Here’s our old pal John McTernan, angrily condemning Labour’s shadow Chancellor John McDonnell quoting Chairman Mao to make a point in the Commons yesterday:
And for once he’s right. What sort of vile cretin would go around quoting Mao?
For over two years now, this site has been warning that the UK government will take the earliest opportunity it thinks it can possibly get away with to abolish the Barnett Formula, the funding mechanism which the No campaign sold as the biggest benefit of Scotland remaining in the Union.
The Formula is hated almost everywhere else in the UK, by both politicians and the English (especially) public, who see it as an over-generous subsidy to the scrounging Jocks, and with the threat of independence theoretically removed after the referendum there’s very little protecting it.
Neither Labour nor the Tories – with just one Scottish MP each – would have much to lose politically from reducing Scottish funding by billions of pounds they could use to bribe swing voters in England instead. Barnett’s partial survival was the only solid commitment made in The Vow, but it’s set to be slashed by the Scotland Bill, and the smaller it gets the less resistance there will be to its total removal.
This week the House Of Lords made lots of headlines by highlighting the shambolic, half-baked state of the Bill, which hasn’t yet come up with a “fiscal framework” to replace the bulk of Barnett. But make no mistake – the Lords want it gone just as much as everyone else does.
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
We’ve been pondering this week whether or not to hold a quick fundraiser to pay the £750 fine levied on us recently by the Electoral Commission for being a bit late with some indyref paperwork, readers.
(Our feeling is that there’s still plenty money left in the Wings War Chest from this year’s big crowdfunder, but lots of people have specifically asked for one for the fine, mainly to make a point to both the Commission and the little army of Unionist trolls who almost exploded with glee when the news came out late last month.)
But we’re not sure we can compete with this.
The Unionist media has leapt on former SNP adviser Alex Bell’s blog post about the economic case for independence this week like a starving dog thrown a sausage.
It’s been wringing articles out of it for days, the latest being Torcuil Crichton’s column in today’s Daily Record, in which the unembarrassable hack (last seen trumpeting an entirely imaginary £20bn increase in Holyrood’s budget from the Smith Commission proposals) rather audaciously takes someone else to task over an economic “lie”.
Bell’s article is such self-evidently weak sauce that we haven’t bothered with it until now. But as it seems clear that the papers are going to talk about nothing else for the forseeable future, we may as well point out the obvious.
Of course, that particular problem is easily solved. All the SNP needs to do is decide NOT to offer an alternative, at which point one will magically be created out of thin air.
One of the stranger criticisms regularly levelled at this site is that we don’t attack the SNP/Scottish Government enough.
That’s weird firstly because it’s not like there’s currently a shortage of hostile media scrutiny of Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues, and secondly because we’ve never in our four-year life claimed for a moment to be neutral.
But the reality is far more nuanced than that.
Below is an article taken from the UK media today about the Scotland Bill.
Give it a read through, and pay attention. There’ll be a very short quiz at the end.
Scottish Labour were unambiguous: VOW DELIVERED IN FULL!
And who could disagree?
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
