I see corporate lobbyist Andy MacIver has his columnist mask on tomorrow which another attack on teaching unions. I wonder if he will, this time, mention his obvious professional and financial interest? I'm going to guess: no

Do a Twitter search for @akmaciver and @eisunion and have a look for yourself. This small selection goes back to 2014.

And remember of course that Andy's lobbying firm, Message Matters, completely failed in its attempts to get Teach First into Scotland.

But I cannot for the life of me imagine why he has such a problem with Scotland's largest teaching union.

Andy likes to try to convince everyone that his views on education are nothing to do with who pays his bills. You can even believe that if you want to.

I've actually just noticed that one of those earlier screenshots is an especially good example of the fact that he is completely ignorant or acting in bad faith. Or both, I guess.

Anyway, tomorrow's column will likely tell us that teachers are wonderful and Andy thinks they're just terrific but that their union is very very bad.

That isn't analysis - it's a lobbying tactic.

Of course this sort of thing is pretty much inevitable when a lobbyist - someone literally paid to influence public narratives, policy and spending to benefit whoever is writing the cheques - is allowed to write newspaper columns and be a "commentator" on TV.

Even a quick glance through the Message Matters client list shows groups that would stand to directly (and financially) benefit if Andy MacIver were able to influence national discussions and policies around education.

He isn't trying to inform you - he's trying to manipulate you.

(That is literally his job)

The brass neck required to end that dreadful, waffling nonsense with this is incredible.

Let me give you an idea of what is going on here, using some rough numbers off the top of my head.

Scotland has about 50,000 teachers & something like 80% are EIS members, so that's somewhere in the region of 40,000 people.

What does 40,000 people look like? Well it's more than the total population of Stirling according to the last census. It's nearly about the same number of people you'd get if you filled Easter Road (Hibs) and Tynecastle (Hearts) stadiums at the same time.

Or, for a clearer visualisation, it's like having Stamford Bridge packed to capacity with teachers (ie experts) while lobbyist Andy MacIver stands in the centre circle and tells them all that they're wrong.