Wings Over Scotland

Here’s some more from Johann Lamont’s recent BBC interview (18m 20s).

BRIAN TAYLOR: Will a Labour government repeal the bedroom tax?

JOHANN LAMONT: Well, what we’ve been very clear about is that this is, em, deeply damaging to very many families. I’ve had examples of young people with learning disabilities living in supported accommodation who are now paying more. That is simply unacceptable.

As answers go we suppose it’s not exactly “Yes” or “No”, but it definitely sounds like we’ve got a firm and specific commitment coming up any second now, readers!

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It would appear that we’ve reached the point where the anti-independence campaign has officially run out of arguments, and is being forced to reissue its Greatest Hits.

The headline on the left is from January 2012, the one on the right is yesterday’s.

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We have a fun task for Scottish Labour’s exciting new “Truth Team”, which made its debut last week. Clearly it would be rather unseemly to go around proclaiming yourself an arbiter of truth if there was a great big lie at the heart of your very existence, so hopefully someone on the Team will be able to explain the curious and seemingly untrue assertion that still heads up Scottish Labour’s own Twitter account.

We highlighted it yesterday for fun, but it’s worth serious examination too.

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We gather a few refreshments are usually taken at party conferences, so given that Eddie Barnes of the Scotsman is in Inverness covering the Scottish Labour gathering, perhaps a hangover explains his rather confused piece for Scotland on Sunday today.

There are three particularly notable passages, which we’ll take you through quickly here so you don’t have to go and read them on the paper’s website.

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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 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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It’s gone midnight and we don’t normally do speculation, but as it’s already showing up in our incoming searches we’ve spent the last little while trying to work out what’s gone on between SNP MP Angus Robertson, Labour MP John Mann and the Herald in the last 24 hours. So first let’s establish the known facts, then have the attempted deduction, and hopefully by the morning read the official clarifications.

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We recently received the same letter from the Radio Times as many other people did, in response to our complaint about the magazine’s misrepresentation of respected Scottish historian Dr Fiona Watson last month. The problem related to an article about the film “Braveheart”, which made some deeply unpleasant implications easily read as saying the SNP were xenophobic racists encouraging anti-English violence.

The reply didn’t address the very specific issues we’d raised about what Dr Watson did or didn’t say, so we wrote back to the mag’s editor Ben Preston seeking clarification on a couple of important points. His reply is below.

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We’ve been documenting of late how the No campaign has grown increasingly negative and smear-based since the turn of the year, as opinion polls show a trend of small but consistent movement towards independence. One of the core characteristics of negative political campaigning is to accuse your opponents of doing the thing you’re actually doing, and the last couple of days have thrown up some striking examples.

That’s our old pal Euan McColm of the Scotsman, of course. And he’s not alone.

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Ian Taylor, chief executive and president of Vitol, is the donor who just keeps on giving:

“Oil market dealers confirmed on Friday that a Syrian government tender on behalf of state oil company Sytrol for gasoline that closed on the market this week has been picked up by giant oil traders Trafigura and Vitol. Syria exports crude oil, but does not have the refining capacity to meet its domestic needs and relies on petrol imports.

On the same day US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the first time called for an international boycott of Syrian oil and gas products, and sanctions against its oil and gas industries as the best way of putting pressure on the regime to stop its murderous repression of protests there which began on March 15th and have cost upwards of 1700 lives.”

(Our emphasis, as usual.) To be honest, we hope “Better Together” don’t hand back Mr Taylor’s £500,000 donation. We imagine Yes Scotland will rather enjoy hitting them with this particular oil- and blood-soaked stick all the way to September 2014.