Some facts re Cambridge Analytica:
- An external consultant for the SNP had one meeting concluding they were a bunch of cowboys and rejected them
- The Conservative party had meetings with them in 2016
- Several major Conservative party donors have invested in them
- SCL, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, has been run by a chairman of the Oxford Conservative Association
There’s no story here with regard to the SNP but there’s a real opportunity for investigative journalism if any of the current crop had the balls to pursue the Tories. They haven’t. Instead they’ve gone for their preferred target, the SNP, and in a show of end-of-times churnalism, produced these headlines:
Scotsman: ‘SNP accused of hypocrisy over links to Cambridge Analytica’
Herald: ‘SNP accused of hypocrisy after failing to disclose meeting with Cambridge Analytica’ AND ‘Blunder by SNP HQ adds to tensions with MPs’.
So, an exploratory meeting by an external consultant leading to a quick negative assessment is somehow a blunder and hypocrisy? It’s clear where those words would be better applied.
BBC went with Cambridge Analytica ‘met SNP’ to pitch services – BBC News ‘cleverly’ using speech marks to distance themselves from complaints.
Worst of all, as you might expect, the ‘Scottish’ Daily Mail attacked blindly with ‘SNP must come clean on its data talks.’ AND ‘EXPOSED: SNP’s SECRET LINK TO DATA ROW FIRM.’
Here’s the correct headline:
‘SNP has never worked with Cambridge Analytica.’
Sorry, the ‘editor’ doesn’t like it.
I’m getting the hang of these speech marks.
Off-topic Footnote: The National’s pet right-winger, Michael Fry, supports the missile attacks on Syria. I haven’t bought one for some time, but I won’t be buying one again.
Talking-up Scotland 
Thank you for exposing the hypocrisy of the MSM, yet again. Pleased to hear SNP rejected Cambridge Analytica as cowboys.
RE: “Off-topic Footnote: The National’s pet right-winger, Michael Fry, supports the missile attacks on Syria. I haven’t bought one for some time, but I won’t be buying one again”.
I don’t support bombing of anyone, but I will continue to buy and support the National as the ONLY daily newspaper to support Scottish Independence. We have to stick to the primary aim- Scottish Independence, and encourage our media supporters, even if they are not always of the same mind set on single issues.
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Thanks Alastair
I worry that the National is damaging the cause by giving space to Fry and MacKenna and Common Space writers whose desire for actual independence I doubt.
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I went into a shop that sells trumpets but it wasn’t a nice shop so I left. Now the Herald is accusing me of being Louis Armstrong.
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Better that than feeling a bit Dizzy Gillespie?
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And his biography is titled ‘Journey to Freedom’! You must have sensed that.
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Like it, Bryan. Now, come clean or are you just going to blow your own trumpet?
John, sorry to hear you’re not going to read The National. I buy it on a Saturday and read it on the internet. I just ignore Michael Fry, but it’s the only paper which has a decent thing to say about Scotland.
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Pwaaaap!!!
They publish too much that is damaging for the cause.
After the great day, I’ll join in criticism of the SNP but until then we stick together and concentrate our fire on the Unionists.
No infighting. I won’t have it!
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The public are rumbling the MSM bit by bit. The beeb Jockland site carries a fairly detailed piece on Johnston Press’ full year financial results and they make pretty dismal reading for employees and shareholders. (The CEO – ex -beeb honcho Ashley Highfield continues, meanwhile, to extract his enormous remuneration package, along with other ‘senior’ executives). Note the forthright language in the Financial Statement section “.. may cast significant doubt on the group’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
One of Britain’s major news publishing groups has sustained another year of large losses due to its heavy debt burden and falling value of its titles.
Johnston Press, which publishes newspapers including the ‘i’, The Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, saw a pre-tax loss of £95m last year.
In 2017, it further reduced the book value of those titles by £57m, to £84m.
With £196m of debt, it has yet to find a way of rolling it over when it becomes due, in June 2019.
Discussions with a committee of bondholders were announced last November, and there is no sign with the publication of the full-year financial results that chief executive Ashley Highfield is close to cutting a deal.
The financial results statement said this was a “material uncertainty” for the company’s future, adding: “Failure to repay, refinance, satisfy or otherwise retire the bonds at their maturity would give rise to a default under the indenture governing the bonds dated 16 May 2014, and this possibility indicates a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt on the group’s ability to continue as a going concern”.
The figures for 2017 showed revenue from print advertising was down 20% to £49m.
Revenue from circulation of its newspapers was down 1% to £79m.
The cost of redundancies was more than £13m, and its strategic review cost more than £3m, while capital spending was less than £5m.
That was while total revenue fell from £223m in 2016 to £202m last year.
Without the high cost of a financial adjustment to account for its heavy debt burden, the publisher reported adjusted pre-tax profits on continuing operations down from £17m to £14m.
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The BBC website Scotland Politics page has given a feature on the SNP/Cambridge Analytica allegations today – 19, April, because THE COLONEL raised it at First Minister’s Questions. The FM responded in the way the SNP did yesterday and pointed out the connections between the Tories and Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL. The website reports the FM’s reply, but I do not see any investigation into alleged Tory/CA links.
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