Wings Over Scotland

The last time we checked in on our fundraising campaign, it was going pretty well.

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It can be hard to keep up with the Scotsman’s constant “finessing” of its news stories. For example, last night we followed a link to an interesting-sounding piece with the headline “UK’s Scots independence claims ‘on very thin ice'”.

It led to a David Maddox article on Professor David Scheffer’s recent comments suggesting that the UK Government’s official position – that an independent Scotland would inherit a worst-of-both-worlds share of the UK’s debt obligations, but none of the UK’s memberships of international bodies – was somewhat less than robust.

So when we saw the same story prominently featured on the front page of the paper’s website this morning, something seemed amiss.

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Whenever we put up one of our very occasional football-related posts, a few readers grump about their apparent lack of connection to the wider sphere of Scottish politics. So we couldn’t help but notice this comment lurking unassumingly in the middle of a Davie Provan rant in today’s Scottish Sun about the Rangers cheating verdict:

“Despite the £250,000 non-disclosure fine, Nimmo Smith ruled that Rangers had gained ‘no sporting advantage’ through their use of EBTs. If that’s good enough for the man who tried the Lockerbie bomber, it should be good enough for the rest of us.”

We think that’s what they used to call “friendly fire”.

When someone sent us the image below on Twitter, we actually went to the “Better Together” Facebook page to verify it was real, because it can be hard to tell the No campaign’s real leaflets and posters from satire. But it’s totally genuine.

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The NHS in Scotland is failing. If you don’t believe us, have a look at this graph that’s currently doing the social-media rounds courtesy of our “Better Together” friends (and was forwarded to us by an alert and concerned reader) and you’ll surely be convinced.

The graphs represent cases where NHS Scotland has failed to meet the targets imposed for processing patients through the A&E departments of Scottish hospitals within four hours (left graph) and 12 hours (right graph). If you want to read the full report for yourself it’s on the ISD Scotland website here.

(The figures only go back to July 2007, as previous Labour/Lib Dem administrations didn’t record them – they’re an initiative of the subsequent SNP governments.)

Now, that 323 people in a month had to wait over 12 hours for treatment is factually correct, and it’s plainly a bad thing. (The Scottish Government noted that this winter’s unprecedentedly severe norovirus outbreak was both a major contributing factor in itself and also had knock-on effects, and as norovirus requires extensive cleanup and disinfection procedures in order to meet infection-control standards it’s a valid point.)

There’s a vital piece of information missing, though.

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(And finally… #24)

A charming shot of a British nationalist from an EDL march in Manchester today.

You might need to click the pic to get the joke.

We followed a bit of a long and winding road ourselves to stumble across this rather excellent piece from the Scotsman archives today, and owe a major hat-tip to alert reader “Alexandre Dumas” for a hefty helping hand. It comes from the paper’s editorial leader column of the 26th of March 2007, less than two weeks before the Holyrood election that saw the first ever SNP government.

We’re not sure which is our favourite bit. See what yours is.

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Well, this is odd.

“A recovery in North Sea oil and gas investment is set to generate £100bn of economic stimulus and hand the Chancellor a £25bn bonus through extra tax receipts, new figures showed on Monday.”
(The Telegraph, 25 February 2013)

“An independent Scotland would begin with a £4 billion black hole in its finances due to a fall in oil revenues, UK Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said yesterday.”
(The Scotsman, 2 March 2013)

Looks like that Reverse Perception Field at the border is still working, then.

Not content with this morning’s Daily Mail masterclass in misinformation on pensions and embassies, eagle-eyed reader Andy Inglis also offers us this quite remarkable interpretation of the Eastleigh by-election result from the same source:

There’s been a “seismic political upset” in England, so Scotland should stay in the Union to ensure “continuing political stability”, even though being in the Union has brought us “an unknown future at a time of global crisis and financial meltdown”. Eh?

In fact, reading between the lines the piece SEEMS to say “If Scotland doesn’t stay in the Union, the Tories won’t be able to win the next election”. We’re not absolutely sure that’s quite the No-campaign vote-winner the Mail appears to think it is.

First the lies (from the print-only editions of today’s Daily Mail):

And then the truth, from our own Scott Minto a week ago.

Decide for yourself who to believe.

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Wings Over Scotland readership stats for February. Click to size-up.

Bullet points below for fans of blatant self-aggrandisement.

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(Apologies to Chomsky and Herman.)

A standard-issue scare story in the Scotsman today was cast in an interesting light following an email we received last night from an alert reader, who’d been contacted by “a business owner in Moray” after the latter received an unsolicited communication from the official “Better Together” campaign.

We’ll let the reader tell the rest of the story.

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