Wings Over Scotland

The week-long media frenzy that would have surrounded the Scottish Government releasing a key set of figures about independence, only to have them immediately and pointedly disowned by their cited sources as gross distortions misrepresenting the reality by a factor of 12, doesn’t bear thinking about.

(Remind yourself of the 10 desperate days they dragged out of some spectacularly innocuous comments about Vladimir Putin and multiply that by about a thousand.)

The one-sided national embarrassment that is the Scottish media, however, has done its level best to completely bury the wholly-justified anger of Professors Patrick Dunleavy of the LSE and Robert Young of Western Ontario University.

Neither of the country’s current-affairs TV shows gave the matter more than the most cursory passing mention, nor did most of its newspapers. You’ll search in vain for a story about it in the Guardian, and the Scotsman actually managed to hide its two paragraphs of coverage deep inside pieces attacking the SNP.

A promised interview with Professor Dunleavy on “Good Morning Scotland” never materialised, but the distinguished academic DID eventually surface on Wednesday’s edition of “Newsdrive”. If you click the image above you can listen to the seven-minute slot in its entirety, and wonder just how outrageously the defenders of the Union would have to act to make the front pages of a Scottish newspaper.

This is a lengthy piece of audio at 64 minutes, but we recommend it highly.

The man speaking is Neil Walsh, who’s the Pensions Officer of the Prospect trade union (scientists, engineers, professionals). The recording is of a conference call that he conducted for the union’s members this week dealing with the ramifications of independence for, funnily enough, pensions.

Prospect is a UK-wide union with a position of complete neutrality on the referendum, and no sides are taken. All you’ll hear is an Irishman with no dog in the indyref fight calmly and rationally assessing the issues from the perspective of his 140,000 members and their interests.

It may be the sanest and most reasonable thing you hear in the entire independence debate. If you’re worried about your pension, or you know someone who is, you need to listen to it, and the sooner the better.

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BBC Northern Ireland website, 2 May 2014:

“Former NI First Minister Lord Trimble has said the biggest threat to peace in Northern Ireland would be if Scotland were to vote for independence.”

Lord Trimble on “Good Morning Scotland”, 3 May 2014 (31m 30s):

“I want to correct what you said… [the website] reported me as saying that would threaten the peace process. I did not say that, that is not my view.

Actually, a Yes vote in Scotland would reinforce the argument against violence, because it’s a demonstration of how you can achieve major change through the political democratic process.”

Whoops, eh? Oddly, while the original story is still on the BBC NI website, we can’t seem to find one reporting the correction anywhere, even though Lord Trimble spoke to GMS more than eight hours ago. We’re sure it’ll be along any minute now.

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The transcript below is taken from a public meeting hosted by the Scottish Office at Murrayfield in Edinburgh last Thursday (24 April), featuring Alistair Carmichael.

You can listen for yourself by clicking the above image.

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This clip comes from yesterday’s “Good Morning Scotland”, around 2h 35m in.

It features Professor Paul Collier, who is apparently the Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and therefore an obvious choice for the BBC as a go-to guy on the subject of Scottish politics.

We think you’ll find it a stimulating and thought-provoking opinion.

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There’s a wonderful opening paragraph in today’s Courier that we’ll quote in full:

“The UK’S Energy Secretary has accused the SNP of employing ‘negative politics of fear and bullying’ as he warned bills could rocket by as much as £189 a year in the event of independence.”

That virtuoso display of Olympic-class irony from Mr Davey was part of the latest fearbomb from the No camp – Nick Clegg’s plea for a “Sunshine Strategy” apparently having been a casualty of Lord Robertson’s “cataclysm” – in the shape of yet another “Scotland Analysis” report from the UK government insisting that every single aspect of Scottish independence would be comprehensively and unequivocally disastrous.

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Major kudos to the hyper-alert reader who covertly recorded the Q&A session after last night’s event in Glasgow where Alistair Darling was interviewed by James Naughtie.

Obviously it’s not exactly broadcast-quality, but it’s perfectly audible for all but the occasional couple of seconds. We were going to catalogue all the flat-out lies Mr Darling told in the 51 minutes, but frankly the “Better Together” chairman was on autopilot and you’ve heard all the untruths – and their respective debunkings – a dozen times before on this site alone.

So while we see if we can summon up the mental stamina to wade through them all yet again, just watch and see how many you can spot for yourselves.

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Still no sign of any video despite repeated requests, but we’ve finally managed to lay our hands on an audio recording of Alex Salmond’s New Statesman lecture in London last week, including the audience question-and-answer session afterwards.

(The main speech ends at 36m, if you’ve already read it and want to get to the Q&A.)

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If you missed it live, here’s the audio recording of the debate held at the Volunteer Rooms in Irvine on Friday. (The event wasn’t video-recorded, despite Clan Destiny Films having a high-quality camera team there, because the Labour MP for Central Ayrshire, Brian Donohoe, refused to give his permission.)

Click the image for the two-hour MP3 file.

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Here’s we’re-not-actually-sure-what-he-is Bob Mills earlier this evening on Radio 4’s News Quiz, hosted by Sandi Toksvig with a very quiet Fred MacAuley twisting his tartan bunnet in the corner and hoping for a pat on the head.

Whatever will they do for laughs without us?

Commentator and writer Lesley Riddoch (whose acclaimed recent book Blossom is a comically absurd bargain at £1.09 on Kindle this month) asked earlier this afternoon for her appearance on today’s Good Morning Scotland along with English journalist David Aaronovitch to be put online, and we’re happy to oblige.

Readers unusually sensitive to condescending, patronising metropolitan hacks talking down to far better-informed debating opponents, and who have any easily-breakable items nearby, are advised not to listen. We were chewing our knuckles all the way through recording it, and it wasn’t even us he was doing it to.

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There was much hilarity on BBC Radio Scotland’s “Headlines” this morning (from 39m), as the studio guests discussed right-wing Scottish Labour MP Jim Murphy’s Daily Mail-assisted attempts this week to silence dastardly so-called “cybernats” by preventing them from attending debates or appearing on TV.

But an alert Wings reader had already noticed that Mr Murphy isn’t exactly new to the notion of attempting to muzzle those whose opinions are not at one with his own.

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