Wings Over Scotland

Turns out it’s not just Scotland the media commentariat knows nothing about.

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This happened last night:

Despite having only raised £5,470 of its £50,000 target, the fundraiser set up by a veteran Lib Dem activist (or, in BBC language, an “Aberdeen woman”) was suddenly closed down, with no explanation offered.

So what do we know?

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It’s a pretty widely-held axiom that supporters of independence rule the internet. While there are online No sites – mainly demented Loyalist affairs on Facebook – none of them has anything like the reach of even the middle-ranked Yes ones.

Where the independence movement has always trailed a long way behind is conventional media. For most of the modern era there hasn’t been a single newspaper or broadcast outlet that supported Yes. Now the Sunday Herald and The National have stepped into that space, with encouraging results, and NewsShaft are doing increasingly exciting things on air (though still web-based).

Clearly, though, more is needed, and one of the most impressive productions is one which has existed for almost a year already, but is curiously little-heralded.

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Here’s Atul Hatwal, editor of the influential Labour website Labour Uncut, speaking first in July and then reviewing his position with the benefit of hindsight in August.

Corbyn just won the leadership election in the first round with 60% of the vote. Don’t give up the day job, Atul. Well, actually, maybe you should.

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We had no idea it was so hard to give money away, to be honest. Indiegogo delivered the final tranche of donations from our recent anti-poverty fundraiser last night, and we’ve now sent it all on to good causes.

We said previously that we didn’t want to spread it too thinly, because while the sum was 30 times what we set out to raise it’ll barely make the tiniest of scratches on the surface of poverty in Scotland, so we’ve split it between half-a-dozen organisations. For the record, this post lists where it went.

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Today, readers, we’re slowly building our way up to an aneurysm trying to give away a fairly sizeable sum of money to foodbanks and other charities, who appear to have collectively decided that that should be an experience only slightly less challenging than the Krypton Factor assault course. (Ask your parents.)

While our nervous breakdown continues apace, we thought we’d draw your attention to this story in the Independent about how the new Conservative government has been avoiding putting any senior ministers up for questioning by the media.

It’s a tactic you may recall from the “Better Together” campaign, and we thought you might like to read this piece (and more here) by a videogame-journalism friend of ours which explains what’s going on when it happens.

We’ll hopefully be back with you soon.

To be honest, readers, this site isn’t very bothered about a bit of rudeness in politics. The sainted Aneurin Bevan, father of the NHS, once famously called the Tories “lower than vermin”, and his contemporary opponent Winston Churchill wasn’t averse to a few strong words either.

So long as nobody’s inciting violence, it’s our view that adults should be allowed to express dislike of each other in whatever terms they choose – at the end of the day, words are just sounds, and it’s absurdly irrational for a civilised species to arbitrarily pretend to take offence at the sounds “uck” or “unt” but not the sounds “urp” or “erk”.

So we’re not too fussed if dim-witted and boorish Conservative councillor Gordon McCaskill would “like to see” ISIS fanatics rape, behead or blow up Nicola Sturgeon. Unless he actively encourages or assists them to do it, he can think and say whatever he likes. That’s what free speech in a free country is supposed to be about. You don’t need to like something to defend it, as we demonstrated last week.

But our job is to monitor the media and the comical double standards thereof, and in particular the BBC, which is funded by taxpayers and which (unlike newspapers and other broadcasters) is supposed to be bound by law to impartiality and fairness.

And in the case of Cllr McCaskill, the leader of the Conservative group on East Renfrewshire Council who’s now been suspended by the Scottish Tories pending an investigation over his comments on Twitter on Monday, we suspect that alert readers won’t be entirely surprised by what we’ve observed.

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From a report on the BBC News website today:

But those sums don’t work, do they?

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We can’t help wondering if the Church Of England’s “Daily Prayer” this morning was chosen while looking north towards a certain Scottish Lib Dem MP in his time of trial.

If such things are your inclination, readers, pray for Alistair.

A serial offender.

We’re sure Ruth Davidson will act with her usual decisive swiftness.

Tonight’s games went as badly as they could have done for Scotland, pretty much as we suggested they would at the weekend, after a truly abysmal Scottish performance (an embarrassing 28% possession) saw them beaten 3-2 by Germany while Ireland scraped past Georgia 1-0.

But as we also said, and despite the clueless honkings of just about every pundit working in a TV studio tonight, it didn’t actually damage the team’s chances of making the playoffs very much.

Here’s your quick guide to where things stand.

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As we write, Alistair Carmichael’s QC is two hours into a seemingly-interminable drone in an Edinburgh courtroom, in a case brought by ordinary citizens against a former government minister funded by a public appeal. Our own recent fundraiser, inspired by a case a world away from such high-minded concerns, closed a few days ago on a phenomenal total of £16,083.

Indiegogo have now disbursed the first half of the money (the rest, specifically that part that was donated by credit card, should follow in the next fortnight), so now we need to decide what to do with it.

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