Wings Over Scotland

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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Our brain protected us from looking at the Scotsman yesterday, so it wasn’t until late last night that we noticed what we first thought must be some sort of elaborate spoof.

“Labour claim 1m may lose jobs after independence”, ran what we suspect may in the post-match analysis come to be regarded as the most deranged headline of the entire referendum campaign. There are fewer than 2.6m people working in the country altogether, which would mean Labour were threatening almost 40% of all the jobs in Scotland would be lost with a Yes vote.

It wasn’t until two thirds of the way down the article that we discovered the headline writer had in fact gotten a little carried away, and that Labour had once again just plucked the word “million” out of the air to sound scary, claiming that only “some” of the jobs were allegedly at risk.

But how many is “some”?

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A post appeared on the news-and-discussion site Reddit Scotland last night. We’ve reproduced it in full below, because it seems like something people should know.

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Below is a clip from the short report on social media in the independence referendum that appeared on tonight’s STV News, and will apparently also air on Scotland Tonight. (You can see the whole thing here.)

Like every other media report of our article about Alex Johnstone MSP, it omits the bit where we explained WHY we called him some rude names, but in this case we’re happy to accept that that was for reasons of time.

The more interesting bit is Johnstone’s own comments, because the MSP’s reaction is a breathtaking piece of hypocritical dishonesty that seems to us to be entirely in keeping with the character of the man.

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Remains, we think, the thought that this person could theoretically be First Minister:

Of course, in theory she could be the devolved FM too, so it’s not much of a case, but we’re seriously starting to think that Labour have decided it’s their best strategy.

The tweet on the left is one of the rare appearances of Scottish Labour’s fabled “2014 Truth Team”, while over on the right is a snippet from Scottish Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale’s column in this morning’s Daily Record.

This shouldn’t take long.

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To be fair, the article in today’s Sunday Mirror isn’t shy about setting out its position.

“In the end it will all come down to two little words. One of which will save our 300-year union with Scotland. The other will rip it to shreds. If Scotland’s Bravehearts vote YES on September 18 it will tear apart that union which has seen both countries’ men march shoulder-to-shoulder in two world wars.

Which is why YES seems such a small a word to bear responsibility for dismantling one of the world’s oldest democracies and for cutting a centuries-old umbilical cord that has kept us joined to Scotland since 1707.”

It’s all in there – “tear apart”, “rip to shreds”, Braveheart, two world wars, Rule Britannia blah blah etc – inside the first 100 words, so you know what’s coming. Although we’re pretty sure you’re not supposed to leave umbilical cords attached for centuries.

But as it turns out, that’s the most sensible part.

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We were in quite a cheerful mood last night. The “indy cyclist” Mark Coburn had just achieved the goal on his latest fundraiser for various Yes groups, which meant that any extra money raised between now and the end of the project next Friday would go to the Maryhill Food Bank run by Julie Webster, which we featured last weekend.

And then we read a story from yesterday’s Scottish Sun.

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Iain Macwhirter in the Sunday Herald, 13 July 2014:

“The Scottish Parliament is responsible for health in Scotland but funding remains with Westminster through the Barnett Formula, which increases or decreases every year in line with health spending in England. The intention of the UK health reforms is to get private companies to take on more and more of the work of the NHS, reducing the contribution made by the taxpayer.

This will inevitably reduce the funding that comes to Scotland, even assuming the Barnett Formula is retained. George Osborne has pencilled in a further £35 billion in cuts to health spending. As consultant surgeon Philippa Whitford has argued, this means the Scottish Government might be forced to go along the same privatisation route to fill the gap.

But there is a further threat facing the NHS.”

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Alert readers may recall a piece two months ago when we gently mocked the No campaign’s comical claim to have “more boots on the ground than its nationalist opponents“. An article in the Telegraph suggested that “Better Together” could deploy 30,000 grassroots activists to knock doors and hand out leaflets paid for by millionaire Tory lords, with the largest troop concentrations in the key battleground of Glasgow.

Right, just 29,994 left to find.

We assume Danny Alexander has been writing for the Record this morning.

We still haven’t been issued with our special UK Goverment Scottish Independence Costs Calculator by the Treasury, but we nevertheless still feel fairly confident that £550 million minus £250 million is £300 million, not £3 billion.

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Our ever-alert readers will almost certainly recall – for it was only four days ago – this piece, in which we noted the Scottish media’s curious reluctance to cover what looked like a pretty blockbusting story.

Professor Sir Donald Mackay of the pro-devolution think tank Reform Scotland, an extremely distinguished businessman and adviser to the UK government, wrote a stinging article for the Sunday Times rubbishing the Office for Budget Responsibility’s gloomy forecasts for North Sea oil revenue in the coming decades, and suggesting that the real figures were likely to be over £8 billion a year higher.

Despite the enormous effect such a sum would have on the economy of an independent Scotland – wiping out the highest estimate of its deficit at a stroke and leaving it with an annual surplus of hundreds of millions of pounds – the rest of the media uncharacteristically didn’t swipe the ST’s story for their Monday editions.

But then the OBR issued a new forecast.

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