While our primary goal here at Strathclyde Spotlight is taking the piss, we are of course people who have an opinion about politics, Scotland, and Scottish Independence.
This will be no surprise to most of you, but we are largely a pro-independence publication. This is mostly a combination of wanting to live in a real democracy rather than a constitutional monarchy, getting to be EU citizens again and not being dragged into foreign wars by Westminster. We can take or leave the Braveheart nonsense and can't be arsed with anti-English sentiment; our ire is with the English establishment and dominance within the UK, not the people.
That been said, we are not overly attached to the parties advocating independence, and if there's a good enough joke to be made at the expense of the indy2 campaign, we're gonna go for the laugh first. With Salmond and the right wingers in Alba kicking about, there's going to be some uncomfortable bedfellows. And if Sturgeon slips on a banana peel, we'll be racing to publish the 'up the Clyde' pun before the Sun. Although, as gaffes go, we're confident even the bookies will back Boris having >90% possession this time around.
The reason we're breaking the fourth wall here to say all this is that this campaign is going to be so, so much worse than 2014. For all the Bitter Together and online vitriol that fermented back then, we are almost a decade on and have really distilled the fake news/media spin/echo chamber shite to an unforeseen level.
Satirical publications like ours, which are motivated primarily by comedy, start been shared ignorantly (or maliciously) as news stories during these political circuses, and we wanted it loud and clear on our site that this is where we stand so no one can accuse us of insidiously pretending to be an impartial journalistic endeavor and sharing whatever jape we make that day as if it's an exclusive from Reuters.
It's going to get messy, and we hope we can provide a moment of levity during the carnage; as Malcolm Tucker said, 'like a clown running through a minefield.'