It’s been an interesting week for the Scottish media. First the Sun’s website vanished behind the clouds of a paywall, and today the Daily Record unveiled a new version of its tablet app which no longer gives readers the weekday paper for free.
(Both papers, naturally, presented these new restrictions as enhancements.)
So, slightly to our surprise, we actually just got a reply from Blair McDougall to our email offering to put on a debate between Alistair Darling and Dennis Canavan at a mutually-convenient time and location and with a neutral host.
You can read it below.
Obviously we tried ringing “Better Together” ourselves again this morning, just before 10am, but once again Blair McDougall was unavailable, and the person we spoke to couldn’t tell us when would be a good time to catch him as he’d be “in and out” of the office throughout the day.
We took that to mean that he was currently out, so we called him on his mobile.
(We’ve blanked the bit where he gives out another “Better Together” mobile number, as we don’t know if that one was publicly accessible like Mr McDougall’s was.)
We’ve sent an email to the specified address. We’ll try a text after that.
As alert readers will be aware, we’re having an inexplicably hard time getting hold of “Better Together” campaign chief Blair McDougall at the moment. Although the No camp constantly claims to want “debate” and we’ve already got the Yes side’s agreement, for some reason Mr McDougall still hasn’t accepted our invitation to have BT’s official spokesman, Alistair Darling, go up against his Yes counterpart Dennis Canavan in a public head-to-head at a mutually convenient time and location.
Despite our trying to get in touch with Mr McDougall every day for the last week, he always seems to be out or “in meetings”, even if we call 60 seconds after he’s just posted a tweet. And when we leave messages with BT staff, he never gets back to us.
Obviously we’re pretty busy and can’t just sit here redialling every two minutes, so if any of you get a spare moment to call the BT office today, can you ask them – very politely, please – if he’s in, and if so whether he’s got an answer for us yet? Ta.
That number again: 0141 225 6288.
Michael Moore is the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Keep that in mind when you read the next line.
Some of the more cynical independence supporters among our readership may today be asking themselves “What is it that Labour are trying to bury today with all this ludicrously farcical ‘Labour For Independence’ business?”
Allow us to suggest a few possibilities.
We’re just going to leave these here, okay?
Labour voters are going to be key in deciding the outcome of the independence referendum. Even if everyone who voted SNP, Green or SSP in the last Holyrood election voted Yes in 2014, it wouldn’t be quite enough to secure a 50%+1 result.
But with polls consistently showing 15-20% of Labour voters are already in favour of independence, and also that a huge majority are dissatisfied with the status quo, it can be no surprise that the Unionist parties and media are extremely nervous of any growth in the Labour Yes faction.
But while nerves are one thing, blind panic is another.
For some reason which escapes our understanding, the operator of the misleadingly-named “Scottish Labour” Twitter account chose to tweet this message this afternoon.
We know the answer, but we’re jiggered if we get the point.
We’re now in the sixth day of our attempt to arrange a public debate between the respective chairmen of the Yes and No campaigns, Dennis Canavan and Alistair Darling. Yes Scotland director Blair Jenkins accepted on behalf of Mr Canavan some days ago, but despite his “Better Together” counterpart Blair McDougall initially agreeing (on the misunderstanding that we were inviting him rather than Mr Darling), he’s yet to respond to several further enquiries.
We rang the BT offices in Glasgow just after two o’clock this afternoon, but Mr McDougall was “in meetings” (though he was posting tweets two minutes beforehand) and the person we spoke to couldn’t tell us when we might be able to get hold of him. We left a message asking him to get in touch when he had a minute. We’ll let you know when we hear anything.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
