Scotland on Sunday interview
Mark & Mary are interviewed in Scotland on Sunday about The Majority and the #ResignSturgeon campaign.
We represent the silent majority of people in Scotland, who are angry and frustrated by Nicola Sturgeon’s shenanigans bringing international shame on Scotland. When we left that time, the SNP were just 5 per cent in the polls and just a nutter and cranks, or rightly viewed that way. To some extent the big question was ‘how did this happen?’. We talked about the boiling frog, the frogs in the pot that don’t realise they are being slowly boiled. The casual nationalism and seeing that is quite disturbing – this rise in anti-English sentiment, a rise in centralisation of power in Edinburgh, just things that people in Scotland might not notice as much…The response was very positive and it’s clear people are looking for something, and I think that’s why we’ve grown quickly, to 14,000 followers on Twitter and 25,000 on Facebook.
On the Scottish Parliament, Mark says:
The nature of constitutional arrangement should be something that should be looked at at all times. There should be more discussion on what alternatives there are to a Scottish Parliament and is the Scottish Parliament delivering for the Scottish people? For the last 14 years it hasn’t delivered. Does that mean it has to be abolished? I don’t know. If you have a system that can be taken over by nationalists and used as a vehicle for separation, then I think it doesn’t fit the purpose or intention of what it’s for.
The National Interview
Mark is interviewed by The National, a daily newspaper in Scotland.
Our aim is to summarise all of the world’s news – past to present. We distribute our news through partners, such as social media fan pages and share advertising revenues with the page owners. People can sign up to be the next set of contributors. They tell us what they are interested in and we help them produce a timeline along the way. Anyone can come in for free and read the timeline or edit it…Facebook used to do a lot of news but now its model has changed where do people go for unbiased news? People can get a left-wing view in the Guardian and a right-wing view if they read the Telegraph but where is the unbiased reference point?
Sarasota Patch interview
Mark is interviewed about WeCheck. describing how the idea came to him when he annotated an editorial by Nicolas Kristof in the New York Times. The site is an online version of that manual process, allowing users to tag speeches and articles for common logical fallacies, and so dig deeper into the truth of political statements.
At first I wasn’t thinking ‘fact checking,’ I just wanted to find out whether it was true or not…I have good faith in the people. There’s enough people out there that are out to find the truth than for the political aspect.
Newsweek article
Crisscross Social Network is featured in Newsweek magazine. Mark:
The problem with the expat markets is how you get beyond them. Where do you go?
Arthur C. Clarke joke
On a trip to Sri Lanka, Mark interviews Arthur C. Clarke, who tells him a joke:
Business a.m interview
In an interview titled Big in Japan, with the Scottish newspaper Business a.m. Mark & Mary talk about the renaming of Tokyo Classified to Metropolis, how the dot.com bust affected Japan Today and their relationship with Scotland. Mark:
I look up Scottish property websites about once every two weeks and I have a little dream of buying something there…But this place [Tokyo] has a real energy. The last time I returned to Tokyo after a holiday in Scotland I was so happy to be back. Even in that short time, Tokyo had changed. I took a walk down the street and it seemed like new buildings had gone up. Scotland’s a great place but there’s a real energy here. And we’ve still got a bit of work to do.
Asahi Evening News interview
In an interview with the Asahi Evening News, Mark & Mary talk about the magazine:
If you’ve just arrived in Tokyo, you can use the classifieds to find a house, to go places and meet people. You couldn’t do that before.
On the difficulty of selling ads in Japan:
Before we published the first issue, Mary went around trying to sell ads to Japanese companies. We had a bit of a problem because many Japanese companies didn’t know what a classified ad was.