Wings Over Scotland

Scottish Labour’s record time for a policy U-turn was already pretty low. It took less than 24 hours from Johann Lamont’s infamous “something for nothing” speech before her MSPs were hastily popping up in the papers to insist that various universal services were in fact NOT under threat at all. (Despite the fact that the head of the commission investigating them had explicitly said that nothing was off the table.)

But yesterday saw the hapless party set a new personal best.

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We think this might be that cross-border vortex at play again.

(This post is respectfully dedicated to the wonderful late Scottish folk singer, comedian and actual proper socialist Matt McGinn.)

We’re not impartial witnesses, of course, but we suspect even the most unbiased observer would struggle to dispute that the last 12 hours have seen Scottish Labour’s most spectacular on-air implosion since Iain Gray’s infamous Hindenberg disaster in the wake of Wendy Alexander’s “bring it on” brainfail of 2008.

For openers, a pained and ghostly-looking Johann Lamont on Scotland Tonight. (Starts at 0:51, continues for about six toe-curling, slow-motion minutes. Audio-only recording here for when the video is no longer available on the STV website.)

Then some desperate stalling from Anas Sarwar on Newsnight Scotland. (We’ve linked to a bit four minutes in, which lasts until the end about eight minutes later.)

But the glorious piece de resistance is unquestionably Johann Lamont being speared, skinned and filletted by David Miller on Good Morning Scotland. (The first two minutes or so are a bit slow, but you really need to hear all of the 10 minutes following them.)

And if you don’t have the time to watch/listen to the whole 24 minutes of those right now, here’s all three appearances compressed into just nine seconds.

To be honest, further commentary from us seems superfluous.

The Scotsman reports this morning that Ed Miliband is planning a highly personal attack on Alex Salmond and the SNP at the Scottish Labour conference in Inverness later today. Apparently the Labour leader will say, among other things:

“His is a narrow nationalism that thinks the way Scotland prospers is in a race to the bottom across the UK, cutting corporation tax rates for powerful companies while doing nothing for working people. And a narrow nationalism that says if it is in the interest of the SNP then it is OK to do cosy deals with Rupert Murdoch.”

If you can’t quite remember who Ed Miliband is, this is him:

“He refused to put a date on when a new set of Labour policies would be ready, saying only: ‘You will read it first in The Sun.’”

We look forward to that exclusive.

We must admit we’re quite jealous of National Collective’s media management. We told Ian Taylor’s lawyers to sod off over a week ago and nobody put US all over the news. But in amongst all the brouhaha around the site’s welcome return, one aspect of the coverage stood out rather startlingly.

“Better Together campaign director Jackie Baillie MSP said she did not have a problem accepting Mr Taylor’s money. […] Ms Baillie also pointed out that Mr Taylor had made important investments in the Harris tweed industry on the Western Isles.

‘Is the first minister equally suggesting that Mr Taylor should disinvest from Harris tweed?’ she said. ‘I don’t think he’s said that today.'”

After a week of stonewall silence, it seems the No camp has finally come up with its defence line (the Tories, Lib Dems and various tame columnists have also been faithfully parroting it all day): there’s no difference between Ian Taylor investing his doubtless-legally-obtained wealth in Harris Tweed and investing it in “Better Together”.

Except there rather obviously is, isn’t there?

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Yesterday saw the release of the latest unemployment figures. They showed Scottish unemployment falling by 11,000 to its lowest level in four years – dropping below the 200,000 barrier for the first time since 2009, after five successive months of falls – with the number of people in work showing its biggest increase for almost 13 years.

The figures came against a backdrop of continuing increases in UK joblessness, leaving the Scottish unemployment rate significantly below that of the rest of the country. The Scottish economy also grew by 0.5% over the most recent measured period, while that of the UK continued to shrink.

We know what you’re thinking – this is GOOD news, right?

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We doff our hats to the people of former mining village Goldthorpe in South Yorkshire today. This afternoon they marked the passing of Baroness Thatcher according to their own experience of her, and it didn’t cost the taxpayer a single penny.

Full picture gallery courtesy of BBC reporter James Vincent here, story here.

This is from an article in today’s edition of north-Scotland regional paper the Press & Journal about a poll they’ve just conducted among residents of Orkney and Shetland.

Flying in the face of Tavish Scott’s most recent attempts to bang on his battered old drum of how the Northern Isles might want to form their own independent nation/s if Scotland left the UK, the citizens of the two island groups delivered a crushing “No” to the notion, voting by a margin of almost 8:1 to stay part of Scotland.

Why, then, has the P&J chosen to illustrate the “No” section of its pie charts (meaning “No, we shouldn’t be separate from Scotland”) with the Union Jack of the UK, and the “Yes” section (meaning “Yes, we should be separate from Scotland”) with the Saltire? We’ve dropped them a line to ask.

The oil industry: volatile, unreliable, risky, bad.

“Oil & Gas UK believes around 470m barrels of oil and gas will be extracted from the area in 2013, a fivefold increase on the average over the past three years. Two million barrels of oil a day are set to come on stream by 2017, up from 1.5m this year.”

The nuclear industry: stable, predictable, good.

“they might be committing all of us to pay more for that electricity than is justified – and not just for a few weeks or months, but till 2060.”

Independence: we just can’t afford to take the chance.

We don’t really need to write anything today. If you want to know why you have to vote Yes in 2014, just turn on your TV.

Labour MP John Mann has now given his account of yesterday’s goings-on around a misattributed quote in the Sunday Times and Herald. You can read it on his website, or look at this conveniently-located screenshot (click to supersize) instead:

Speaking as writers we’re especially impressed by the fifth paragraph’s use of no fewer than SIX exclamation marks after a single word. But it’s the next bit, and in particular the section we’ve highlighted in the image above, that’s rather more concerning.

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We were dismayed to hear this morning that the Scottish Parliament had wussed out on holding a debate on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy which had been scheduled for the day of her funeral (though not during it). But we were immediately cheered up again by this indirectly-related reader comment:

“By the way did I hear correctly that the funeral is supposed to have a Falklands theme? Would it therefore be bad taste to suggest putting Thatcher into a General Belgrano-shaped coffin and have it sunk into the grave by a hearse disguised as HMS Conqueror?”

Now THAT we’d pay money for.