Wings Over Scotland

We’ve explored the “Kinnock Factor” previously on this site, but some numbers from the latest YouGov weekly polling surprised even us today. Labour’s lead over the midterm Conservative-led government is still falling – to just 6% this time – and Ed Miliband’s personal ratings are even worse than David Cameron’s, but that wasn’t it.

You’ll probably want to click on that image to enlarge it.

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Got stuff to write about today. Should really comment on Henry McLeish’s cutting observations about the No campaign, or mock the Daily Record’s hilarious attempt to pretend Johann Lamont’s been driving Labour action over Falkirk all along. But I can’t seem to put sentences together, because I’m still trembling a bit after watching this.

It’s hard to relate it to the Scottish independence debate, except to note that where the US goes, the UK is rarely far behind. (In much the same way that a devolved Scotland ends up following the policies of England within a few years, because without control of your own revenues, taxation and welfare there’s only so much you can juggle a decreasing budget to try to offset the effects.)

I don’t want a “special relationship” any more. I want out.

A Scotsman just won Wimbledon. Wimbledon. What can’t we do?

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We don’t often have cause to praise the actions of Tory councillors, so allow us to take the opportunity to salute Cllr David Meikle of Pollokshields for this intervention against braying Spectator idiot (and former star of our Zany Comedy Relief section) Fraser Nelson:

Ooft! Oddly, Nelson hasn’t rushed to also claim Gordon Reid as “British”, despite his being so in just the same way Andy Murray is – perhaps because Gordon and his Dutch doubles partner in fact lost their semi-final yesterday against the top seeds.

We’d previously dismissed the complaint as a tired old nationalist chip-on-the-shoulder hobbyhorse, but it seems that – to BritNats like Nelson at least – it really IS true that sportspeople from Scotland are British when they win and Scottish when they lose.

We won’t do any more of these after this one, honest. But we couldn’t help noticing the Director Of Research for “Better Together” posting this sorry whinge of a tweet last night, unable to resist a chance to have a snipe – however petty – at the First Minister of Scotland for wishing a Scottish sportsman well on behalf of the people of Scotland:

Mr Aikman might want to poll a little wider before repeating that claim.

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It’s “Follow Friday” on Twitter (as it is every Friday). So for those of you still scared to take the plunge into this most modern of communication tools, we thought we’d put together a handy one-stop list of 50 of Scottish politics’ most significant tweeters, and see if we can get you started.

(Click the images to visit the pages.)

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Relaxing at the splendid American Museum high on the hills at the outskirts of town tonight, celebrating Independence Day on a glorious summer’s evening with a few Budweisers, a barbecue and a couple of hundred ex-pats and well-wishers.

Our turn soon.

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We know we go on about this, but it’s pretty important. A few days ago Edinburgh University held an independence debate which was unusually mature and reasonable in its tone (probably because of the absence of any representatives from Labour).

One of the six panellists was Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie, and one of his contributions contained a couple of notable truths, one more significant than the other.

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In the introduction to the chilling “V For Vendetta” (the brilliant comic book, not the awful movie), author Alan Moore wrote some words that have stayed with us:

“I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It’s cold and it’s mean-spirited and I don’t like it here any more.”

That was in 1988, and as far as we know Alan Moore still lives in Northampton. Perhaps he couldn’t think of anywhere better to go. But two pieces in today’s papers illustrate the bleak phenomenon he was talking about better than we could hope to explain, and it’s more true now than ever. You should read both of them if you want to understand modern Britain. Here’s the cause, and here’s the effect.

If you think it’s a coincidence, maybe you need to open your eyes a bit.

We haven’t seen anyone giving due kudos to BBC Scotland’s graphics department for this splendid bit of work on last night’s Newsnight Scotland yet, so we’ll do it now.

As “vicious insidious pied-pipers of cybernats”, we appreciate it especially.

Blimey. We were going to write about devo-max or something this evening, but we’re more emotionally drained than Ivan Lendl after a night at Riverdance from watching that incredible Andy Murray match at Wimbledon.

With Andy playing like a blind monkey flailing at moths for the first two sets and Fernando Verdasco hitting the ball like he’d found it in bed with his wife, the tension was almost unbearable for the whole three and a half hours before a magnificent display of character and skill finally saw the No.2 seed through to the semi-final.

Luckily, the watching-through-our-fingers pain was eased just a little by the knowledge that our fellow Brits from south of the border were suffering through it along with us.

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It’s quite difficult to construct a rational case for why an independent Scotland would need an army at all. A couple of battalions for emergencies can’t hurt, but beyond that level ground forces are something of an affectation for a small country like ours.

Given Scotland’s location, the threat of invasion is essentially zero. Only one nation has attempted to invade Scotland in the last thousand years – the sole country with which we have a land border – and we doubt that even the wildest fringes of the nationalist movement really think England would try it again in the forseeable future.

(And if they did, frankly, the biggest army we could plausibly hope to ever field would have very little chance of stopping them. Ditto Russia, China, North Korea, Guatemala, giant space dinosaurs or whoever the latest Project Fear fantasy bogeyman is.)

Nevertheless, we’re a bit confused by the dire warnings currently being issued by all and sundry regarding the difficulty of recruiting soldiers to such a force.

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