We’re indebted to an alert reader for pointing us towards this intriguing story:
Click the words for more details about how an increasingly discredited Scottish mainstream media is resorting to desperate measures to survive, then consider if you might want to fund more honest reporting, lest you be left with none at all.
One of the main weapons in the arsenal of the No campaign is to induce fear in the public over their pensions. It’s a strategy based on the generally inadequate knowledge that most of us have over our pensions, so the “Better Together” coalition has been handing out flyers proclaiming that “the pensions of 1 million Scots are guaranteed by remaining in the UK” – the implication being that outside of the UK they wouldn’t be.
But since we can generally assume the contents of their leaflets to be somewhat economical with the truth, what would happen to our pensions after independence?
The reliably toxic Simon Johnson in the Telegraph this morning:
Actual result of referendum: 62-38, a margin of 1.6/1.
Size of Mr Johnson’s casual exaggeration: 25%. (1.6 x 1.25 = 2)
But seriously, though – what is it about believing in the Union that apparently renders educated people suddenly unable to count? We have no idea, but it may go some way to explaining the UK’s credit-rating downgrade.
Today’s press is full of reports on the Glasgow University independence referendum, in which the vote went 62-38 against on a turnout variously reported as 11%, 12% and 13%. (To our considerable surprise, this dismal level of interest was in fact regarded as a triumph, and vastly above the usual amount of engagement with student politics.)
Fewer than 2,600 people voted – despite the ballot being held somewhere students had to go anyway – so the results are barely as authoritative as a typical opinion poll. They do suggest a couple of reasonably interesting things, though.
This is the text of yesterday’s radio interview between BBC Scotland’s Glenn Campbell and Lord Malloch-Brown, the former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations who also served as a Foreign Office minister in the last UK Labour government. It seems reasonable to suggest that (a) he’s not a rabid SNP stooge, and (b) he’s a pretty good authority on how Europe works.
The interview starts with the response to a question we don’t get to hear, and we’ve excised a few “um”s, “you know”s and “I mean”s for readability. All emphasis is ours. The transcript is otherwise verbatim.
A realistic, informed and expert assessment of an independent Scotland’s relationship with Europe was accidentally reported by the BBC this morning. It’s chilly here today so we’re going to have to warm up our transcribing fingers for those who can’t access streams, but in the meantime the rest of you can listen to the audio.
The most interestingly consistent trend of recent opinion polls has been a significant movement away from the No vote to the Don’t Know camp. Almost every one conducted in the last few months has shown the proportion of the population intending to vote against independence dropping below 50%, but the Yes campaign has only picked up a minority, with the rest now firmly undecided.
The significance of this shift shouldn’t be underestimated. Once someone’s opinion starts to change, more often than not it tends to keep moving in the same direction, unless there’s a fundamental alteration in the reasons that caused it to start. And with the anti-independence side showing no signs of abandoning their campaign of relentless negativity, that seems unlikely.
However, it also shouldn’t be OVER-estimated. A crucial section of the populace has signified its willingness to be persuaded, but if it’s to turn the headline figures around YesScotland still has to finish the job. In order to understand how that might be achieved, we need to examine the fundamental tenets of Unionism.
It’s always a matter of concern when supposedly impartial newspapers put out stories which appear more openly partisan than a party press release, and doubly so when the author is a staff news reporter rather than an opinion columnist. (As the latter are under no obligation to exercise impartiality, or indeed even to feign it.)
So it’s actually rather rare to see a smear piece as blatant as the one penned by David Maddox for the Scotsman today. Advertised on Twitter with the words “Does the Declaration of Arbroath have any significance beyond Scotland for the SNP? The evidence suggests not”, there are so many odd things about the story we’re going to have to make a list.
I’m not a feminist. I’m barely feminine come to that: a pushing-40 tomboy. My initial reaction to comments about gender balance is a cringe. So what if there are four men and no women on a panel? What do women bring to a debate that a man can’t? If I’m really honest, a man will often persuade me to a cause long before a woman – they can exude an air of authority most women would feel embarrassed to display.
It’s only very recently, partly thanks to Women for Independence, I’ve realised it’s an issue that does matter. On this site – below the line – the question of gender balance has been dismissed as hysterical feminism. On Twitter, a debate last week had the lack of women in politics dismissed with “Well, they exclude themselves, don’t they?”
The irony for me, as a woman, is how those kind of comments mirror the independence debate itself. An “I’m not a feminist but…” article echoes the now common, “I’m not a nationalist but…” refrain. The cringe when women speak up about gender imbalance is similar to the Scottish cringe: a lack of confidence in who you are; in standing up for yourself or others in your position; in insisting you on your right to be heard over those exuding more authority.
The “Well they exclude themselves don’t they? If women want to be involved what’s stopping them?” line carries within it the same lack of insight into power structures and barriers as, “What are those Jocks whinging about now? They’re represented at Westminster, aren’t they?”
The issue, as far as I’m concerned – and other women may disagree, we don’t all think the same – isn’t one about straight gender balance. Simply replacing male politicians and panellists with women who’ve made it within the same system misses the point. The issue is with politics itself, and the style of UK political and media debate.
We’re not quite sure what someone put in the tea at the Sunday Mail this morning, but the quoted-for-truth excerpt we’ve reproduced further down this post (emphasis ours) comes from what is a simply extraordinary editorial considering the source.
We’ve been saying the same thing since 2011, of course, but seeing it in the Mail is a bit like the Telegraph saying “Y’know, communism isn’t all THAT bad”. The Indiana Jones analogy, and what it implies about independence, is particularly startling.
Headlines can be the bane of a writer’s life. Often – including on this site – an article will go out with a different title to the one the author originally envisaged, as part of the subbing process. Occasionally (if the sub-editor or editor isn’t very good at their job) the title can be one which the author feels misrepresents what they’ve written.
We have no idea whether or not that’s the case with a column in today’s Scotland On Sunday, penned by folk singer Karine Polwart, which goes under the eye-catching headline “Why I’ll vote Yes despite the SNP”. We’ll simply observe that there’s a fairly important word in that title which doesn’t appear at all in the actual article – and that indeed the thing the word describes is not referred to, or even obliquely implied, anywhere in the author’s words – and leave you to arrive at your own conclusions.
Let me declare an interest. I am old enough to get the £200 tax-free winter fuel payment and free local bus travel anywhere in England. As I live in London my travel Freedom Pass extends to local bus and tube travel throughout London 24/7, and local trains from 0930. I guess the whole package is worth £700 a year to me, tax-free. Though in truth if I paid for London travel I would claim back much of it from clients and customers. So that’s that out of the way.
Well almost. I do not in the slightest need that money. If it disappeared tomorrow I would shrug and say “So be it”. It would not leave me freezing in the winter and cut off from family, friends or the local library. Or, come to that, work. So: I get it; I do not need it; and the amount is small enough in my personal financial affairs that whether I get it or not is neither here nor there.
So that leaves me uniquely able to say unequivocally that it would be complicated, counterproductive, and wrong to stop winter fuel payment and free bus travel for those over state pension age. Here’s why.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
