Wings Over Scotland

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.

Read the rest of this entry →

For independence supporters of a certain age, the 1979 devolution referendum is one of the most infamous moments in Scottish history. While a wafer-thin majority of Scots voted Yes to devolution, an electoral fiddle conceived by a Labour MP meant that it didn’t happen, and part of the reason was that in effect, dead people were counted as No votes.

(We won’t go into all the details here, but basically an impossible threshold was set for turnout, and people who’d died but hadn’t yet been removed from the electoral roll were counted towards the calculation of that threshold.)

We were put in mind of it by an odd development this evening.

Read the rest of this entry →

After the implosion of Rory Stewart MP’s “Hands Across The Border” initiative (to be replaced by “Make A Big Pile Of Rocks For The Union”, which we’re sure will be a roaring success, despite being currently £52,500 short of its fundraising target), we comforted ourselves that there was still to be a big lovebombing exercise between Scotland and England this month, in the form of the Border Union Rally.

Tragically, it seems as though some “unforeseen technical problems” have struck the event – although we’re not absolutely sure how you can have technical problems with going for a walk – and it too has had to be cancelled.

The website has vanished, so the precise details of these insurmountable logistical obstacles aren’t as yet forthcoming. (We’re finding it hard to shake the terribly cynical suspicion that they’re related to the difficulty of calling something a “rally” if there are only three people at it.) But we’ll bring you more news as we get it.

Go and read this. It’s an electric piece of polemic on Bella Caledonia by the respected Scottish playwright Peter Arnott, and it’s the best distillation we’ve ever read of one of the key principles of the referendum debate.

The myth that a No vote is a vote to keep things the way they are is one of the most powerful and dangerous weapons wielded by the anti-independence campaign. The reality is far worse, for all sorts of reasons.

Some are cold hard facts: the financial trap waiting for the Scottish Government in the form of “more powers” that aren’t powers at all, but huge burdens which will cripple the Scottish budget. But what Arnott’s piece outlines is something much more insidious.

Read the rest of this entry →

Kerry Gill in the Scottish Daily Express, 17 July 2014:

“Two months to go until the referendum, but acrimony will last for years

There are just two calendar months to go before we go to the ballot box to decide whether we prefer Scotland to remain within the proven safety of the United Kingdom, or take a chance on Alex Salmond’s distintegrating case for separation.

The Yes Scotland campaign – comprised largely of SNP members and sympathisers, aided by a ragbag of Green nationalists, a small number of disaffected Labour voters and rather more anti-English bigots than anyone cares to admit – is in trouble.

On September 19, whatever the result may be, we will all have to try to get along together, but it will be difficult, no matter the good intentions.”

Our emphasis. It sure is a mystery where this “acrimony” is coming from, eh readers? Perhaps, if we all have to get along together after the referendum, it might possibly be better not to engage in furious, unhinged rants where you call your opponents a bunch of racist bigots. Just a thought, like.

Alert readers might be thinking that headline sounds vaguely familiar and they’d be right, because we published a post two months ago with a similar title, highlighting the curiously inverse relationship between media scare stories about alleged abuse in the referendum campaign for which there’s no evidence whatsoever and actual abuse that really happened.

We were put in mind of it this week, after the Daily Record ran a particularly barrel-scraping “vile cybernats” piece about how a Labour activist from England got a little bit of extremely mild stick on Twitter after announcing he was on his way to Scotland to stick his nose in the independence debate, and how he WORRIED that he might meet a hostile reception at the railway station (although of course, and happily, he didn’t).

“Better Together” campaign leaders Blair McDougall and Alistair Darling constantly demand that the Yes campaign, and Alex Salmond in particular, takes responsibility for and action against random online nutters behaving in abusive or threatening ways, even when those people have no discernible connection to Yes Scotland or the SNP.

But they’re less keen on putting their own house in order.

Read the rest of this entry →

Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson, bless her wee heart, is banging once again in today’s Scottish Sun on the drum she’s made her own personal pet issue of the referendum campaign – the BBC.

The Tory chief – who likes to bash the public sector but has spent almost her entire life funded by the taxpayer, first as a Beeb employee, then as a student at a Scottish university and now as an MSP – notes that viewers in Ireland pay £5.50 a month to access the iPlayer, and that the same fate might befall an independent Scotland.

It sounds a reasonable argument, but like so many of the No camp’s assertions it unfortunately falls to pieces under the pressure of reality.

Read the rest of this entry →

The media and the No camp, in so far as those are two different things, got incredibly excited today about some comments made by new European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in which he said that the EU wouldn’t undergo any further enlargement for the next five years.

“Juncker deals blow to Alex Salmond’s EU claims” (Telegraph)

“Independence: Juncker deals blow to Scots EU plans” (Scotsman)

“Alex Salmond’s dream of staying in the EU dealt a blow by new President of the European Commission” (Daily Record)

“Blow for SNP as Junker [sic] rules out EU expansion” (Express)

“Unionists hail Juncker ‘hammer blow’ to Scotland’s EU place” (Financial Times)

“Better Together said the president’s comments make it clear that a Yes vote in the referendum would also be a vote to leave the EU.” (Herald)

So far so mundane. And then something odd, but welcome, happened.

Read the rest of this entry →

A post appeared on the news-and-discussion site Reddit Scotland last night. We’ve reproduced it in full below, because it seems like something people should know.

Read the rest of this entry →

Below is a clip from the short report on social media in the independence referendum that appeared on tonight’s STV News, and will apparently also air on Scotland Tonight. (You can see the whole thing here.)

Like every other media report of our article about Alex Johnstone MSP, it omits the bit where we explained WHY we called him some rude names, but in this case we’re happy to accept that that was for reasons of time.

The more interesting bit is Johnstone’s own comments, because the MSP’s reaction is a breathtaking piece of hypocritical dishonesty that seems to us to be entirely in keeping with the character of the man.

Read the rest of this entry →