Wings Over Scotland

Tony Benn, who died today at the age of 88, was an archetypal British nationalist. He wanted Britain out of the EU, but opposed Scottish independence on the grounds that it would turn his mother into a “foreigner”.

Nevertheless, even to a lot of people on the Yes side he represented, in the words of pro-independence New Statesman columnist James Maxwell this morning, “a Britain I could’ve voted for”. (NB Retweets are not necessarily endorsements.)

A man who went to court to fight against his own personal privilege, Benn was an anachronism in a country full of politicians who spend much of their time battling to protect their access to the great trough of public money on the banks of the Thames.

So it’s no surprise that his passing has unleashed a tidal wave of hypocrisy.

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We’ve talked a bit today about a fascinating poll by Survation for the Daily Mail last month, whose findings got very little coverage in the media, perhaps because they revealed the rather off-message fact of how ineffectual two of the No campaign’s three great pillars of propaganda have been proving.

But there was another interesting snippet in the results, which could confound the flurry of recent polls all showing the SNP with a commanding lead for the 2016 Holyrood election, regardless of whether it’s for an independent Scottish Parliament or a devolved one.

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Below is a spread from Aberdeen newspaper the Evening Express tonight, reporting the findings of a poll about the conduct of the city’s council in recent weeks, covering incidents like the Labour/Tory administration’s mind-boggling attempts to ban Scottish Government ministers from all council-owned property and the controversy over a letter sent out with council tax bills which urged people to vote No.

If you click the image you can read the detailed results. And our more alert readers might come to the conclusion that there’s something odd about the paper’s summary.

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To an alert Wings reader who contacted them last month. Emphasis ours.

“Dear [redacted]

Thank you for your email of 27 February 2014.

We are disappointed that our statement has caused you concern.

To clarify our position, Standard Life currently has no plans to relocate or transfer parts of our operations out of Scotland. What we have announced are precautionary measures to ensure we can provide continuity and protect the interests of our customers, wherever they live in the UK (and around the world), in the event of Scotland becoming independent.

We have no desire to move any aspect of our operations unless absolutely necessary. We have been based in Scotland for 189 years. We are proud of our Scottish heritage and believe that Scotland is a good place from which to run our business and compete around the world. We very much hope this can continue.

Standard Life is strictly non-political and will not seek to influence people on how they should vote. However, we have a duty and a responsibility to understand the implications of independence for our four million UK customers, our shareholders, our people and other stakeholders in our business. We will take whatever action is necessary to protect their interests.

Yours sincerely 

Gerry Grimstone
Chairman”

It’s not quite how the media’s painting it, it is?

We don’t mind telling you, folks, we’re struggling on this one.

“If Scotland was independent today we would have no option but to cut spending on services like schools and hospitals or put up taxes – or probably both. Today as part of the UK we don’t have to do that.” (Alistair Darling)

But… don’t…

“Whatever the Scottish government says now, the government of an independent Scotland would be forced to raise taxes and cut public services. We are better off together.” (Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury)

Aren’t… haven’t you…

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A couple of interesting passages from Hansard in January 2012:

“The Government’s decision in March 2011 to increase tax rates on the industry, which increased the top tax rate to 81% and the corporation tax rate to 62%, is inevitably and regrettably having a chilling effect on the leading indicators of investment.

The signs of lower investment in the future are already apparent. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will see from the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s latest energy trends analysis a significant impact on drilling activity, with exploration wells down 50% in 2011.

It is from that exploration drilling that the future large capital investments will flow. The March 2011 tax increase reduced the value of future projects by 25% overnight.“

(Our emphasis.) The words of some dastardly separatist panicking about the value of Scottish oil? Not so much. The lines quoted above were addressed to Parliament by the Rt. Hon. Nicholas Soames, Conservative MP for Mid Sussex.

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We don’t say it very often, readers, but as a civilised human being with even the merest glimmer of empathy it’s hard not to feel sorry for “Better Together” sometimes. It must be absolute agony for them today, trying to talk about the slightly disappointing GERS figures without screaming “TOO WEE! TOO POOR! TOO STUPID!” at the tops of their voices, which is what they want to do so much they must be able to taste it.

Instead of naked glee, they must do their best to fake concern, and not appear too joyful to be reporting bad news for what they insist is (proudly, of course) their nation. We don’t envy them in having to maintain two faces and lie about their true feelings, no matter how practiced at it they are. The constant vigilance must be incredibly wearing, because dishonesty is exhausting.

The only way to never be caught out, after all, is to never have to remember which lies you told yesterday and to whom. So as always, we’re just going to give you the truth.

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We’ve just watched three hours of the Education and Culture Committee at Holyrood discussing the report on media bias by Professor John Robertson of the University of the West of Scotland, which featured the good professor himself and senior BBC Scotland executives including Ken McQuarrie and John Boothman.

The contrast between Prof. Robertson’s absolute frankness and candour – openly discussing his political views and his mild autism – and the BBC men’s evasion and obfuscation was quite something to behold. We’ll have some analysis this week.

One finding of Prof. Robertson’s report was that the anti-independence media (or for short, “the media”) had a strong tendency to personalise the Yes debate in the form of Alex Salmond, and a piece in today’s Scotsman provides us with a handy illustration.

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This sort of thing just won’t do at all, STV.

Because that closing comment isn’t true, is it?

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We seem to have hit a bit of a lull in the independence debate. Even the papers look to be just a touch bored of recycling the same “Project Fear” scare stories for the 14th or 15th time, and it’s hard to keep track of all the identikit “warnings” from various corporations that don’t actually amount to anything more than “if things change we’ll keep an eye on them”, or in other words the bleeding obvious.

Enjoy the calm while it lasts, though, because in 11 days time the phony war is over.

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It’s Monday, so it must be time for Gordon Brown to lumber into the independence debate again. The man who was the least popular Prime Minister of the last 50 years magically transforms into a respected elder statesman when the British left is desperately trying to lend some progressive gravitas to the floundering No campaign in the wake of a series of ill-judged right-wing interventions from Tory ministers and millionaire business tycoons.

So we suppose we’re obliged to spend at least a couple of minutes examining the latest pronouncements of the man who so famously ended boom and bust.

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We’ve commented before on the odd way that newspapers can reveal their bias in the way they phrase their reporting, rather than in the actual content of it, which can be entirely factually accurate. As we noted, a particular giveaway is the angle from which they view statistics, and especially opinion polls.

A poll showing 35% of people backing independence will almost always be reported as “ONLY a third back Yes”, whereas one with the exact same numbers for a different question might be presented as “OVER a third distrust Alex Salmond”. The proportion “one third” is in such a manner portrayed as being both a small and a large one, to suit whatever position the publication wishes to promote.

It’s in such a context that we invite readers to ponder today’s Mail On Sunday.

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