Wings Over Scotland

We don’t like to write articles that are 70% adjectives, so let’s start with a disclaimer: it’s nigh-on impossible to exaggerate the naked, open contempt with which the Scottish football authorities are now treating their paying customers, so let’s just take it as read that any opinions we might offer in the following piece are understatements by a factor of around 1000 and get on with it.

Direct quotes from those who attended today’s meeting of the Scottish Football League are thin on the ground, with the main participants reluctant to be interviewed, so we’re going to have to rely on second-hand accounts from reporters outside Hampden. Seemingly, SFA chief executive Stewart Regan revealed that Charles Green’s new football company Sevco Scotland (which he intends to rename Rangers, but has not yet legally done) will not be admitted to the SPL no matter how the Premier League’s members vote at their own meeting tomorrow.

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We were struck by a thought this morning. Between them, measured by average attendances, Rangers and Celtic between them command more support than the other 40 clubs in senior Scottish football put together. They pull in somewhere over 100,000 paying customers at a time to their home games, (and could probably attract considerably more had they the stadium capacity to accommodate them), while the other 10 SPL clubs struggle to get half that many combined.

It’s a massive dominance, and obviously is particularly the case in Glasgow, where the vast bulk of Scotland’s media is located. So it’s weird that offhand we can’t think of a single print or broadcast journalist anywhere in the entire Scottish media that admits* to supporting either one of them. If every writer in the country who claimed to support Queen Of The South or Albion Rovers actually turned up to either of those sides’ games at once, they’d pack their stadia to the rafters rather than having crowds you can count on fingers and toes.

The question arose in our minds when pondering a couple of pieces in today’s papers.

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*Jonathan Edwards is the Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. This piece first appeared on his own blog, but we asked if we could reprint it to bring some of its excellent insights to a wider audience. (And also to fix the original’s impressively esoteric rendering of “paraphernalia”. We’re real spelling Nazis.)

I’ve been meaning to write this blog ever since Ed Miliband’s car-crash speech on English identity. I have also taken part in a number of BBC interviews over recent months in which it is sometimes difficult to get your point across when you have an interviewer on the other end barking at you as you challenge unionist perceptions. It also supports why Leanne Woods’ intervention this week is an important one.

When the Miliband speech was being pre-briefed I had high hopes that we were about to hear something significant – that Labour were going to proclaim that their answer to the challenge posed by the SNP’s independence drive was a federal settlement for the British state. I expected Labour to position themselves as advocates of an English Parliament as the political expression of English identity. Instead what we got was hot air, followed by one of the most painful interviews I have seen by a Unionist leader on Channel 4 News.

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We’re bored of the “debate” about a second question in the independence referendum. The facts are plain and beyond any sensible dispute:

(a) the SNP has a majority government, and therefore a legitimate democratic mandate to conduct the business of government – including the referendum – any way it wants.

(b) The party’s 2011 election manifesto promised a referendum – it did NOT, contrary to the No camp’s constant assertions, specifically promise a single-question one. (A lie the media bizarrely never challenges.)

(c) All referenda in the United Kingdom are advisory rather than legally binding, so the reservation of the constitution to Westminster under the Scotland Act is therefore irrelevant, and

(d) …is in any event over-ridden by the universal principle of self-determination enshrined in the United Nations Charter and the Declaration Of Human Rights.

So that’s that. This blog, however, neither supports a two-question referendum nor believes for a moment that there will be one. As we’ve said numerous times, Alex Salmond has manoeuvered the Unionist parties onto the ground they instinctively want to occupy anyway – that of denying the people of Scotland the right to select their preferred form of government from the full range of choices – and has neither the desire nor the intention to actually put a second question on the ballot paper, which would all but guarantee the failure of the goal for which he has worked his entire adult life.

But more than that, a two-question referendum is unacceptable no matter which side you’re on. If we’re discounting the simple and reasonable “Yes-Yes” formula of the 1999 devolution referendum – as it appears we must on the grounds of Willie Rennie’s mendacious and disingenuous “51% rule” – and insisting on either-or voting, then the only legitimate number of questions for the referendum is either one or three.

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Right then. Around 14 hours after we first saw the SFL reconstruction proposals, we’ve just about coaxed our eyebrows back down off the ceiling and cranked our jaw shut again. Without further ado, let’s take a wild and wacky journey, line by line, through the tacky Powerpoint presentation comprising the most…

• stark-raving-bonkers
• howling-at-the-moon
• loopier-than-a-box-of-Fruit-Loops-looping-the-loop-over-the-Leeds-City-Loop-Road
• lights-are-on-but-the-hamster’s-got-the-house-keys
• ten-sandwiches-and-seven-cans-of-lager-short-of-a-picnic
• madder-than-a-suitcase-full-of-weasels-in-a-tumble-drier
• wasn’t-April-Fool’s-Day-three-months-ago?
• oh-my-God-they’re-actually serious

…document ever issued in the entire long and murky history of Scottish football.

We’re going to assume you know the fundamentals already, and will therefore get straight down to the analysis. Buckle up, readers, it’s going to be bumpy.

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The BBC is reporting today that the Scottish football establishment hasn’t yet resigned itself to a reanimated zombie form of Rangers playing in Division 3 of the SFL next season. Despite half-a-dozen SPL clubs having made it clear that they won’t allow Charles Green’s new company directly back into their league, and despite it being the overwhelming wish of almost 100% of the fans of every other team in Scotland – and a large percentage of Rangers fans too, for varying reasons – that any new club start at the bottom, the craven moneymen of the SPL are still trying to find ways to get the Ibrox side back into the top division with the absolute barest minimum of delay.

It’s a mindboggling plan, and one we find it hard to attach much credibility to for a whole raft of reasons. Let’s look at just a few of them.

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Now, let’s get something straight right from the start: the headline on this feature ISN’T referring to the people pictured below. We’re sure they’re fine, lovely, good and honest Scottish folk you’d be happy having live next door to you, who just happen to disagree with us on a particular political issue. Nothing wrong with that.

But the “Better Together” campaign’s launch video appears to have gone out of its way to make them appear to be simple-witted idiots, in order to try to disguise the utter hollowness of its argument.

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Attentive readers will know that here at Wings Over Scotland we’ve been exhaustively detailing the 32-year trailer campaign for the fabled “positive case for the Union“. Well, despite our cynicism it’s finally here – the “Better Together” website, launched today, has a whole page devoted to describing the positive case (or as they’d have it, the “+ve” case, which the page URL mischievously translates to “-ve”) in detail.

Stand by to be blown away.

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Can anyone help reconcile these two facts for us?

“Seventy-one per cent of people trust the Scottish Government to act in Scotland’s best interests (up from 61 per cent in 2010), compared to just 18 per cent who trust the UK Government (down from 35 per cent in 2007).“

“The number of people prepared to support Scottish independence is falling substantially, new polling suggests. A Mori Scotland poll found just 35% said they would vote ‘yes’ to independence north of the border, compared to 55% saying ‘no’.“

It’s not a rhetorical question. We don’t get it.

After last weekend’s bizarre time-travelling “exclusive”, this weekend’s Sunday Herald has thrown up another little curiosity. A story in the lead section of the paper’s website today trumpets the latest positive argument from the Unionist camp – that mortgage rates will soar in an independent Scotland, as alleged by Danny Alexander.

The piece, penned by Tom Gordon, is headlined accordingly – “Alexander claims: yes to independence could mean mortgage rise”. What’s interesting, though, is a little piece of text that seems to have been left in by accident at the bottom of the page.

It appears to be a discarded alternative headline for the same article, given that the fourth paragraph cites “the SNP Government” dismissing Alexander’s claims as scare stories. (We did check by Googling to see if the headline had appeared on a completely different Herald piece, but turned up nothing.)

It’s quite instructive to see the paper’s thought processes laid bare. “Scottish Government Slam Scare Tactics” is a positive message from the SNP’s point of view, as it would portray them standing up against Unionist fearmongering.

The headline used instead is the complete opposite – it actually IS Unionist fearmongering, designed to produce an instinctively frightened reaction in the reader, by planting in his/her mind the image of a crippling rise in the cost of living and associating it with a Yes vote (no matter what the feature then goes on to say).

We just thought we’d point it out.

The pendulum set to determine the presence or otherwise of Sevco Rangers in next season’s Scottish Premier League, which earlier in the week appeared to be conclusively stuck on the “No” side of the clock, seems to have swung back at least partially in favour of the Ibrox club in the last 48 hours.

First of all Aberdeen chairman Stewart Milne refuted an apparent suggestion that the club were certain to vote No to Charles Green’s application for the old club’s SPL share, and now Motherwell have released a document painting a dire picture of the Fir Park side’s prospects without Rangers in the top division, going so far as to threaten the possibility of insolvency, in advance of the Well Society’s decision about their vote.

The document, compiled by the Motherwell board, does contain some balancing views (noting, for example, the possibility of a boycott by both home and away fans in the event of voting Yes, which would damage revenues in that scenario too), but seems tilted in favour of persuading the Society to accept Sevco Rangers’ application. And that’s odd, because of all the “Other 10” SPL members outside the Old Firm, Motherwell are the ones best placed to gain massively from the absence of Rangers – a fact the document surprisingly fails to explore.

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We’re losing track of all the threats and counter-threats about next season’s SPL. Let’s recap on the latest positions as far as we can discern them:

– Rangers fans are going to boycott their own home games as long as Charles Green remains in charge of the club.

– Rangers fans are also going to boycott away games if penalties are imposed on the newco’s admission to the SPL. (Which seems to be an absolute certainty if they’re admitted at all.)

– Celtic fans are going to boycott away games at any club who votes Yes to admitting the newco (which would of necessity mean at least eight of the 12 teams in the league, possibly including Celtic).

– 54% of Celtic fans are going to boycott ALL games if New Rangers are admitted to the SPL. (A further 36% will boycott Rangers games only.)

– 56% of fans of the other 10 SPL teams will also boycott ALL games in those circumstances. (A further 34% will boycott Rangers games only.)

That seems to be pretty much everyone. As far as we can tell, if Rangers are playing in the SPL next season under Charles Green, the average 2012-13 SPL attendance is going to be about 250 people. We’re not sure Sky are going to be very happy.