Wings Over Scotland

This was us for most of yesterday:

Because we were genuinely concerned about this year’s fundraiser. It was coming off the back of our lowest traffic month in four years (February was absolutely dead in Scottish politics, and we had almost no internet for the last two weeks of it), and some other indy sites had had badly underachieving crowdfunders in recent months.

So it’s quite the pleasant surprise to be able to say that the total (direct donations as well as through the fundraising page) for the first 24 hours alone was… £72,429.

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And fire it into the heart of the Union.

(Fundraiser page here, or click here to donate directly.)

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2 days remaining. Running total (all sources) at 9am, Thu 5 April: £127,400.

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As the winter Scottish political news drought enters its 17th week, mainstream and alternative media commentators alike are scratching around desperately for anything to write about, which tends to end up in overlong reflective and/or hectoring essays about how to secure independence, invariably concluding that what we need is for everyone in Scotland to start thinking and acting exactly like the author of the article.

We’re going to aim for something a bit shorter and more practical, at least.

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What you’re missing:

That’s a single year’s profits. For a bit of perspective, it’s about four times the Scottish Government’s entire annual budget. Thank goodness we’ve had Westminster to manage our resources for us all this time, eh?

If you’re a person (unemployed or working) subsisting via state welfare in the UK, there can be no more genuinely, blood-runs-cold, terrifying phrase in the English language than a Tory saying they’ve come up with “fresh thinking” on poverty and benefits.

Because – and if you’re only going to trust us on one thing in your life, trust us on this – it never, ever means your life’s about to get better.

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…for the relationship between the four “partner” nations of the UK presented itself at the weekend when BBC anchorman John Inverdale asked the Scottish rugby pundit and former international Andy Nicol “what does this do for self-belief from a Scottish perspective, Andy?”

Which was clearly pretty ironic in itself:

But alert readers may recall how that “epitome of Better Together” worked out.

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After Scotland’s rugby team sent proud Edward (Jones)’s army homeward with some well-skelped erses from Murrayfield yesterday, it seemed like an opportune moment to reflect on this from just 12 years ago.

The full story is below.

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A timely reminder about how much 85% of British people (or to put that another way, English people) really value the rest of the UK.

“Lead us, Scotland, don’t leave us!” is going to be a pretty hard sell next time.

It’s still thin, thin gruel for Scottish politics in the press – everyone’s desperately trying to pretend income tax is a story again today – so while we do some research it’s back to the vaults for more ironic historical chuckles we go.

Last week, just a day after we highlighted the disastrous sales collapse of the Daily Record during almost certainly the most tumultuous and eventful seven-year period in Scotland’s peacetime history, the paper’s editor-in-chief Murray Foote apparently took the Scottish newspaper industry by surprise by suddenly resigning his position.

(We’re sure, incidentally, this is entirely unconnected with the recent advertising of some senior media vacancies in Scottish Labour.)

Rival hacks dutifully issued a series of glowing tweets about what a smashing guy Foote was and how much he’d improved the paper during his 27-year tenure there in various positions, most recently editor-in-chief, group editor and deputy editor.

So even though Foote accused this site of “debasing public life” with “sewage politics, conspiracy theories, hatred and paranoia” when we forced his paper to reluctantly and belatedly correct a massive front-page lie, we thought we’d join in the salutes.

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Presented without comment, covering a period of THREE major national referendums, EIGHT elections (UK, Scottish, EU, council) and of course the death of Rangers.

What we’re saying is, it’s not like there wasn’t any news.

(Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

We still have no reliable internet, just occasional five-minute bursts or a shonky 4G phone connection, but there’s a BT Openreach man in the garden and as soon as he gets hold of a different kind of all-terrain BT Openreach man we’re hopeful that the problem will finally be fixed by the end of today, after two weeks.

In the meantime, we couldn’t help but be struck in passing by the collapse of talks on reopening the Northern Ireland’s devolved Assembly, which has now been closed for over a year following the failure of an election to deliver a workable administration.

If there’s a better illustration of just how limited the powers of devolution in the UK are than the fact that the region seems to have muddled along just fine for 13 months without the parliament, we’re having a hard time thinking of what it might be. The old saying that “power devolved is power retained” has never been more visibly true.

If Scotland wants to thrive, it can only do so with all the meaningful powers of a nation under its own control, and at the end of the day there’s only one way to get those.