Wings Over Scotland

Alert readers may have spotted that today’s Sunday Herald features Professor Adam Tomkins and myself for its weekly “In The Hot Seat” interviews with opposing figures in the independence debate. The paper’s Investigations Editor Paul Hutcheon flew down from Glasgow on Wednesday, and we had an interesting and enjoyable two-and-a-half-hour chat on the subject of the referendum and politics in general.

Obviously it’s not easy to edit that down to a short 1,000-word article. But just for fun, I thought it might be enlightening to compare the content of the two columns.

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From today’s Sunday Times.

We can see that Hands Across The Border is going to just keep on giving.

Click here for more.

The referendum is now just two months away, and things are starting to get serious. Yesterday we received notification from the Electoral Commission of the procedure and deadline for appointing “referendum agents”. These are people who can:

– attend the receipt and opening of postal ballot papers and/or appoint postal ballot agents to do so on their behalf.

– attend polling stations on polling day for the purpose of detecting personation and/or appoint polling agents to do so on their behalf.

– attend the counting of votes and/or appoint counting agents to do so on their behalf.

There are 32 local counting areas, and we’d like to have a Wings representative at each one to keep an eye out for any shenanigans. This is too important to be another Glenrothes, so please only put your name forward if you’re sure you’ll be able to do it.

If you’d like to volunteer, see below.

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After the implosion of Rory Stewart MP’s “Hands Across The Border” initiative (to be replaced by “Make A Big Pile Of Rocks For The Union”, which we’re sure will be a roaring success, despite being currently £52,500 short of its fundraising target), we comforted ourselves that there was still to be a big lovebombing exercise between Scotland and England this month, in the form of the Border Union Rally.

Tragically, it seems as though some “unforeseen technical problems” have struck the event – although we’re not absolutely sure how you can have technical problems with going for a walk – and it too has had to be cancelled.

The website has vanished, so the precise details of these insurmountable logistical obstacles aren’t as yet forthcoming. (We’re finding it hard to shake the terribly cynical suspicion that they’re related to the difficulty of calling something a “rally” if there are only three people at it.) But we’ll bring you more news as we get it.

Go and read this. It’s an electric piece of polemic on Bella Caledonia by the respected Scottish playwright Peter Arnott, and it’s the best distillation we’ve ever read of one of the key principles of the referendum debate.

The myth that a No vote is a vote to keep things the way they are is one of the most powerful and dangerous weapons wielded by the anti-independence campaign. The reality is far worse, for all sorts of reasons.

Some are cold hard facts: the financial trap waiting for the Scottish Government in the form of “more powers” that aren’t powers at all, but huge burdens which will cripple the Scottish budget. But what Arnott’s piece outlines is something much more insidious.

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Kerry Gill in the Scottish Daily Express, 17 July 2014:

“Two months to go until the referendum, but acrimony will last for years

There are just two calendar months to go before we go to the ballot box to decide whether we prefer Scotland to remain within the proven safety of the United Kingdom, or take a chance on Alex Salmond’s distintegrating case for separation.

The Yes Scotland campaign – comprised largely of SNP members and sympathisers, aided by a ragbag of Green nationalists, a small number of disaffected Labour voters and rather more anti-English bigots than anyone cares to admit – is in trouble.

On September 19, whatever the result may be, we will all have to try to get along together, but it will be difficult, no matter the good intentions.”

Our emphasis. It sure is a mystery where this “acrimony” is coming from, eh readers? Perhaps, if we all have to get along together after the referendum, it might possibly be better not to engage in furious, unhinged rants where you call your opponents a bunch of racist bigots. Just a thought, like.

Alert readers might be thinking that headline sounds vaguely familiar and they’d be right, because we published a post two months ago with a similar title, highlighting the curiously inverse relationship between media scare stories about alleged abuse in the referendum campaign for which there’s no evidence whatsoever and actual abuse that really happened.

We were put in mind of it this week, after the Daily Record ran a particularly barrel-scraping “vile cybernats” piece about how a Labour activist from England got a little bit of extremely mild stick on Twitter after announcing he was on his way to Scotland to stick his nose in the independence debate, and how he WORRIED that he might meet a hostile reception at the railway station (although of course, and happily, he didn’t).

“Better Together” campaign leaders Blair McDougall and Alistair Darling constantly demand that the Yes campaign, and Alex Salmond in particular, takes responsibility for and action against random online nutters behaving in abusive or threatening ways, even when those people have no discernible connection to Yes Scotland or the SNP.

But they’re less keen on putting their own house in order.

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Our mole in the No camp risked life and limb to bring us this behind-the-scenes footage of the filming of the exciting “Scotland, You’re Our Best Friend” video.

To be honest, it only confirms our suspicions.

Get Me Out Of Here, And Onto The Telly Again.

Please.

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Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson, bless her wee heart, is banging once again in today’s Scottish Sun on the drum she’s made her own personal pet issue of the referendum campaign – the BBC.

The Tory chief – who likes to bash the public sector but has spent almost her entire life funded by the taxpayer, first as a Beeb employee, then as a student at a Scottish university and now as an MSP – notes that viewers in Ireland pay £5.50 a month to access the iPlayer, and that the same fate might befall an independent Scotland.

It sounds a reasonable argument, but like so many of the No camp’s assertions it unfortunately falls to pieces under the pressure of reality.

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The media and the No camp, in so far as those are two different things, got incredibly excited today about some comments made by new European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in which he said that the EU wouldn’t undergo any further enlargement for the next five years.

“Juncker deals blow to Alex Salmond’s EU claims” (Telegraph)

“Independence: Juncker deals blow to Scots EU plans” (Scotsman)

“Alex Salmond’s dream of staying in the EU dealt a blow by new President of the European Commission” (Daily Record)

“Blow for SNP as Junker [sic] rules out EU expansion” (Express)

“Unionists hail Juncker ‘hammer blow’ to Scotland’s EU place” (Financial Times)

“Better Together said the president’s comments make it clear that a Yes vote in the referendum would also be a vote to leave the EU.” (Herald)

So far so mundane. And then something odd, but welcome, happened.

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