Alert readers will of course remember a few short weeks ago in April, when “Better Together” attracted much great hoopla in the press for its relaunched, “more positive” campaign strategy which would dazzle Scots with the feelgood benefits of the Union.
We thought it’d be worth checking in and seeing how that was going.
The UK Trident programme encompasses the development, procurement and operation of the current generation of British nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them. It was announced in July 1980 and patrols began in December 1994. Its stated purpose is to provide “the minimum effective nuclear deterrent as the ultimate means to deter the most extreme threat”.
It has also been described by former Vulcan squadron commander (the UK’s original nuclear deterrent) and current vice-president of CND, Air Commodore Alastair Mackie, as Britain’s “stick-on hairy chest”.
And yet other than “We should/shouldn’t get rid of it”, it’s rarely the subject of any serious debate or investigation. And as it’s the summer close season for politics, this seemed like a good time.
The Stevenage Advertiser, 22 July 2014:
We can’t do any better than that. Vote No, everyone. UK OK!
Readers of this site may remember the story published on the BBC earlier this week, where the figures for GDP per capita miraculously switched overnight from showing Scotland as a net contributor to the UK to implying that Scotland was a net recipient.
And after reviewing the data posted by the BBC, it appears that the export figures have also been massaged to imply that Scotland exports vastly less than it does in reality.
We just caught a documentary on the BBC News channel presented by John Beattie and entitled “The Games People Play”, which seems to have been first aired on either Saturday or Tuesday (the BBC seems somewhat uncertain). Covering the link between sport and politics, for our money it’s one of the best things the state broadcaster has produced as part of its referendum programming, and we recommend it.
One rather depressing bit leapt out at us, though.
Sir Craig Reedie CBE, from Stirling, is former chairman of the British Olympic Committee and a current member of the International Olympic Committee. And when Beattie asked him about an independent Scotland’s entry into the 2016 Olympics in Rio, he gave an answer which readers may or may not find surprising, depending on their level of cynicism about “proud Scots”.
We know you’re not really very big on boring old politics while there are still reality TV “celebrities” alive and desperately punting their “leaked” sex tapes, Scottish Sun On Sunday, but we could probably do with just a little bit more to go on than this:
Investors Chronicle (part of the Financial Times group), 25 July 2014:
(Our emphases.) We all suspected as much, of course. But the Investors Chronicle isn’t exactly a renowned fount of Scottish-nationalist propaganda – for 150 years it’s been making its living out of telling the City of London how to get richer. If you want to find out what the UK’s wealthy elite REALLY think about the North Sea’s prospects, you won’t find a much better indicator.
So if it’s telling its readers to dive in on oil companies which had a big DROP in profits last year (you know, the freak low year for oil tax receipts that the UK government just loves to use as the foundation for its theatrically gloomy analyses of an independent Scotland’s finances), it’s probably worth taking note.
Alert readers will doubtless have noticed that a post yesterday was disrupted by a series of strident and increasingly ill-tempered comments by a particular user, themed around their insistence that a central bank is a prerequisite of EU membership, and therefore Scotland wouldn’t be eligible if it was using Sterling as its currency OUTSIDE of a formal currency union with the rUK.
In fairness, that’s an assertion that quite a few people have made during the debate, and the commenter – eventually, having been repeatedly challenged for evidence to back up his claim – managed to provide a couple of examples, in the form of the New Statesman’s George Eaton and the Telegraph’s Andrew Lilico.
The problem, of course, was that those were just equally empty assertions which provided no evidence. So rather than argue the toss over interpretations of obtuse legalese, we thought we’d just go straight to the horse’s mouth, and we rang Graham Blyth, the Head of Office of the European Commission in Scotland.
Being such important people, we got straight through.
For at least a year now long-suffering newspaper readers have had to endure dire warnings from Unionist politicians about the dastardly Nats turning the Commonwealth Games into some sort of evil referendum propaganda campaign. (It was, of course, absolutely fine to continually invoke the “Olympic spirit” in 2012 and beyond as a reason Scots should vote to stay in the UK. That’s totally different.)
Today’s UK edition of the Daily Mail (on the left above, and somewhat different to the Scottish edition on the right) carries a story that appears in several papers about the opening ceremony, in which it transpires that the Red Arrows were forbidden by the Ministry of Defence from creating only blue-and-white vapour trails over Celtic Park.
But even after just one day, it’s far from the only example of the No campaign’s politicisation of the Friendly Games.
Can be seen in today’s Scotsman – ironically in a comment located below a story headlined “Independence: Salmond pledges politics-free Games”.
Below it is a torrent of anti-SNP abuse, including the suggestion that Alex Salmond should be dropped out of a helicopter without a parachute. We’re sure, of course, that the No campaign will rush to condemn these remarks by another of Blair McDougall’s Brit Boys, and that the media – which scours the most obscure websites and Twitter accounts for comments to whip up a “cybernats” storm about – will have a double-page spread on it tomorrow.
Yesterday a number of news outlets including the Scotsman, the Courier and STV all carried a scare story from Gordon Brown about independence ending cross-border organ transplants. Curiously, none of them had thought to check the allegation with NHS Blood & Transplant, so we did it for them, and got the unequivocal and unambiguous answer back that “Scottish independence will not affect organ donation and the system will continue as it does currently.”
You’d imagine that the publications concerned would have wanted to put their readers’ minds at rest by publishing that categorical reasssurance today, wouldn’t you?
You know how the rest goes by now, readers.
We telephoned Organ Donation Scotland on Friday for their reaction to the despicable scare stories being put around by a teenage Labour activist from Liverpool bussed up to Scotland last week by the No campaign.
We’re still waiting for them to get back to us with a quote. But in the meantime, it’s been predictable – but no less disgraceful – to see senior Labour figures repeating the lie. It all seems to be part of a major Unionist offensive on health, doubtless sparked by fears that privatisation of the English NHS will lead to a significant reduction in the Scottish block grant and corresponding damage to the Scottish health service.
The No camp, unsurprisingly, has chosen to fight fear with fear.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
