Wings Over Scotland

Impressively we’ve managed to sneeze so powerfully and manfully today that we blew a filling out, so while we go off to the dentist to have it nailed back in here are a few of the better pieces from the Scottish political media and blogosphere over the last few days, in case any of them passed you by.

Alex Massie’s been in a fine vein of form recently on the Spectator, and this analysis of Ed Miliband’s comments on Scotland was particularly insightful. We were also pleased to stumble across this archive piece from a year ago echoing almost exactly our own recent question on the same theme, which remains unanswered.

Stephen Noon blogs much less frequently than Mr Massie, but when he does it’s usually a cracker, and this related piece is no exception, while Kate Higgins shows what she can do when she’s not randomly calling people misogynists with this excellent study of the topic. And finally on Murdochgate, Newsnet Scotland makes an interesting and telling observation that went unnoticed by anyone else.

Away from the Murdoch issue, we don’t often find much to commend in the Telegraph – and less still from Fraser Nelson – but we couldn’t fault this look at “tricolour Britain”. And the increasingly impressive A Sair Fecht enlightened us with an illuminating history of Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, founder of the Scottish Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party and the National Party of Scotland, one of the forerunners of the SNP.

That should take you through lunch. We’re off to the bone-driller.

The 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum has sparked a flurry of nostalgia pieces in the games press, many of which for some reason can’t help comparing the Sinclair machine to its main American competitor. And since the games press is a dictatorship of dullards, the C64 has come out on top in most of them, invariably helped by a colossally biased selection of judges.

Eurogamer, for example, takes a big dump on the Speccy’s birthday cake by calling on Julian Rignall (editor of a C64 magazine), Steve Jarratt (editor of a C64 magazine), Gary Penn (writer on a C64 magazine), Gary Liddon (writer on a C64 magazine), Jason Page (a C64 coder) and Paul Glancey (writer on a C64 magazine) – with only some three-year-old quotes from the sadly-deceased Jonathan “Joffa” Smith holding up the Speccy’s end of the debate – to come to the startling opinion that it deems the C64 the superior machine. Last month’s Retro Gamer reached a similar conclusion for much the same set of spastic-faced reasons. (“Whine bleat SID chip wah wah wah.”)

But fuck all of them, because they’re all cunts and they can suck our dicks.

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When we started a politics website, we invested in the best equipment money could buy, because we knew we’d need to guard against double standards ourselves as well as measuring them in others. The Super HypocrisOMeter 5000 is an industrial-strength device, built to cope with the most extreme manifestations of a trait that is the stock-in-trade of all politicians. But this morning we switched it on and tried to run Labour’s reaction to a story in today’s Express through it, and look what happened:

Let’s be clear. We’re not especially fussed about the comments themselves. We’ve figuratively wished a few people dead in our time, and as we’ve recently noted, at the end of the day it’s just words on the internet. We’re deeply dismayed at the growing phenomenon where people can be prosecuted, fired from their job, or even threatened with prison just for saying unpleasant stuff that plainly isn’t meant in any threatening sense. Salmond Senior’s own admirable response strikes the perfect note of disdain.

We’re not even going to attempt to whip up any outrage about the fact that the Labour member in question chose to attack Alex Salmond’s 90-year-old father rather than the First Minister himself – that’s pathetic and despicable, rather than hypocritical. Nope, the thing that catastrophically overloaded the triple-locked shielding and emergency cutout protection of the Super HypocrisOMeter 5000 was Labour’s astonishing attempt to half-heartedly distance the party from the comments. As well as blithely and shamefully trying to insist that Mr Kelly’s views reflected a “substantive issue”, Labour’s unnamed spokesman offered the following high-handed dismissal:

“This desperate smear campaign falls at the first hurdle because this Facebook page is not owned, managed, or operated by Scottish Labour, and it will not detract from the rantings and ravings of SNP candidates – sacked or otherwise – online.

“Political parties are responsible for their candidates and officials, but members of the public must be responsible for their own behaviour.”

Those readers whose minds haven’t just boggled all the way into unconsciousness will very likely be struggling to reconcile this statement with Labour’s previous views on online extremism, at least when it’s practiced by the infamous “cybernats“:

“Mr Gray made a strongly worded attack on what he calls ‘vile cybernats’ during his final Scottish Labour conference speech. And today Mr Gray writes in The Scotsman that he has discovered ‘at least one post suggesting that a particular journalist should be shot’.

Mr Gray also accused the SNP leadership of a “tolerance of this culture”. He also said that all voters ‘should be worried’ by internet postings from some SNP supporters, who he says are ‘poisoning the vital debate we now face’ on Scotland’s future. There is also a claim from Mr Gray, who stands down as leader on 17 December, that the SNP internet posters are ‘undermining the decency of the country’.“

Iain Gray has, of course, been far from alone among senior Labour figures in insisting that the “cybernats” – a disparate group of largely-anonymous individuals, of whom all, some or none might actually be SNP members – operate under the explicit instruction and control of the SNP leadership:

“Labour’s Anas Sarwar said: “Everyone knows that Alex Salmond desperately wants a second question on the ballot and now he has left the door open for his army of cybernats to deliver the response he wants.”“

Ever since 2011, Labour and its tame media have ramped up the angle that the SNP leadership must “do something about the cybernats“. Prominent features are headlined with pious pleas or strident demands for the SNP to condemn their nefarious activities, even as elected Labour MPs, MSPs and councillors (rather than random internet users) freely compare Alex Salmond to Hitler, Robert Mugabe or Slobodan Milosevic or call SNP politicians and members ‘traitors” without the hysterical press opprobrium which accompanies “cybernats” doing the same thing.

The Facebook group on which Alex Salmond’s father was wished dead was not an open group populated by any old internet loonies who wandered along. It’s closed to the public and the controlled, vetted membership of 533 includes the Scottish party’s foremost and finest – as well as current “leader” Johann Lamont and her “deputy” Anas Sarwar along with Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran, former First Minister Jack McConnell, MPs Cathy Jamieson, Ian Davidson, Eric Joyce, Sarah Boyack, Tom Harris, Tom Greatrex and Tom Watson, and front-bench MSPs Jackie Baillie, Ken Macintosh and James Kelly, are all members.

(Most of the prominent online Labour activists whose names our readers will recognise also belong to the group, including John Ruddy, Aidan Skinner, Duncan Hothersall and Cllr Alex “Braveheart” Gallagher. Only the lovely Terry Kelly is unaccountably missing.)

We don’t think it’s dreadfully unreasonable to suggest that with a membership list like that, Scottish Labour has a lot more control and responsibility over what’s posted on the group than the SNP does over random anonymous Twitter users or comment-thread posters. In a world where suggesting that certain actions of rival politicians might be “anti-Scottish” generates hundreds of column inches and loud demands for resignation, we look forward to the blanket media coverage demanding that the leadership takes urgent action against this vile cyberBrit menace nestling in the very bosom of Scottish Labour. We’re certain it’ll be along any minute now.

The political is the personal. Nobody comes out of the womb with a view on the merits of the free market versus state interventionism – opinions are formed by someone’s experiences and environment. So where do “cybernats” come from? Speaking as one myself, and quite a recently-minted one at that, let me see if I can explain it.

I wasn’t indoctrinated into the Nationalist cause as a child – my parents are pro-Union (but I’m working on that). My upbringing was British, and I was proud of it. So what went wrong with the United Kingdom that now in adult life I disavow the very notion of Britishness and strive to bring that same UK to an end?

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We’ve been feeling a little hurt this week, readers. Judging by the number of bloggers and suchlike who’ve huffily blocked us on Twitter for no apparent reason, or just said nasty and untruthful things about us, we were beginning to think we must be bad people. So we were relieved beyond measure when we asked website-of-the-moment Klouchebag (which marks users on four undesirable traits, with low scores out of a maximum 100 being good) to analyse our tweet history and got this reassuring result:

Just for a bit of lightweight Friday-night fun, then, we decided to run a random selection of our follow list through the machine too, along with a small scattering of wildcards and some of the delicate wee flowers we’re clearly still too awful for, and see what an impartial automated observer made of it all.

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The following is a transcript from an interview with Scottish Labour “leader” Johann Lamont on BBC Radio Scotland’s “Good Morning Scotland” on Wednesday 25th April, concerning the relationship between Alex Salmond and Rupert Murdoch. (2h12m in.)

GARY ROBERTSON: Would you, if you were First Minister, be meeting Rupert Murdoch and others to talk about jobs in Scotland?

JOHANN LAMONT: Well, you would have to meet with people to talk about jobs and so on.

GARY ROBERTSON: So you would have had the same relationship, then?

JOHANN LAMONT: I would make this point: that we have all learned a lesson about dealing with Rupert Murdoch, and that is you sup with a long spoon.

The picture below comes from the Sun, in a 2011 feature entitled “Red Ed Is Dead“:

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The Scottish media this week has worked itself into an apoplectic rage over Alex Salmond acting (or rather, merely being prepared to act) in defence of thousands of Scottish jobs. It’s been an odd phenomenon to witness, but doubly so given that last week everyone was furious with him over some jobs that were lost.

Despite the fact that unemployment in Scotland (at 8.1%) is again lower than in the UK (8.3%), the situation remains extremely fragile and any government could expect severe criticism if it failed to do everything in its power to protect and create jobs. Yet Alex Salmond appears, on the evidence of the last few days, to be damned by the Scottish media if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

The taxpayer-funded BBC has a far more powerful influence in Scotland than News International, and is frequently portrayed by nationalists as the Union’s propaganda vehicle of choice. The allegations can sometimes be difficult to dispute however objective one would wish to be, and the BBC’s coverage of the Doosan furore last week was an instructive case.

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Regular readers may have noticed that our comments system has been prone to random brainstorms for a while, leading to some awkwardly-formatted comments that can be a bit of a pain to read. Ever alert to customer concerns, we’ve installed some new plugins that should smarten things up somewhat, and which also provide a five-minute editing window so you can go back and fix any embarrassing clangers that may have slipped into the first draft.

Um, that’s it. Nothing more to see here. Move along, now.

There is, as we’ve previously noted, very little actual news to be found in the Alex Salmond/Rupert Murdoch story that’s got the Scottish media on a full-scale SHOCK HORROR! war footing this week. These are the only actual facts in the furore:

1. Murdoch’s papers, having (in Murdoch’s words) “declared war” on Labour, switched their backing to the parties most likely to defeat them north and south of the border in the general elections of 2010 and 2011. Both parties concerned, the SNP and the Conservatives, duly won their respective elections.

2. The Scottish Government decided to back News International’s bid for control of BSkyB, on the grounds that the company was a major employer in Scotland and that such a move may well bring a significant number of jobs to Scotland. It signalled its willingness to express this support to the UK Government, though having no leverage or influence over the matter. In the event, the support was never expressed, as the UK Government decided to clear the bid anyway.

3. James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and Alex Salmond all unequivocally and categorically deny that any connection between the two matters was ever raised or discussed by either of the parties involved, and nobody has produced or even suggested the existence of any evidence contradicting these denials.

And that’s it. The Scottish Government took a position entirely within its normal and proper powers with regard to a business matter, and News International’s publications exercised their free democratic right to endorse whichever political party they chose to, just as they’d done within the space of the previous three years for both the Conservatives and Labour. It’s not exactly “hold the front page” stuff.

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Below is an extract from Rupert Murdoch's written witness statement to the Leveson Inquiry, specifically the entire section relating to his relationship with Alex Salmond. The first part (in bold) is the inquiry's request to Mr Murdoch, the second part is his response. The emphasis in the second part is ours. The text is otherwise unedited and unexpurgated. Compare to the Scottish media's spin and make your own judgements.

————————————————————-

Please describe the nature of your relationship with First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond. Please provide a list of all official and unofficial discussions and meetings with Mr Salmond, whether before or since his election to that office, indicating at whose initiative these meeings were called and a summary of the content of these discussions.

What Is the value of this relationship to you? To what extent is political support for any Individual, party or policy discussed in such Interactions? Specifically, please give an account of your titles’ editorial stance to the Issue of Scottish devolution and Independence, and the part you expect your titles, and your interectlons [sic] with Mr Salmond, to play in the run-up to the current planned referendum on Scottish Independence.

You should explain in your answers the extent to which your interactions with Mr Salmond are similar to or different from your Interactions with other senior politicians on this Issue, Including the First Minister of Wales, and the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.

112 Mr Salmond has a fine sense of humour and I enjoy speaking with him. I am interested in his exploration of independence for Scotland, although I question its practicality, and I have enjoyed discussing the subject with him. I also have discussed News Corporation’s investment in Scotland, a matter of interest to both of us. BSkyB Is one of the biggest private employers in Scotland. My calendars indicate that I have had about a half dozen calls or meetings with him over the last four years. I have attached as Exhibit KRM28 a list of the discussions and meetings requested by the Inquiry.

113 As for the ’value" of the relationship, I can say that I like Mr Salmond, I am interested in Scotland because I am half-Scottish. I am interested in the writings of the Scottish Enlightenment, and intrigued by the Idea of Scottish independence. The topics we have discussed include Scotland’s economy and possible NI investments in Scotland. He has not explicitly asked me for the political support of Nl’s titles and we have not discussed any such support, but of course Mr Salmond is a politician.

114 I am informed that the stance of NI titles on the issue of Scottish devolution and independence to date has been as follows:

(a) The Scottish Sun, the leading newspaper in Scotland, has backed Labour (2007) and SNP (2011), while not supporting independence. It is neutral on Scottish independence.

(b) The Sunday Times supports greater fiscal autonomy but not independence.

(c) The Times has been supportive of devolution but leans against Scottish independence.

115 I do not know what, if any, part the NI titles will play in the run-up to the current planned referendum on Scottish independence in autumn 2014. I have no doubt all three titles will report upon the referendum and will publish thoughtful and interesting commentary on it.

116 I have no relationship with the First Minister of Wales and the First Minister of Northern Ireland, perhaps because I simply have not had the pleasure of meeting them.

We had a successful but very late night at poker last night, so we've only been up for a couple of hours as we write this. But we've been watching BBC News for that entire time, almost all of which they've spent talking about the Leveson Inquiry, and so far they haven't felt that the allegations concerning Alex Salmond (about which the Scottish press and Holyrood opposition is in such a shrieking frenzy) were worthy of so much as a single mention. To be honest, we think that's as telling an analysis of the story's merits as anything anyone could write. (Though this is also a good stab.)

Similarly, we look forward to seeing whether the opposition parties are so suicidally stupid and lacking in self-awareness as to attack Salmond over the issue at First Minister's Questions tomorrow, given that they're all absolutely dripping with gooey, sticky, foul-smelling brown effluent when it comes to their own relations with Murdoch. But nevertheless, something's been nagging at us for a little while, and perhaps some of our rapidly-growing band of readers might be able to help provide an answer:

What IS it that's so uniquely evil about Rupert Murdoch anyway?

Wings Over Scotland isn't yet a billionaire multi-media mogul, but if we were we can offer you a solemn and unequivocal promise: we would use our power to try to influence political events in favour of our own agenda, all day and every day. Apart from making money, that's the ONLY reason anyone EVER gets involved in the media. We hope we're not giving away a massive secret or anything there.

This blog exists at the opposite end of the political spectrum to Rupert Murdoch on just about any issue you care to name. We despise almost every ideology he holds dear. But we acknowledge his right in a free democracy to put forward his views and use any legal means he can to further them.

Phone-hacking, of course, is not legal. But it's beyond any rational doubt that just about every major media organisation in the land is knee-deep in the swamp when it comes to phone-hacking, so there's nothing uniquely evil about Murdoch among media proprietors in that regard. The same goes for publishing oceans of largely made-up prurient/muck-raking drivel about celebrities and their sex lives/cellulite, which is in fact the main engine of 90% of news-stand journalism nowadays.

So why is it worse for Murdoch to back political parties than when the Guardian or the Mail or the Mirror Group does it? Why is it somehow inherently wrong and scandalous and dirty for, say, the Scottish Sun to back the SNP, but okay for the Daily Record to back Labour, the Guardian to support the Lib Dems, the Telegraph to advocate the Tories and the Mail to come out for the French National Front?

We're serious. It's been axiomatic folk-wisdom in this country for years – since long before the phone-hacking scandal – that Rupert Murdoch is the devil, and merely being associated with his name makes you instantly guilty of some sort of a priori crime. We're not fans, but can anyone tell us what it is he's actually done that makes him measurably worse than anyone else in his line of business in this country? Is it just that he's better and more successful at it? We'd honestly like to know.

The following is a transcript of an interview broadcast on last night’s Newsnight Scotland, between the BBC’s presenter Glenn Campbell, the Labour MSP Jenny Marra and SNP MSP Linda Fabiani.

GLENN CAMPBELL: What, Linda Fabiani, would be a “win” in the referendum that you hope to have? What’s a majority?

LINDA FABIANI: I think it’s quite clear: 50% is what we always look at for that bridge over into a majority, so it’s quite clear – those who vote, if you’re over 50% that’s a majority.

GLENN CAMPBELL: Even if that’s a minority of those entitled to vote, a minority of the Scottish people?

LF: Well, when you start talking round these things you’re back in the realm of 1979, when Scotland was stymied and then it was 20 years down the line before we got anything. So I think it’s very plain, very straightforward in a transparent process – as the referendum was carried out for devolution in 1999.

GC: If 50%+1, Jenny Marra, say yes to independence, is that enough in your view to end the Union? A simple majority?

JENNY MARRA: Well, I think we need to have, I think the real message of Angus Robertson’s visit to Canada, is that the process points of this referendum are critically important. The question is important, whether there’s one question or two, the size of the majority, the clear majority. [Our emphasis.] Now these have been written into Canadian legislation but they’re still not clear and the issue of independence just rumbles on and on and on in Quebec. This is something we don’t want in Scotland – we want a clear and decisive result, and then we can move on with the priorities of our country that [end of sentence indistinct].

GC: Okay, but can you spell it out? Because the Clarity Act in Canada doesn’t actually spell out what a clear question or a clear majority is, but we do know that a narrow win for the federalists last time around has not settled the question. So when it comes to the Scottish referendum, is 50% plus 1 enough to end the Union?

JM: Well, Glenn, that’s not a decision for me, Jenny Marra, to-

GC: What’s your VIEW?

JM: That is a decision for – well, we need to represent the views of the Scottish people and what THEY would want as a clear majority, so we need –

GC: And what do you think, what do you think that would be?

JM:  – we need to have that discussion with all civic society in Scotland and we all need to come to a consensus on what the process points of this referendum will be, and only once we’ve had that discussion will we then be in a position to move forward.

GC: Would you agree, Linda Fabiani, that if the result IS that slim it’ll certainly open the result to question, in the way that perhaps it has when the federalists won in Quebec?

LF: No, I think there should be a clear agreement amongst all parties that we judge this the way we judged the referendum in 1999, the way that people think of a majority. It should be clear, it should be straightforward, that’s what we want.

GC: Linda Fabiani, Jenny Marra, thanks both very much indeed for coming in.

So that’s pretty unequivocal. As far as Linda Fabiani’s concerned, the normal rules of arithmetic apply – the side that gets the most votes wins. 50%+1 was good enough for the 2011 AV referendum, good enough for the Common Market referendum in 1975, good enough for the 1973 Northern Ireland sovereignty referendum and good enough for the 1999 Scottish devolution referendum, so it’s good enough for independence.

Jenny Marra’s position, on the other hand, is rather more concerning. Asked directly three times by Campbell, she declined three times to answer whether a simple majority would be accepted by Labour as a win for the Yes camp, and refused to even express a personal opinion, inevitably raising the prospect that the Unionist parties might try once again to pull a fast one as they so infamously did in 1979, putting effectively impossible obstacles in the way of the Yes campaign.

The whole idea is, of course, a non-starter. We feel confident in saying that Alex Salmond would sooner move the UK’s Trident submarines to the stream at the bottom of his garden than be party to a 1979-style stitch-up. So what can Labour possibly hope to gain from refusing to concede even the most basic of mathematical realities?

Can they conceivably be hoping to manoeuvre themselves into a position whereby accepting that the side with most votes is the winner is considered some sort of compromise on their part, to be used as a bargaining chip? Frankly we think they’d get extremely short shrift on that one. And as a ploy to try to force the SNP to withdraw/boycott the referendum it’s a bit too transparent.

The only thing that makes any kind of sense is that the party is positioning itself on the premise that it might win the UK general election in 2015, and – unthinkable as it sounds – is accordingly preparing the ground to give itself some sort of basis on which to obstruct the process of dissolution, or even outright reject a narrow victory for independence, should they be in government at Westminster when the negotiations with the Scottish Government would be taking place.

If you’ve got any more convincing ideas for Labour refusing to publicly acknowledge that 51 is more than 49, do share them with the class.