Sunday, July 06, 2008

Ministry of Truth

In light of Baillieston MSP Margaret Curran's sudden entry into the Glasgow East steeplechase, I went looking to see if I could find a Labour press release anywhere in which they had called for Alex Salmond to quit as an MP. It would be a bit of a turnaround, after all, for a representative of party which had been criticising the SNP venomously for months for having a dual-Westminster/Holyrood mandate member, to then go out and seek exactly the same role for themself.

My researcher, Mr Google, directed me to this page on the Scottish Labour website. Sadly, the page no longer appeared to be active, which was a shame since it seemed like the smoking gun I was looking for. Ever the innocent, though, and always prepared to believe the best of people, I thought that perhaps the url was simply broken. Curiously, though, Mr Google had the foresight to store a previous version in his cache here:

What makes things all the stranger is that there are press releases for the same date (15 June 2008) on Labour's 'news' page, but this one calling for Mr Salmond to step down as an MP appears to be absent. This is curious, because a friend of mine was able to make a screen grab which shows how as recently as earlier today, Labour's demand for Mr Salmond to step down was still being given pride of place (bottom right of screengrab - click to enlarge):


How odd! Surely Labour isn't trying to conceal a highly embarrassing u-turn, here?

Meanwhile, in other news at thirteen o'clock, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia...

2 comments:

Will said...

To be honest, Richard, they may as well not bother and carry on saying what they say regardless of what happens to Margaret Curran.

After all, they see nothing wrong in Goerge Foulkes occasionally skipping Holyrood - to which he was elected - in favour of the House of Lords - to which he wasn't.

So why bother making the U-turn now when they've been two-faced about this since last May?

Anseo said...

Spotted the same yesterday (see the blog) when it was a case of now you see it, now you don`t.

After the Gavin Yates debacle surley they realise that things get cached.