Wings Over Scotland

This isn’t a spoof. We checked.

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One of the most enlightening aspects of doing this website has been seeing how the nation’s elected representatives behave towards the people they ostensibly represent.

We’ve been collating the responses from various Unionist MPs, MSPs and assorted others to these questions we raised recently and the standard has varied wildly, from serious and considered to petulant and juvenile. (Many more, of course, simply haven’t bothered to respond to their constituents’ queries at all.)

But the most disturbing yet is the one below.

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The Telegraph, 10 August 2014:

“Policy Exchange, a think tank with close links to the Conservative Party, will later this month publish a report calling for the government’s £26,000 benefits cap to be lowered outside London to reflect the lower cost of living.

Any enterprise as crass, witless and poorly-thought-out as Dan Snow’s “Let’s Stay Together” campaign – funded by the same man who gives millions to murderous war criminals and populated by a curious mix of billionaire Tories, Sirs, Lords, Baronesses and Z-list nobodies – will always create all manner of hostages to fortune.

We’ve already mentioned David Starkey, who felt able to pledge his love to Scotland despite having previously called it a “feeble little country” obsessed with the “deeply boring provincial poet Burns” and “the awful bagpipe”. The “celebrity” list also featured Ross Kemp (who previously likened Glasgow to a third-world warzone) and the deeply unpleasant right-wing columnist Rod Liddle, who opined in 2010 that:

“The only reason any people remain in Scotland is on account of the extremely cheap alcohol available in supermarkets, plus a ready supply of heroin for when the alcohol runs out.”

And then there was “hard man” actor and bookies’ shill Ray Winstone.

Quite a few people picked up on Winstone’s appearance last year as the guest host of “Have I Got News For You”, in which he trotted out a list of tired stereotypes and suggested Scotland should “bugger off”. But as we noted at the time, HIGNFY is a comedy show produced by public schoolboys for whom patronising the “Jocks” is second nature and not worth getting worked up about.

What bothers us a little more is Ray’s view on the country he wants Scots to stay in.

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I watched your STV debate with Alex Salmond on Tuesday night with interest. As the debate progressed I began to realise that your task would be so much easier if you simply put forward reasons why the United Kingdom, in its present form, is a positive force that serves the Scottish people and satisfies their aspirations.

I’ve no doubt that you’d also prefer to put forward a positive case instead of having to constantly attack the idea of independence and use negativity, uncertainty and personal attacks to achieve your aims. So why are you doing this?

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In a blur of media excitement this week about such stellar household names as Haydn Gwynne, Maggi Hambling, John Illsley, William Dalrymple, James Timpson, Amanda Foreman, Andy Puddicombe, David Rowntree, Bill Morris, David Goodhart, William Boyd, Tracy Brabin, Paul Cartledge, Glen Baxter and Andy Barrow* all telling Scots to vote No because they love us, an even more thrilling endorsement for the Union was largely overlooked – that of Dana Rohrabacher.

What do you mean, who?

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We can’t really avoid mentioning the big list of “celebrities” for No assembled today by the cuddly, fluffy, funded-by-Tory-donor-oil-tycoon-linked-to-genocidal-murderers “Let’s Stay Together” campaign to lovebomb Scottish voters, summed up perfectly by an alert reader on Twitter as “a veritable Who’s That? of the British establishment”.

One of the people we HAD heard of on the list was the, er, noted historian Dr David Starkey. Dr Starkey was keen to lend his name to the letter telling Scots that “we want to let you know how very much we value our bonds of citizenship with you”.

He didn’t always feel quite so warmly towards Scotland, though.

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Private Eye editor Ian Hislop hasn’t made much of a secret of his opposition to Scottish independence. The satirical and investigative magazine, which is normally so razor-sharp on all the failings and hypocrisies of politicians and the media, has been remarkably silent on the subject of the referendum for the past few years, which one might have thought would have given it enough material to go weekly.

So in that context of that self-imposed censorship, the BBC’s coverage of last month’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow must have been really quite something.

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As so insightfully predicted by Lallands Peat Worrier yesterday, the media has raced to proclaim victory for Alistair Darling in tonight’s STV debate. For our money, the only winners were the people who watched something else.

The debate was a mess – not quite as shambolic as Nicola Sturgeon and Johann Lamont’s effort on the same channel a few months back, but none of the lessons from that trainwreck were learned. Darling was angry and personal from the start, while Salmond was off-form and the strategy he adopted for dealing with the only subject Darling wanted to talk about – currency – was absolutely dreadful.

We warned back in February that Yes couldn’t just keep flatly saying “There will be a currency union” for seven months, even if it’s true, and the studio audience was deeply and audibly unimpressed with Salmond’s evasion of Darling’s repeated question, even if the tactic got old and tired when the No man was still using it an hour later.

But we’re not going to get into too much spin, because our view is partisan. The main evidence used for the hasty declarations of a “triumph” for Darling was a snap poll conducted immediately afterwards by ICM for the Guardian. But on even a cursory examination, the poll actually found the opposite of what the media said it did.

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So everyone will believe THAT’s definitely going to happen, then.

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Ralph Topping, CEO of William Hill, in the Financial Times, 4 August 2014:

“I have spent the past six years as chief executive of a company whose 17,000 employees work in Scotland, elsewhere in the UK and throughout the world. Businesses are accustomed to dealing with different tax systems and employment regulations in the countries in which they operate. This rarely causes real difficulties.

And they know that national governments tend to collaborate where there is a mutual economic interest – indeed, they expect nothing less.”

Those voices of common sense just keep mounting up, don’t they?

Chris Huhne in the Observer, 3 August 2014:

“If Scotland goes, it will be in everyone’s interest to have a ‘velvet divorce’, as the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia was described. A nasty and messy separation would damage both sides. London will want early certainty, and for Scotland to be an EU member alongside the rest of the UK.

The result on 18 September may rewrite history, but not geography. We will all still share the same island. Their mess will be ours, both sides of the border. So we will all have an interest not to make a mess.”

Isn’t it weird how an MP has to be “disgraced” before they can tell the truth?