Wings Over Scotland

Joyce McMillan in the Scotsman today, as the Scottish press is finally, after three days, shamed into acknowledging what happened on Tuesday.

“What I see at Westminster now is not an alternative politics that avoids the pitfalls of nationalism, but an instinctive, backward-looking British nationalism that is even worse: a farrago of double standards about Westminster and Holyrood, and of reactionary nonsense about the nature of national identity in the 21st century, combined with a complete vacuum of progressive policy, and an instinctive willingness – on the part of the Labour Party – to side in this debate with what is perhaps the most privileged and reactionary government the UK has seen in a century.

The truth is that the tone of the No camp’s response to the independence debate has – in too many cases – been so reactionary, so negative, and so fundamentally disrespectful of the Scottish Parliament as an institution, that I now find it hard to think of voting with them, no matter what my views on the constitution.

And this, for me, is a new experience in politics – to enter a debate with a strongish view on one side of the argument, and to find myself so repelled by the tone and attitudes of those who should be my allies that I am gradually forced into the other camp.”

We’ll have more on that subject later this morning. Don’t miss it.

We thought you might like to see the statistics for Tuesday’s section 30 debate in the House Of Commons in at-a-glance pictorial form, so we’re delighted to share this graphic sent in by alert reader Stewart Bremner. (NB we default to anonymity when people send us things, just in case we get them in trouble at work or something, but we’re always very happy to give full attribution where desired.)

Click the image for full-size version. Detailed data here (OpenOffice format).

Seeking some light entertainment, this morning we belatedly got round to reading a piece by Jim Murphy MP on Labour Uncut while we were waiting for First Minister’s Questions to begin. (An event we were startled to see Labour and the Tories both turn up to, recklessly lending legitimacy to an undemocratic one-party dictatorship.)

Murphy’s piece was the usual drivel, but a line caught our eye:

“Opposition to independence increased from 50% in January to 55% in June then 58% in the latest poll. At the moment, the nearer we get to the vote the further away the SNP look like winning it.”

Naturally we were confused. Murphy’s piece was published on Tuesday, so you’d have thought by then he’d be aware of the “latest poll”, which was published by the Herald on Monday and in fact showed “opposition to independence” plunging from 58% to 48% – a level below even the lowest figure in Murphy’s timeline, dating back a year.

Can anyone point us to this more recent poll than Monday’s? Cheers.

Readers may well recall some very recent analysis we undertook on the Scottish Government’s investment in promoting Scotland abroad, and the huge returns it generated in jobs and tourism. They may also remember that the opposition parties in Holyrood, led by Labour, were incandescent with rage at the “waste” of around £500,000 of taxpayers’ money spent on sending government delegations numbering dozens of people to the USA to undertake the work.

Given the recent revelations that almost half as large a sum – £232,708 – was unnecessarily awarded by Glasgow Labour councillors to a Labour crony who formerly headed a charitable body (over and above a severance pay-off which was already mind-bogglingly generous at £240,000), we wonder if anyone could help us with some info on how many tens of millions of pounds and/or hundreds of jobs the Labour-run council’s expenditure has delivered to Scotland? We can’t seem to find anything.

We’ve been sat in front of this screen ALL DAY today, as you hopefully may have noticed from the flurry of posting activity. Time to clock off for the evening, we think. But just before we go, we wanted to share something with you. The YesGlasgow group had its first meeting this evening, at the Radisson Blu on Argyle Street. (It’s going on as we write this.) There’s a picture of it below.

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We’ve been delving around in the innards of some poorly-documented WordPress plugins recently, and we think we’ve finally worked out how to include polls in the body of a post rather than cramming them awkwardly into a sidebar. (You live and learn.) So as much as an equipment test as anything else, and in the light of the First Minister committing the SNP to a written constitution in an independent Scotland, we thought we’d conduct a wee snap survey.

The first thing to note is that not all of the issues below are actually matters for a constitution at all – some of them are properly party manifesto issues, to be decided regularly at elections rather than enshrined into the country’s founding principles. But since the FM’s speech specifically raised the possibility of things like free university education being made constitutional, we’ve taken a wide-ranging view and picked a dozen of the most common pressing topics of debate.

Secondly, as this site is predominantly read by those of a nationalist persuasion, any results will of course likely be skewed in that direction, and should not necessarily be taken as a representative cross-section of Scottish public opinion. But supporters of Unionist parties are encouraged to take part anyway – it’s just a bit of fun. What sort of Scotland would you like to live in?

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Those of you who joined us in watching some of the six-hour Nat-Bashing Festival in the House of Commons yesterday will be aware that it set a high standard of jaw-dropping “Did he/she REALLY just say that?” televised democracy. (Some edited highlights.) The first couple of hours can be viewed here, with the rest here.

Speakers who supported independence were given around 30 minutes in total of yesterday’s “debate”, with the second being cut short in order to allow more Labour and Tory MPs to line up and explain their heartfelt hatred of the SNP, in case anyone hadn’t picked it up from the previous five hours of contributions.

Later today the House of Lords, which has no SNP representation at all, will discuss the same issue. You should be able to watch it live at this link from after around 4pm. It ought to be entertaining. We’ve made this post so people can discuss it in the comments without having to commandeer another article. Have fun.

We don’t make a habit of printing press releases at Wings Over Scotland – in fact if our memory serves us correctly, as it rather intermittently does, we’ve never done so. But we’re going to make a partial exception here by printing half of one.

It’s from a speech given by the First Minister on the occasion of yesterday’s unopposed passing of the Section 30 order by the House of Commons, enshrining the right of the Scottish Parliament to hold the independence referendum. We’ve left out all the stuff about that, though, in favour of the much more interesting matter of the FM’s comments on a written constitution for an independent Scotland. It’s an incredibly important commitment, and we welcome it unreservedly.

We’ll let him take it from there.

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A few isolated gems we couldn’t find room for in the first piece.

Any more we missed? Send in your favourites and we’ll add them.

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Ten days ago, Scottish Labour “deputy” leader Anas Sarwar issued a press release in his capacity as head of Labour’s referendum campaign, noting that “[Nicola Sturgeon] is right to say there has been a lot of negative campaigning. We will be raising the level of debate and ensuring that Scotland gets the level of debate it deserves.”

Here are some extracts from Sarwar and his independence-fearing colleagues’ contributions to yesterday’s epic House of Commons “debate” (in which one side got a little over 10 times as long to put its case as the other) on the motion giving the Scottish Parliament the power to conduct the independence referendum.

Make your own judgement as to how they did, and the level of debate they apparently consider Scotland deserves.

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We can’t even be bothered linking to Brian Wilson‘s latest load of “will-this-do?” money for old rope in The Scotsman. We also can’t be bothered refuting any of its infantile, defamatory lies, which would all embarrass any grown-up newspaper that retained a shred of pride in its content. And we’re not going to occupy any more of our valuable time demolishing the central argument, when Brian has so helpfully done it for us himself right in the middle of his own article.

HEADLINE
“Shetland has the right to go it alone”

COPY
“There is little evidence that Shetland particularly wants to be independent”

There is? That’s that all sorted out, then. We’ve got a long queue of drivelling eejits to deal with today, Brian – have a lollipop and move along, there’s a good wee lad.

The papers this week have been full of stories about the SNP’s plans for foreign aid from an independent Scotland. The Herald led with a story entitled “Yousaf plans £1.5 billion foreign aid budget”, while the Scotsman went for the slightly more inflammatory headline ‘Scottish independence: International aid budget would soar to hundreds of millions’ with the clear implication that this compared to the modest £9 million the devolved Scottish Government currently spends directly on foreign aid.

The headlines were designed to make people think that under independence the Scottish government would be diverting hundreds of millions of pounds away from Scots, increasing our foreign aid over 100-fold. Opposition MSPs claimed such move would mean spending cuts at home or tax rises in order to fund the increased international aid budget.

You need to delve a little deeper into the articles to find the truth.

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