Frighteningly, Wings Over Scotland is fast approaching its 1,000th post (likely to happen sometime next week). Sometimes, for unknown reasons, someone will tweet a link to an old story I’d forgotten I’d written, and I’ll click to see what it was and get enraged as if I’d never seen it before and was just discovering it now.
We know you don’t have all day. Let’s see if we can clear this up in under 600 words.
A play in three very short acts.
UNIONISTS:“We need information! We must have more information! We demand answers! Why aren’t voters being given the information they need? It must be given to them sooner, if not immediately! It’s an outrage!”
SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT: “We shall deliver this information.”
UNIONISTS:“Taxpayers’ money funding separatist propaganda! It’s an outrage!”
Hey ho. Just 18 more months of these idiots to go, readers.
Newsnight Scotland presenter Gordon Brewer got a bit exasperated on last night’s edition of the show as he tried, repeatedly but unsuccessfully, to get Scottish Labour’s ever-smirking Jackie Baillie to give him anything resembling a straight answer to a question about Labour’s (lack of) policy on the bedroom tax.
As the well-fed welfare spokeswoman embarked on another pre-scripted soundbite of SNP-bashing rather than commit Labour councils to a policy of not evicting tenants for arrears related to the penalty charge, Brewer sighed (at around 12m 52s) that “I was vainly trying to take into consideration the people who might be affected by this” before giving up and moving on to his other guest.
Baillie was demanding that the Scottish Government instead bring forward legislation to make such evictions illegal – just a few days after Scottish Labour’s press office had strenuously denied to this very website that the party was making any such demands. But it’s easy to see why she’d be having trouble keeping track of her position, because to Labour the bedroom tax is little short of a delight.
A keen-eyed viewer alerts us to the alarming fact that the Herald appears to have been letting Magnus Gardham write its leader column with his crayons again:
(Online version since fixed, print version preserved for posterity.)
The media is in full-on spin mode today, reporting Ruth Davidson’s miraculous Damascene conversion to the principle of “more powers” for the Scottish Parliament, just 18 short months after her Churchill-esque declaration of devolutionary defiance to the effect that the petty tinkering of the Scotland Act was a “line in the sand”.
Most of the papers, of course, feign critical analysis by highlighting Davidson’s U-turn. But what we haven’t seen in a single one is any sort of actual examination of the content of Ms Davidson’s speech to a micro-audience of literally several people in what appeared to be the corridor of an Edinburgh hotel yesterday.
We suspect that’s because anyone who did would be very hard-pressed indeed to credibly describe the measures she proposes as representing “more powers” for anything. In fact, they’re the opposite.
Remember how Unionists endlessly cite World War 2 as the definitive example of great British “togetherness”? Turns out they might be over-egging that one a bit. From today’s Scottish Daily Express (print edition only):
Of course, that was a long time ago. Things are different now.
So. Wow. Where to start? Lead with the number, we suppose.
Did we say “Wow” yet?
Running total (updated daily): £28,920 of £29,796 (97.1%).
Donations in last 24 hours: £886.
We don’t know about you, viewers, but when we tune into a two-hour TV programme called “Scottish National Party Spring Conference 2013”, we sort of expect the large bulk of that show to be, well, the Scottish National Party Spring Conference 2013.
With the UK’s state broadcaster, though, that isn’t necessarily the case.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
