Wings Over Scotland

So we’re halfway through “an unprecedented weekend blitz of campaigning” by the No camp, trying to persuade Scots to stay in the Union (but without being Unionist, of course). Twitter was alive on Saturday morning with Unio- sorry, Better Together activists all loudly (and oddly uniformly) proclaiming the “great response” they’d had on the streets of Scotland from voters, and publishing the pictures to prove it.

For those of you who couldn’t make it out to one of the “events” yourself, here’s a taste of the sort of pulsating, dynamic and above all positive action you missed.

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The YesScotland campaign website conducted an interesting thought experiment last week, turning the independence referendum question on its head by asking “If Scotland was still an independent nation, would you vote to join the Union?” It was an interesting and imaginative piece, penned by campaign head Blair Jenkins, and it got us pondering over which other aspects of the referendum might take on a different perspective if viewed a different way.

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We were frankly staggered today to see that the Herald is still determined to flog the dead and rotting horse that is the Martin Sime “scandal”. It had seemed that the paper had slunk away with its “exclusive” between its legs after the widespread contempt generated by the first story, but incredibly it seems doggedly insistent on destroying the remaining shreds of its journalistic integrity by digging the hole even deeper.

The original piece was written by the Herald’s new political editor Magnus Gardham, until recently a faithful servant of the staunchly Unionist and staunchly Labour-supporting Daily Record. Entitled “Salmond in secret push to obtain a devo max option”, the story didn’t present a scrap of evidence of Salmond doing anything, secretly or otherwise. In fact, it was fabricated almost entirely from empirical lies, from the headline down. Let’s take a look at some of them.

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In case you hadn’t noticed, “Devo Max” is dead. Since the turn of the year, the current Prime Minister and the last one have both issued clear declarations that the idea of full fiscal autonomy for Scotland within the UK is simply a non-starter.

Even while Scottish labour “leader” Johann Lamont umms and aahs and coyly refuses to reveal which additional powers she might or might not want devolved to the Scottish Parliament in future, Ruth Davidson of the Scottish Tories hops from one position to another according to whether the London party have told her what she believes that day or not, and Willie Rennie’s increasingly-laughable Scottish Lib Dems put their faith in what we think is the party’s 57th Home Rule talking shop, David Cameron and Gordon Brown have unceremoniously slammed the door on the notion. So what’s left?

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By now most of you should have seen the latest circulation figures for newspapers in Scotland. As you’ll know, though, Wings Over Scotland likes to delve around below the headlines when it comes to stats, so we’ve had our own rummage, done a little data-bashing and come up with a few hopefully-interesting findings.

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In the last 24 hours we’ve now asked at least half-a-dozen different people, of various party loyalties and none, if they can explain exactly what crime Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie apparently considers Martin Sime of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations to be guilty of. Curiously, every time we’ve asked the question the conversation has immediately gone dead and stayed that way.

So far as we’ve been able to establish, an SNP adviser called Alex Bell sent Mr Sime an unsolicited email bringing to his attention a poll that showed a large majority of trade union members to be in favour of a second question in the independence referendum, which would provide the option of more powers for the Scottish Parliament while remaining in the Union.

The core question, then, seems to be whether this is an inappropriate position for SCVO to be taking, and therefore whether Mr Sime would be acting inappropriately in receiving such an email (leaving aside for a moment the issue of how he’d be supposed to have avoided receiving it).

To answer that question, first we need to consult the SCVO’s mission statement, which states the organisation’s purpose as “To support people to take voluntary action to help themselves and others, and to bring about social change”.

That’s perhaps a little vague, so instead let’s examine the submission the Council sent to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the subject of the independence referendum and specifically the number of questions therein, which it published in May of this year.

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We live, perhaps more than at any time in history, in a world characterised by open lies. Only this week, the coalition government was caught red-handed understating the number of school playing-field closures under its administration by 50%. A punk band in Russia singing a protest song about the President’s attacks on human rights are accused of religious hatred, in a show trial every bit as transparently corrupt as anything Stalin or Hitler would have ordered.

Meanwhile in the West, a man dedicated to exposing truth and criminal activities is wanted by the USA to put on trial for espionage. Democratically elected politicians in the “home of the free” call for him to be executed or extra-judicially assassinated as a terrorist. Conversely, the same man portrays as political persecution attempts to have him extradited to another country to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

(We’re surprised that the UK authorities don’t solve the problem at a stroke by simply getting Kenny Farquharson of the Scotsman to determine whether Assange is guilty or innocent while he’s still in the Ecuadorian embassy. After all, Kenny is apparently able to judge these things without all the tedious and time-consuming business of presenting evidence, hearing a defence and establishing or corroborating facts. So long as the accused doesn’t have access to highly-paid lawyers, of course.)

Here in Scotland things are no different. In the last week alone, two senior Unionist politicians have perpetrated enormous and deliberate lies cynically calculated to poison and undermine discourse. Ian Davidson and Willie Rennie have made inflammatory statements no intelligent human being could possibly believe to be true (we’ll pass tactfully over the issue over whether such a definition in fact includes either man), and angrily reasserted them when challenged.

There is only one purpose for actions like these. They are knowingly designed to create an intimidatory atmosphere where journalists are cowed into following the agenda desired by the culprits, and deflected from areas that said culprits don’t wish reported on. The wider intent is to control the media by recalibrating the centre ground of “impartiality”, and thereby achieve a strategic shift of coverage in their favour.

Here’s how it works.

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A reader comment earlier today sent us off to do a little research. Specifically, we were interested in the results of opinion polling before the last referendum concerning the Scottish constitution – the 1997 vote on devolution. The results were fascinating.

In the days leading up to the referendum, two polls with standard sample sizes were conducted by System 3 for the Herald. They showed very similar results, averaging 61% of respondents in favour of a Scottish Parliament (with 23% opposed and 16% don’t-knows), and 46% in favour of that Parliament having tax-raising powers (31% against, 23% don’t-knows).

The second poll was conducted the day before the referendum. The actual vote, just 24 hours later, was 74-26 for the Parliament and 64-36 for tax-raising powers – overnight swings of 7% and 9% respectively in favour of the two propositions.

(Of the 16% of Don’t Knows on the first question, when it came to the crunch 13% had plumped for Yes compared to just 3% for No. On the tax-raising question, meanwhile, the 23% previously answering as Don’t Knows had divided 17% for Yes, 6% for No.)

This site welcomes both the continued determination of the Unionist parties to bully the Scottish electorate into making a stark choice between hope and fear once again, and also their complacency about the outcome.

The Scottish media is predictably excited about Gordon Brown’s latest intervention in the independence debate. Giving a speech at the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Kirkcaldy MP who’s barely turned up in Parliament to represent his constituents in the two-and-a-quarter years since being deposed as Prime Minister abandoned any pretence at a positive case for the Union and presented a doom-laden picture of a future Scotland slashing pensions, welfare and defence while increasing taxes.

The No camp’s united policy on the Scottish constitution, in so far as one can be ascertained at all, is that the Scottish people should reject independence and then rely on Westminster to give Holyrood more powers, though the campaign steadfastly resists any clarification on what those powers might be.

But the remarkable and eye-opening thing about the former PM’s dire vision regarding pensions, welfare, defence and taxation was that it professed – despite the Scotsman’s clumsily inaccurate headline and confused and contradictory text – to describe a future Scotland not under independence, but so-called “devo-max”.

So if we take Brown as an authoritative spokesman on Scottish Labour policy – and it seems eminently reasonable to do so – we can safely assume that the only other party with even a chance of power in either Holyrood or Westminster has no intention of devolving anything substantial to Scotland any time soon. The petty tinkering of the Calman Commission/Scotland Act does indeed appear to be the limit of devolutionary ambition. And if you think about it, it’s hard to see how it could be any other way.

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We noticed the image below doing the rounds on Twitter this morning, and were mildly surprised to trace it back to the official “Better Together” campaign account. Alert readers will already have noticed us satirically characterising it (in a tweet) as a claim that all but one of Scotland’s medal-winners at London 2012 were actually English, but in fact it’s something a little bit stranger than that.

Because what the image actually says is “Hey, Scotch people! Under successive UK governments you’ve suffered such chronic underinvestment in your sporting facilities that every talented athlete in Scotland has had to travel hundreds of miles from their home, leaving their families and friends behind, in order to get adequate training!”

We’re not sure that’s quite the red-hot selling point for the Union they think it is.

What Ian Davidson MP, chair of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee assessing the independence referendum, thinks about people with financial vested interests being consulted on political matters if one of those people is Prince Charles:

“This is a scandal and an anachronism. The idea that the Prince has a right to be consulted on legislation which might impact on his interests belongs to a bygone era.” (Daily Mail, March 2012)

What Ian Davidson MP, chair of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee assessing the independence referendum, thinks about people with financial vested interests being consulted on political matters if one of those people is Ian Davidson MP:

“We have the opportunity if we wish simply to hand over our powers to the Scottish Parliament, but we choose not to do so, and what we are saying in the committee is that the Scottish MPs, and the Scottish Affairs Committee, should have the responsibility for reviewing and supervising and assessing any Section 30 notice that is proposed.” (Newsnight Scotland, August 2012)

Something’s not quite the same, but we can’t put our finger on it. Can anyone help?

There’s currently some dispute between the Scottish and UK Parliaments over who should ultimately determine the nature and details of the independence referendum currently scheduled for autumn 2014. The Scottish Government is adamant that the referendum must be run by Holyrood, the only place where a mandate for the vote exists. The Scottish Affairs Select Committee at Westminster, on the other hand, is vehemently proclaiming its own rights, as expressed by the committee’s chairman Ian Davidson MP on Newsnight Scotland earlier this week:

“We have the opportunity if we wish simply to hand over our powers to the Scottish Parliament, but we choose not to do so, and what we are saying in the committee is that the Scottish MPs, and the Scottish Affairs Committee, should have the responsibility for reviewing and supervising and assessing any Section 30 notice that is proposed.”

There are arguments to be made, constitutionally speaking, for both viewpoints. Legal experts are divided on their interpretations of relevant law, and it seems unlikely that a definitive judicial consensus could be reached without legislation being brought forward and then challenged in court, a time-consuming and expensive process which could bog the referendum down for years.

How, then, might we break the deadlock? Well, a fundamental principle of law is that the arbiters of a decision should where possible not stand to gain personally from any particular outcome of it. And as it happens, one side in this particular dispute is operating under a vested interest that’s just about as big as they get.

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