Wings Over Scotland

The internet’s been enjoying itself since last night knocking up satirical versions of The Sun’s wraparound cover today. For no immediately apparent reason (except perhaps that it’s a slow time for news) the paper has suddenly decided to give a “State Of The Union”-type address explicitly setting out its beliefs on a variety of subjects.

We thought that it might pass a few idle moments to compare the UK and Scottish editions, and see how closely those beliefs matched up on either side of the border.

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You’ve bravely waded through a 3500-word book review already this morning, so let’s give you something a little more bite-sized to digest.

This one could be a game-changer, folks. Brace yourselves.

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Wings Over Scotland went to London last weekend, for no particular reason other than a change of scenery. After a trip to the faux-bohemian Camden Market – in which about six different stalls are now repeated over and over in a sad, gentrified mockery of its previous more anarchic life, yet while still maintaining much of the vibrant feel – we set off in no particular direction and found ourselves in Trafalgar Square.

Despite having been to the capital dozens of times, I’d never visited the home of Nelson’s Column, which is far bigger in real life than it looks in pictures, managing to dominate what is a very large plaza with no shortage of other imposing monuments and decorations. (Including the vast National Gallery and, at the moment, an incongruous enormous bright blue cockerel.)

Suitably inspired, we elected to take a stroll to the Embankment, past the London Eye, and from there on a walking tour of the heart of the British establishment. Searching for exploitable weaknesses, obviously.

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As we noted earlier, the Wings Over Scotland spy at last night’s “Better Together” meeting in our home town of Bathgate last night wasn’t alone. Some intrepid readers also attended the event, and recorded the whole thing to find out what the No campaign are telling people away from the scrutiny of the media.

It’s a grim watch, but we’ve picked you out some highlights.

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Tonight saw the launch of “Better Together Bathgate”, the No camp’s debut foray into our beloved hometown. The email advertising the event, sent out on the 15th of July, said “I hope to see you at the on 28th June” [sic], which might help to explain the rather sub-spectacular turnout of around 40 hardy souls from a town of 16,000.

Of that 40 or so, several (perhaps as many as a quarter) were dastardly pro-Yes spies. And we know that for certain, because one of them was ours.

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In an extraordinary outburst on TV last night, “Better Together” campaign chairman Alistair Darling accused Alex Salmond of exaggerating the amount of extractable oil in the Scottish sector of the North Sea by 1,200%.

The former Chancellor (who we learned a few weeks ago thinks the population of Scotland is six million, creating an impressive 705,000 imaginary Scots) suggested that rather than the 24 billion barrels currently estimated by the oil industry – and commonly cited by the UK government – there were in fact just 2 billion barrels left.

As BT are a tad wobbly with numbers, let’s do a quick bit of arithmetic on that.

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We linked you yesterday to a quite startling display of cognitive dissonance, as a dedicated Labour activist struggled to reconcile his party’s position on Trident with his own belief in disarmament, reaching some quite extraordinary contortions of logic in an attempt to convince himself that staying in the Union represented the best way of ridding the United Kingdom of weapons which are enthusiastically supported by every major UK political party and the Lib Dems.

But it’s not just mad bloggers who are frantically trying to whip up a sandstorm of spin to obscure Labour’s final abject surrender to the nuclear weapons lobby.

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In Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel “V For Vendetta”, the central character tells co-protagonist Evey: “Silence is a fragile thing. One loud noise, and it’s gone”.

Yesterday we ran a guest post from the Scrap Trident Coalition calling for an end to the Johann Lamont and the Scottish branch of the Labour Party to end its silence on the subject of nuclear weapons.

But though Lamont remains “on holiday” and unavailable for comment on a range of issues (or even completely excluded from discussing them at all), her party has ended her silence for her, with a succession of loud noises nobody could possibly miss.

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Careful readers will be aware that this site primarily concerns itself with the activities of politicians and the media. Doing so can of course leave the way open to accusations of paranoia and conspiracy theorising. So we thought it might be interesting to share with you the findings of Transparency International’s 2013 survey into the public perception of corruption in the United Kingdom. (Part of a global poll.)

The only three bodies thought to be corrupt or extremely corrupt by a majority of the UK population were political parties, Parliament and the media, with the media coming off worst out of the three. (Next up, incidentally, were “business” with 49% and “public officials/civil servants” with 45%.)

Perception isn’t necessarily fact, of course. But at the very least, it’s not just us.

Apologies if the headline falls fouls of anyone’s work filter (although it shouldn’t, as it’s officially legally not a swear word), but we can’t think of a more concise and accurate way of describing the phenomenon illustrated by the comically absurd story that’s being blared all over the Scottish media this morning like news of the Apocalypse.

The price of oil, as the No campaign never tires of telling us, is volatile. Nobody knows what it’ll be in 27 weeks’ time, or even 27 days’ time. Predicting what level it’ll be at 27 hours from now is pushing your luck a bit, and City traders regularly make and lose fortunes betting on that timescale and getting it right or wrong.

So the idea that anyone, let alone the Office for Budget Responsibility, can have even the slightest, vaguest hint of a clue where North Sea oil prices and production will be 27 YEARS from now is – well, see the headline.

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Watchful readers will know that one of the recurring themes on this site is the impossibility of finding any real ideological differences between the three main Westminster-based parties. But to be scrupulously fair, we think we might finally have uncovered one now, in the light of this week’s bizarre Lib Dem policy paper on Trident.

(This is turning into the worst day off ever.)

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