Wings Over Scotland

As we forced ourselves unwillingly through the full text of the Strathclyde Commission report in the name of professionalism this afternoon, it struck us that perhaps in our partisan haste we’d been just a tiny bit harsh on it.

After all, while the extension of tax powers is at best an empty charade and at worst an expensive millstone around the neck of the Scottish Government’s budget, and the proposals for devolving elements of welfare vague and highly unlikely to ever be implemented, there are a couple of recommendations that would, while minor in the context of Holyrood’s overall finances, at least be welcome.

Something nagged at the back of our mind, though.

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This morning’s papers are already full of reports about the contents of the Strathclyde Commission report, the Conservative counterpart to Labour’s shambolic “Devo Nano” proposals. Embarrassingly for Johann Lamont, it looks as though the Tories are going to “outbid” Labour, the self-proclaimed “party of devolution”, with what are superficially greater powers for the Scottish Parliament on taxation.

And like much of the media’s coverage of the entire independence debate, the reporting to date is an insult to the intelligence of the people of Scotland.

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We spend a lot of time on this site pulling the Scottish media up on its many and abysmal failings, so it’s only fair that when it occasionally gets something (largely) right we should offer it a little bit of praise and recognition.

And for once we’re not even being sarcastic when we say that, so let’s have a round of only slightly muted applause for this week’s Scottish Sun.

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We don’t have the faintest idea what effect (if any) the Tory-millionaire-run “Vote No Borders” campaign might be having on the general public, but for those of us analysing the referendum campaign it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Whether it’s the extremely suspicious nature of its funding, its employees airbrushing their CVs to remove any mention of ever working for it or the unashamedly blatant misinformation it’s been pumping out remorselessly over a wide range of subjects, it looks increasingly like a very expensive attempt to make “Better Together” appear moderate, reasonable and likeable by comparison.

Last night, in response to a media furore ignited by Wings Over Scotland’s revelation that it had pulled a cinema ad about the NHS after angry complaints from Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, the group finally published an extraordinary, sour and petulant official statement about the incident. As far as apologies go, we think it’s fair to say it leaves something to be desired.

It’s well worth a breakdown.

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From today’s Guardian:

“Labour cannot afford to undo the coalition’s cuts in the next government and must expect to be unpopular, one of the party’s most senior finance spokesmen will say on Friday.

Chris Leslie, the shadow chief secretary to the treasury, will say some of the spending decisions ‘will be the toughest faced by an incoming Labour government for a generation’ if Ed Miliband wins the next election.

‘We won’t be able to undo the cuts that have been felt in recent years, and I know that this will be disappointing for many people. A more limited pot of money will have to be spent on a smaller number of priorities. Lower priorities will get less.'”

And as well as being bad news for the whole UK, we already know what that means for Scotland too. Because Labour has openly said, over and over, what its plans are.

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This is an extract from a mailshot being sent out by “Better Together” this week, featuring a letter allegedly penned by “Sophie”, a 19-year-old student who – like all of the No camp’s definitely authentic grassroots real Scots of all ages who’ve written such letters for it – speaks in a manner uncannily similar to that of Alistair Darling.

(It’s how all the cool teens talk these days, don’t you know?)

Wait a minute – “walking away from membership of the EU”? We just can’t keep up.

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Yesterday the UK government put out what was even by its standards a ludicrously hyperbolic piece of scaremongering about the costs of independence, suggesting that to set up all the governmental bodies the new state would require might come with an eye-watering price tag of £2.7 billion.

Its citing of the London School of Economics made it particularly interesting to hear what Patrick Dunleavy of the LSE actually said about the figures.

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Alert followers of our Twitter feed will have learned over recent months that we have a seriously uncanny ability to influence the outcome of football matches. Need your side to grab a couple of quick goals? Just get us to tweet “Team X looks like they couldn’t score if they played till next Thursday” and get ready to watch the net bulge.

(One day we’ll reveal the size of the bribe we took from a shady consortium of wealthy Hamilton Accies fans during the SPFL playoff against Hibs on Sunday.)

And now it looks like that talent has extended itself to newspapers.

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Some considered thoughts on the evening’s events, then.

Yeah, nice work, Britain.

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Recently we’ve been documenting a bizarre attempt by the No camp to terrify Scots with the thought that in order to continue to pay for pensions and public services and whatnot, an independent Scotland would need, um, almost exactly the same amount of immigration it has now. (Particularly alert readers may even recall when we pointed out that the UK parties used to have the exact opposite viewpoint.)

And it seems our critiques have already hit home.

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Having spent the last few months pleading poverty and pitiful-underdog status, “Better Together” this week appeared to have suddenly remembered that £500,000 cheque it got ages ago from Tory oil tycoon (and friend of genocidal war criminals everywhere) Ian Taylor, and started spending some of it.

12-page colour inserts in newspapers like the Daily Record and Guardian don’t come cheap, and hundreds of thousands of Scots found themselves looking at a small booklet which didn’t identify its source until the very last page, and could have been taken by the unwary to have been a production by the newspapers themselves.

(Especially given the little pale blue “sticker” on the front using what looks very much like the Guardian’s own typeface).

But that was the least of the dishonesty in “The Facts You Need”.

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For quite some time now, and in particular since the turn of the year, this site’s been pointing out two things about polling for the 2015 UK general election.

One is that Labour’s lead has been in steady decline since 2012. The other is that the polls present a falsely optimistic picture for Ed Miliband’s party, as ultimately a significant proportion of UKIP support is likely to vote tactically, because only two people have a chance of becoming Prime Minister and only one of them is promising what UKIP supporters want above all else – a referendum on leaving the EU.

Pleasingly, on one level at least, today we were proved right.

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