded bean counter who ran away from the circus to join a firm of chartered accountants. There are paradoxes mused upon by ancient Greek philosophers which are clear cut and straightforward in comparison to the UK’s Brexit strategy. Zeno famously […]

So Labour’s conference has ended.  In terms of the UK it was all about Corbyn.  The plotters failed. In Scotland the story centred on Kezia Dugdale.  She had attacked Jeremy Corbyn during the summer.  How would she deal with his…