Wings Over Scotland

These pranksters have gone too far with our beloved cultural icons.

(Story, in case you missed it.)

If we were you, we’d skip ahead to about 18 minutes in this video of a debate hosted by the Cupar Business Network at the start of the month. John Swinney’s oratorial skills aren’t his strongest suit, and Murdo Fraser is reading from the same “Better Together” script you’ve heard a hundred times before.

But the following hour shows Swinney where he IS at his very best. A superb debater with facts at his fingertips and a razor-sharp focus, he takes Fraser apart methodically and comprehensively, with impeccable politeness and clarity.

We’ve been tweeting a few of the most noteworthy bits throughout the day, but if you’ll forgive us for asking you to sit through two hour-long bits of media in succession, we think you’ll find this one worth it.

…so beloved of John McTernan are on this particular occasion myself, Michael Greenwell, Andrew “Lallands Peat Worrier” Tickell and the SNP’s Natalie McGarry, blethering away yesterday on the For A’That podcast.

If you’ve got nothing better to do for 61 minutes, you could always have a listen.

This site has been warning for a few months now of what lies in store for Scotland should its people vote No to independence in 2014, and in particular if Labour should defy the odds and win the 2015 general election.

Quite openly and in public, safe in the knowledge that the mainstream media (and most importantly the ever-loyal Daily Record) will ignore it, senior Scottish figures in Labour have said repeatedly that Scotland will receive a lower share of UK public spending, with the money being diverted to poor parts of England instead.

It turns out that we could have saved ourselves a load of analysis.

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We usually make several tweets about other people’s pro-independence fundraisers, but don’t post them on the main site for several reasons – chiefly that there’s always one going on somewhere, and we don’t want readers to feel unable to visit Wings without being constantly pressured to put their hands in their pockets.

We’re going to have an exception for this one, though. Jack Foster and Chris Silver created the brilliant “Fear Factor” mini-movie (as well as some shorter clips previously), and they want to step things up a gear by making a full-length film about independence in time for the referendum.

We’d very much like that to happen. Jack and Chris are the indy movement’s Adam Curtis, and we’re absolutely certain that their movie would be a fantastic piece of work capable of winning hearts and minds and making a real difference.

They need just over £11,000 in a week – peanuts for the level of quality they produce. The Common Weal fundraiser recently cleared that sort of sum in that sort of timespan, and with much less clear and visible goals, so we hope and trust that it’s achievable. Visit the site to find out more, and please help if you can.

TWO indy-positive stories in the Sunday Times? In the same week?

That needs preserving for posterity.

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It’s always nice when the Scottish media takes the time to illustrate one of our points for us. Earlier this week we attempted to distil this site’s core work of the last two years into two simple rules, elegantly pictured below.

Imagine our unrestricted delight, then, when this weekend’s Scotland On Sunday chose to generously provide us with some prima facie evidence of the phenomenon.

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At 9am today, BBC newsreader Nicholas Owen read out the headlines with the words “The Queen will lead the Remembrance Sunday celebrations – commemorations – at the Cenotaph this morning”. He was right the first time, of course.

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Knock yourselves out, folks. But keep it clean, okay? We had a big dinner.

From the defence white paper “Defence Industrial Strategy”, published in 2005 by the Labour government of Tony Blair. “Onshore” in this context means “in the UK”.

“Shipbuilding and integration: there is no absolute requirement to build all warships and Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels onshore, but a minimum ability to build and integrate complex ships in the UK must be retained.

B2.24 There is no requirement for fabrication of basic structures in the UK per se; however, mounting military operations from the UK base (including the fit of specific equipment for the operation in question), requires the relevant facilities and skills to be available onshore.”

Just out of curiosity, can anyone tell us when those policies changed?

We’ve had a go at this subject once before, but this time we’ve come up with a less hyperbolic analogy. It was sparked by another Twitter comment from Labour spin-doctor John McTernan, which cropped up last night in the middle of some truly abject cringing from “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall.

.@bobby_mckail@Dungarbhan@blairmcdougall@Jenemm3 My country is Scotland.

— John McTernan (@johnmcternan) November 7, 2013

We couldn’t help but note the use of the singular.

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Here’s Johann Lamont at FMQs yesterday:

“Let me repeat: the United Kingdom Government has made it clear that defence contracts will not be let outside the United Kingdom and therefore will not come to Scotland if Scotland were outside the United Kingdom.”

And here’s the UK’s Defence Secretary Philip Hammond speaking on Channel 4 News the previous night. See how clear you think he makes that.

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