Wings Over Scotland

Here’s what George Osborne actually said on today’s Andrew Marr Show:

“You will see in the next few days a plan of action to give more powers to Scotland. More tax powers, more spending powers, more plans for powers over the welfare state. 

That will be put into effect – the timetable for delivering that will be put into effect – the moment there is a no vote in the referendum. The clock will be ticking for delivering those powers – and then Scotland will have the best of both worlds.”

(From 32m 40s.) It’s not actually very hard to follow.

Read the rest of this entry →

So, first this happened:

Read the rest of this entry →

New YouGov poll tonight. Yes 51 No 49 excluding Don’t Knows. Interesting.

The Observer’s front page splash is the No camp’s last-ditch Hail Mary – a new devolution talking shop. They just don’t get it. This is about tomorrow, not yesterday.

Read the rest of this entry →

Today’s Daily Mail carries a dismal article under a hysterical essay of a headline reading “Homes vandalised, accused of stealing jobs and an atmosphere of discriminatory intimidation: The savage racism turning Scotland into a no-go zone for the English”. (It actually describes a couple of minor incidents, spread over several years, affecting a single elderly couple in Stirling, without a shred of evidence that they were in fact motivated by their Englishness.)

There are undoubtedly small pockets of anti-English racism to be found in parts of Scotland, like there are small pockets of every kind of racism and prejudice found in every country in the world. But why would any Scottish person ever be driven to feel animosity towards the English – our friends, our family and our neighbours?

Not just because of a few isolated nutters on Facebook, surely?

Read the rest of this entry →

Alert readers will already be aware that former Labour MP, minister and nuclear-power lobbyist Brian Wilson is one of our least favourite figures in the independence debate.

A man utterly consumed by tribal hatred of the SNP – even by the standards of Scottish Labour, which is no mean accolade – his Scotsman columns are some of the most mendacious, bilious propaganda to be found in the country, to the extent that we don’t even link to them in our “Zany Comedy Relief” section.

Today, however, he’s outdone himself in spectacular style.

Read the rest of this entry →

One being shared by more and more Scots.

*Readers! Meet Chris in person next Thursday as part of the Scottish Cartoon Art Studio. Tickets are FREE but you need to book in advance. – Ed.

Because throwing an egg is EXACTLY HOW HITLER STARTED.

Read the rest of this entry →

This is Andy Brough, the Executive Director at Schroders Investment Management Ltd, discussing the referendum and currency on the Bloomberg channel yesterday.

He predicts a Yes vote in the referendum, and that Scotland and the rUK will share the pound, regardless of what George Osborne says. He predicts a “chaotic” aftermath, but seems rather relaxed overall at the prospect of an independent Scotland in a currency union. And for a senior City financier, he seems to have a very perceptive grasp on the reasons behind Scottish Labour’s backing for the Union.

Last week we highlighted the dismissive, contemptuous attitude of many Scottish Labour MPs and MSPs to questions from their constituents, an approach perhaps borne of the safe seats occupied by most of those concerned. However, some politicians from the three Unionist parties in Scotland do still deign to correspond with the electorate, and it would be unfair of us not to acknowledge and credit them for that.

Below, then, are the other responses that Wings readers received to a number of questions relating to independence that we suggested they might like to pose to their elected representatives way back in July. (We’ve given it six weeks, and it seems safe to assume that any who haven’t replied by now aren’t going to.)

It’s a lengthy read, but we think you’ll find it enlightening.

Read the rest of this entry →

Here are two snippets from a couple of recent “Better Together” leaflets:

Curiously, that 16% increase has fallen to 13% in their latest “briefing” full of made-up numbers Blair McDougall has pulled out of – well, let’s be polite and say “thin air”. But since they’ve been specifically named, let’s just check the claim with Tesco.

Read the rest of this entry →

…you probably write for the Express.

Yesterday we posted a couple of tweets observing the fact that the Scottish media had conspicuously ignored the phenomenon that is The Wee Blue Book. (We’d have made more of the total blanking had we been even a little bit surprised.)

Despite having extensively reported almost every other document published about the referendum debate (such as Sir Tom Hunter’s almost-impenetrable digital-only effort), the press saw nothing at all newsworthy about a 72-page book that’s been downloaded over 400,000 times online and which a small team of complete amateurs had managed to fund, print and distribute more than 250,000 physical copies of in a matter of days, with demand still far outstripping supply.

But it turned out we were being a little unfair.

Read the rest of this entry →