I wonder who the Sunday Mail wants as Labour leader

Ah the Sunday Mail. That impartial observer and reporter of all things Scottish. There to serve the people and simply report the truth. You've gotta laugh haven't you? Today they've done a "harmless" little skit on the Labour leadership contest in Scotland. They decided to test how ordinary voters react to photos of the 3 contenders - Iain Gray, Andy Kerr and Cathy Jamieson. Just to be "funny" they added in a pic of some actor. Not quite sure what that was for but maybe my sense of humour's different.

It was all fake and a set up to give Cathy Jamieson a higher profile (who, of course, more people recognised than any of the others). You can tell it's fake by looking at the answers the "ordinary" folk give. One says of Andy Kerr "I'm guessing he's a politician" implying that these ordinary folks have not been told that it's Labour leadership contenders. The same person says she can't name Iain Gray but "it's a sorry state if they're all running for the leadership". Ah, so she DID know. Why did she have to guess one of them was a politican then?

And funnily enough, the comments about Cathy Jamieson are all positive - whilst the comments about the other two are just rude! One person even refers to one of the contenders as "an ugly man". I don't really care what the Labour rags do to Labour politicians but I do care about the principles involved. Newspapers are not supposed to be there to unduly influence public opinion but they do it all the time and blatantly so. I think I prefer that, however, to this sneaky kind of nonsense written with the assumption that its readership are all too thick to work out what they're trying to do.