Raising the Standard

Like other bloggers I welcome our recent victories over the MSM (Mainstream Media). I have to say though that I remain a fan of newspapers, and I mean the real, printed variety. When I lived in London I would regularly travel into the West End on Saturdays for the sole purpose of buying the Scotsman.

I am pleased therefore to welcome the arrival of the Scottish Standard into our newspaper marketplace. Although I am not convinced by the case for independence it did seem rather odd that none of the existing Scottish papers catered for the section of the political spectrum that provides the main opposition at Holyrood. Whether the Standard will succeed remains to be seen:

In a market where impact is all, the Scottish Standard, raised barely a ripple among the newspaper sellers. No advertising posters. No promotional displays.

I bought my copy on Wednesday evening and it was well displayed in my local RS McColl but I spotted a forlorn-looking pile of Standards in WH Smith on Thursday morning, neither with other newspapers nor alongside the weekly magazines.

This comment attracted my attention:

Commercially, it will stand or fall by advertising and that already looks very light. At a rough count, I made it just over eight pages of advertising - not good in 48 pages - and the fact that they have not managed to sell an advert on page one, invariably the most sought-after in a weekly, does not bode well.

Actually, I was rather surprised by just how many ads were in the paper but I know that some new publications offer cut-price deals to create the appearance of a commercial success.

On the actual content I have to say that my views echo those of George Kerevan:

Alex Salmond launched his election campaign on Tuesday with the only serious economic policy document I've seen from any of the parties.

Salmond's message:

To stoke up growth, attract inward investment and return exiled Scots talent, Alex has made the SNP the only party to advocate tax cuts. He proposes to drop corporation tax from its present 30 per cent to 20 per cent.

But I felt just like Mr Kerevan did as I read my copy of the Standard over a quiet pint:

However, I have a wee problem: I've been reading the Scottish Standard. It reminds me that the SNP is still politically schizophrenic.

Yes we had the SNP leader calling for a cut in corporation tax but the rest of the paper could have been written by an off-the-shelf, first-year-undergraduate, leftist cliche generator. If Scotland is to become independent the bills will be paid by the mass of middle class folk who work in the private sector. They're unlikely to be convinced by the first issue of this new paper.