Wings Over Scotland

We spent much of yesterday evening trying to actually track down the “vicious barrage” of vile cybernat abuse that Labour and “Better Together” activist Clare Lally says she was subjected to after being revealed to be rather less of an “ordinary” member of the public than the No camp presented her as at its recent Glasgow rally, and which has received wall-to-wall media coverage.

As yet, we’ve drawn a blank. We’ve made repeated requests, some to people who’ve contacted us angrily claiming to be her friends or family members, for evidence of any abusive comments at all. All have been met with an abrupt outbreak of silence.

Scotland 2014 devoted almost its entire 30-minute show to the issue last night. To depict the terrible onslaught, the above tweets were all they could come up with. The entire affair, readers might feel, is starting to smell distinctly piscine.

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It’s been a pretty bad-tempered day in the independence debate, as the No campaign drags everything down into the mud yet again in an attempt to hide their latest shame. Let’s end it on something beautiful.

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Sorry we’ve deserted you today, readers. I’ve been dashing around the BBC Bath radio cupboard, the ITV West Country studio and BBC Broadcasting House in Bristol talking mainly about the Clare Lally business, which the No campaign is throwing everything at. You’re going to have a hard time avoiding my big stupid face on the telly tonight.

The three appearances were very different in nature. On BBC Radio Scotland I had a very civilised discussion with host John Beattie and fellow guest Hamish Macdonell (of various publications), where everyone got to say their piece without us interrupting each other, while at Broadcasting House for, I think, Scotland 2014, I got pretty aggressively grilled but in a perfectly proper and professional journalistic manner. No complaints there – pending, of course, what makes the edit.

The ITV gig for Scotland Tonight was something else.

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The New Statesman has been doggedly ignoring all our polite requests to release the audio of its controversial interview with Alistair Darling for several days now, but today it very quietly released the full text of it on its website.

Where previously it had reported the “Better Together” leader as having made an “inaudible mumble” in response to a question about whether the SNP were guilty of “blood-and-soil nationalism”, apparently the mag had given its ears a good swabbing out with a cotton-bud and concluded that it HAD been able to hear him after all.

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The Daily Record carries a story this evening about a man placing a £200,000 bet with William Hill on a No vote in the independence referendum.

“A punter is so sure of a No vote in the Independence referendum he has put a record £200,000 on the result.

The bet equalled the biggest sum wagered on politics in the UK. The revelation came yesterday from bookie William Hill, where the gambler made three hefty bets on the status quo being maintained.

The man, in his 50s, walked into a shop in Glasgow and put £30,000 on the counter, taking odds of 1/5 on a No vote. He then came back later that day and stuck on another £70,000.

And the next day he turned up with another £100,000 in cash, which he stuck on despite the odds shortening to 1/6. If Scots vote to stay in the Union he will win £36,000.”

And readers might be forgiven for finding it a bit familiar.

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This is what the media is asking you to swallow today, readers:

“If Scotland wants to be like the vast majority of NATO members and have no nuclear weapons stationed on its territory, NATO will cut off its own nose to spite its face and reject Scotland as a member, even though that would leave the strategically-crucial North Atlantic Gate (also known as the ‘GIUK Gap‘) guarded by a non-member state and one with basically no military at all.”

Right.

“Scientists who currently think Scottish universities and laboratories are the best place to research a cure for cancer will suddenly decide to use what they previously considered to be inferior facilities if Scots vote to take control of their own affairs, because as we all know, cancer-research scientists care more about Scottish politics than curing cancer.”

Uh-huh.

“Using the anniversary of D-Day as a tool to campaign for the Union, even though the men of countless independent nations besides the UK sacrificed their lives for freedom there, ISN’T a crass politicisation of the event.”

Sure. Of course.

We’ve said it before, readers, and with the heaviest of hearts we must presume that we’ll have to say it many more times in the next 100 days: they think you’re morons.

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“Great Britain” began with the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James the VI of Scotland ascended to the Throne of England and Ireland, but the “United Kingdom” didn’t come into existence until the Act of Union in 1707, which effectively dissolved the Scottish Parliament. The “British Empire” began with the Union with Scotland and, if those in support of a Yes vote have their way, it will end with Scottish independence.

But what’s any of that got to do with Barack Obama?

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This is a story in today’s Scottish Daily Express:

Now that’s what we call some rapid inflation.

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For the sake of our blood pressure we don’t normally tune in to Radio Scotland’s weekday phone-in show, but as Lallands Peat Worrier was on it today we stayed with it for a few minutes, and found ourselves getting increasingly annoyed as presenter Kaye Adams asked caller after caller if they thought Barack Obama’s comments on independence yesterday (in so far as he actually made any) had been “off the cuff”.

We knew they hadn’t been, so we rang up just to keep the record straight.

We wanted to have Obama’s awkward, halting delivery on file anyway, so this’ll do.

One of the most commonly-occurring arguments proffered by the left side of the No camp (regardless of how often it’s comprehensively debunked) is that should Scotland decide to leave the Union, it would condemn the English to perpetual Tory rule.

It’s essentially an appeal for Scotland to give up the chance of self-governance in order to mitigate someone else’s problem. But it could be even worse than that.

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There’s a considerable amount of uncertainty currently flying around on the internet with regards to Alistair Darling’s comments in an interview with the New Statesman which was published on the magazine’s website yesterday.

There seems to be no dispute that the “Better Together” leader compared Alex Salmond to dead North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, adding his name to the illustrious pantheon of assorted Unionist politicians and journalists who’ve likened Scotland’s democratically-elected First Minister to a series of genocidal murderers.

There is, however, something of a grey area around whether Mr Darling also accused the entire SNP of promoting “blood-and-soil nationalism” – an extremely offensive term normally used in reference to Nazi Germany, where it translated as “Blut und Boden”.

Well, let us clear that up for you. Yes, he did.

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