Wings Over Scotland

Earlier this morning an alert reader directed us to an article in the Daily Express which seemed to make an eye-catchingly remarkable claim. It turned out to be one actually made by Ruth Davidson on Saturday (which had already been reported in the Express that day), when she appeared on Iain Dale’s radio show on LBC.

A 27% swing? From the SNP to the Tories? Putting the Tories AHEAD in the polls? That would be such a stupendously Earth-shattering development in Scottish politics that you’d think the media would have made more of it than a couple of mentions in an embarrassing low-circulation comic like the Express.

So we thought we’d better check.

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Scottish schoolchildren start their exams today. We wish them good luck, because if any of them have taken their lead in language skills from the nation’s media they’re going to be in a lot of trouble.

For 10% of extra course credit, let’s find out why.

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We had to rub our eyes when we got up this morning, because we thought we must have opened the wrong issue of the Times tablet app by mistake – the lead Scotland story seemed to be a reprint of a piece from the previous day’s Sunday Times.

But we were wrong.

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We greatly enjoyed Any Questions on Radio 4 this week. Well chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby, it was a mostly grown-up and adult discussion of issues around nationalism and independence, perhaps assisted by the fact that – we gather – Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale was unable to take part and was replaced as a Labour representative by Lord Falconer, who offered some considered and intelligent views.

The only slight wasp in the ointment was Tory list MSP Adam Tomkins, who delivered his usual boorish, patrician and arrogant debating style, which was frequently met with boos, jeers and catcalls from a feisty Blantyre audience. But he did come out with one rather unexpected and off-message policy position.

(Any Questions, BBC Radio 4, 29 April 2017)
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Wait, did we hear that last bit right?

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This appears to be a genuine question from a YouGov poll going out to selected areas of the country today. We’ve had a couple of people confirm it to us who we have no reason to disbelieve. (It also asked this.)

The particular political arrangement it’s testing the waters of public opinion on there is fascist dictatorship. God help us all.

Following on from Ian Murray’s last night, we received another election leaflet from an alert reader today, this time one delivered to them by the Scottish Conservatives.

Let’s just look at that highlighted section again.

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We had a little fun last night at the expense of Ian Murray, the sole surviving Scottish Labour MP, who’d sent his constituents a list of his achievements in office that was actually a blank sheet of paper. And in fairness, he was extremely quick off the mark in response, producing a video tweet within four hours.

And it seems that he’s actually been keeping VERY busy.

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An alert reader received a letter today about the forthcoming general election, from Scottish Labour’s only current MP, Ian Murray. (Although you’d have to know that in advance, as he doesn’t mention the Labour Party in it once.)

Here’s a close-up of part of it:

And below, we swear, is what’s on the other side of the page.

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There’s no particular reason to post this today, other than that it’s only come to light this week and today happens to be the 20th anniversary of the article below.

While it’s often said (mainly by nationalist types) that the Scottish Parliament and its electoral system were specifically designed to prevent the SNP from coming to power and holding an independence referendum, there’s been very little in the way of explicit evidence to back that statement up.

The 27 April 1997 issue of the Scottish Sun, though, had it in spades.

So we thought we should save it from Twitter’s fleeting attention span for posterity.

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We’re still struggling a bit with this one, to be honest.

So… now the Tories are upset because the SNP aren’t obsessed with independence?

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We’ve never tried to put a precise breakdown on how much of the falsehood pumped out daily by the Scottish political media is due to deliberately misleading spin and how much of it is simply due to journalists who are really, really terrible at their jobs.

But there’s plenty of both in today’s Times.

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This is the Conservative MSP group at Holyrood today, at the end of an unusually powerful speech from Kezia Dugdale during the rape clause “debate”. Click the picture to enlarge it if you want to find out what people gazing into the hideous abyss of their own souls and not liking what they see looks like.

We put the word “debate” in quotemarks because every single Tory MSP who spoke was too cowardly to allow any interventions from the other parties. We can’t say we’re surprised. We’d find it hard to look anyone in the eye if we were them too.