Wings Over Scotland

Readers have had a small handful of replies in response to our “Infrequently Asked Questions” post of last week. (Have you written to your MP/MSP yet? WHY NOT?)

They’ve mostly been pretty rubbish, as you’d probably expect. But while pondering them, a thought suddenly came to us out of the blue, in that irritating “Why on Earth didn’t I spot this before?” way that’s the curse of all writers.

It’s about the idea that the rUK would have to impose border controls – logically, including a 100-mile-long physical barrier from Gretna to Berwick patrolled 24/7 by armed guards – if an independent Scotland adopted a significantly different immigration policy to that of the remnant UK.

The notion has always been cobblers, for all sorts of reasons including the ludicrous cost such an undertaking would entail and how upset poor Rory Stewart would be, but if you think about it there’s an even more obvious one.

Read the rest of this entry →

There’s been a small furore this week over fracking, and the possibility that the UK government could grant licences for drilling in some of Scotland’s most beautiful locations, including – astonishingly – Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.

But in fairness, we can’t say that we weren’t warned.

There’s a remarkable story on the BBC website today. Torn between the referendum campaign and the 2015 UK election campaign, Labour’s health spokesman Andy Burnham has finally admitted in public that yes, NHS England IS being privatised.

But it’s what he wants done about it that made us double-take.

Read the rest of this entry →

Alert readers will of course remember a few short weeks ago in April, when “Better Together” attracted much great hoopla in the press for its relaunched, “more positive” campaign strategy which would dazzle Scots with the feelgood benefits of the Union.

We thought it’d be worth checking in and seeing how that was going.

Read the rest of this entry →

Our “Better Together” mole has just leaked us this exclusive extract from a new cinema advert with a re-imaged Alistair Darling listing the consequences of a Yes vote.

It’s really from the 1981 Labour conference, of course. But it’s fascinating to note that while the No camp leader’s politics may have softened somewhat over the intervening 33 years, his modus operandi hasn’t changed a bit.

Supporters of independence are often accused of a certain degree of paranoia when it comes to their lack of trust in the Scottish and UK media.

The above chart is from the latest European Quality Of Life Survey, conducted by an EU agency with the unwieldy but self-explanatory name of The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, (Eurofound for short).

It’s a wide-ranging study with a variety of very interesting findings, but one of the most striking is the almost unique and near-pathological lack of trust in the media held by the UK public. With the exception of Greece, every other nation on the continent has considerably more faith in its press.

It’s not just a cynical British nature – trust in the Parliament and the legal system(s) here are much healthier in comparison to other European nations, but the people of Britain don’t trust their media as far as they could throw it. (Perhaps astonishingly, UK citizens trust politicians significantly MORE than they trust newspapers.)

It’s not just us, readers.

In case you somehow carelessly missed it, here’s the nine-minute-or-so segment from last night’s “The Westminster Hour” on Radio 4, in which dear old Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph and I discussed the tone and tenor of the independence debate.

The fascinating thing was how Cochrane started off essentially claiming that the entire thing was an intolerable horror, but but by the end was agreeing that it was actually surprisingly mild and civilised as these things go, and needed to continue in exactly the same manner it was now. Funny old cove.

The Stevenage Advertiser, 22 July 2014:

“‘Lessons must be learned’ from the death of a Stevenage diabetic who could not afford electricity to keep his insulin cool after his benefits were stopped.

Former soldier David Clapson died aged 59 at his home in Hillside from fatal diabetic keto-acidosis, which the NHS calls ‘a dangerous complication of diabetes caused by a lack of insulin.‘

His jobseeker’s allowance of approximately £70 a week – on which his family says he was reliant – had been suspended three weeks before on June 28, for missing meetings.

According to his family, Mr Clapson was found “alone, penniless and starving” a short distance from a pile of printed CVs, with nothing to his name but £3.44, six tea bags, a tin of soup and an out-of-date tin of sardines.

The coroner found that David – a former BT engineer of 16 years, who had served two years in Northern Ireland with the Royal Corps of Signals during The Troubles – had nothing in his stomach when he died.”

We can’t do any better than that. Vote No, everyone. UK OK!

Does anyone know if Alistair Darling (left, with banner) is still a republican?

He doesn’t seem to talk about it much these days.

We just caught a documentary on the BBC News channel presented by John Beattie and entitled “The Games People Play”, which seems to have been first aired on either Saturday or Tuesday (the BBC seems somewhat uncertain). Covering the link between sport and politics, for our money it’s one of the best things the state broadcaster has produced as part of its referendum programming, and we recommend it.

One rather depressing bit leapt out at us, though.

Sir Craig Reedie CBE, from Stirling, is former chairman of the British Olympic Committee and a current member of the International Olympic Committee. And when Beattie asked him about an independent Scotland’s entry into the 2016 Olympics in Rio, he gave an answer which readers may or may not find surprising, depending on their level of cynicism about “proud Scots”.

Read the rest of this entry →

We know you’re not really very big on boring old politics while there are still reality TV “celebrities” alive and desperately punting their “leaked” sex tapes, Scottish Sun On Sunday, but we could probably do with just a little bit more to go on than this:

Investors Chronicle (part of the Financial Times group), 25 July 2014:

“In the 12 months since we recommended EnQuest (ENQ) as a speculative buy option, the share price of the North Sea independent has oscillated within a relatively narrow range (-11p/+16p) either side of the current share price of 132p. The relative stability (or stagnation) of the share price – depending on your point of view – is partly attributable to repeat production delays on the Alma/Galia project.

But oil from the 34m barrel development is now imminent, which will help to shore-up near-term sentiment, particularly if output is cranked-up in fairly short order. However, even beyond the immediate quest to bump-up EnQuest’s daily production volumes by another 13,000 barrels, the driller’s strategic focus on exploiting maturing assets and underdeveloped fields in the UK North Sea places it in an ideal position to benefit from likely regulatory reforms, and we recommend buying in anticipation.

We think that Westminster has been deliberately downplaying the potential of the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) ahead of September’s referendum on Scottish independence.

The Department of Energy has certainly been far more subdued than it was at the time of the February publication of Sir Ian Wood’s preliminary findings on the future of offshore oil & gas in the UK.

According to the report, the UK economy could generate £200bn over the next 20 years through the recovery of only 3-4bn barrels of North Sea oil and gas. Many analysts believe that the potential is much greater.“

(Our emphases.) We all suspected as much, of course. But the Investors Chronicle isn’t exactly a renowned fount of Scottish-nationalist propaganda – for 150 years it’s been making its living out of telling the City of London how to get richer. If you want to find out what the UK’s wealthy elite REALLY think about the North Sea’s prospects, you won’t find a much better indicator.

So if it’s telling its readers to dive in on oil companies which had a big DROP in profits last year (you know, the freak low year for oil tax receipts that the UK government just loves to use as the foundation for its theatrically gloomy analyses of an independent Scotland’s finances), it’s probably worth taking note.