Wings Over Scotland

We’ve got a lot to do tonight, readers, so this is just a quick passing thought. We’re constantly told, among the endlessly contradictory stories about oil, that the biggest problem with it is that it’s running out. Production is declining, they say, and what’s left is harder and more expensive to get to and might not be worth all the bother.

We can’t be independent, then, because while we might be fine for 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years, after that we’ll be knackered and bankrupt. (Which assumes we don’t find any more oil west of Shetland, or in the Clyde Basin, and that we’re too incompetent to build a lucrative renewables sector in four decades, and that we weren’t able to budget for an oil fund. But let’s go with it for now.)

There’s one question nobody asks, though.

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The Scottish Conservatives have put out a properly disgraceful press release today:

“Thousands at risk if cross-border NHS agreement ends

A patient from Scotland receives care from an English hospital every half an hour, research by the Scottish Conservatives has revealed. 

Last year, nearly 20,000 people received elective, day-case and outpatient procedures or appointments thanks to the NHS south of the border, working out at around 54 a day.

Those arrangements would be at risk should Scotland vote to break away from the rest of the UK in September.”

No they wouldn’t. That’s a complete and utter lie.

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From the Scotsman today:

“Without the offshore tax revenues, an independent Scotland’s public finances would be in a far worse state than are the UK’s. The better the argument that these revenues will carry on flowing, the more credible is the Yes campaign.”

Firstly, of course, the assertion fundamentally isn’t true. We know from official figures that an independent Scotland even WITHOUT oil would have a GVA of 99% of the UK average, and an independent Scotland wouldn’t have to follow UK spending plans, like blowing public cash on a vastly inflated military. But that’s not even the point.

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A story from Reuters tonight:

“A majority of FTSE 100 chairmen oppose Scottish independence as they fear splitting up would be bad for British business and dilute the UK’s economic influence”

Ooft. How big is this majority of the chairmen of the 100 leading companies, then?

“The poll by executive search firm Korn Ferry found 65 percent of chairmen of 32 FTSE 100 companies said it would be bad for business if – “

Woah there! 65% of 32? Isn’t that, um, 21? That’s not really a “majority” of 100, is it? And while we’re here, how many of the chairmen of FTSE 100 companies have a vote in the Scottish independence referendum anyway? We have a strong suspicion that the effective sample in this survey might actually have been zero.

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By an old pal of ours.

Let’s just walk through that one for a moment.

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A remarkable insight into how Scottish Labour MPs see the people of Scotland, and the future that awaits us after a No vote, from an article posted on Labour Uncut today:

“Uncut recently put the point to a Scottish member of the [Parliamentary Labour Party] that while it is hard to imagine Scotland voting for an uncertain future outside the EU, keeping the UK together by playing on these fears risks perpetuating Scottish grievance against the English. They were unrepentant.

‘They need to be told. It’s like a child saying they want to play in the rain. They can do if they want but they need to know that they’ll get wet.'”

Hear that, people of Scotland? For even considering taking control of your own affairs like adults, Scottish Labour (ironically) thinks you’re behaving like stupid kids too dumb to come in out of the rain. Mm, feel the respect from your representatives.

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We’ve written often about the contempt with which both the No campaign and the media regards voters, particularly in respect of their willingness to tell them even the most insultingly transparent lies in the assumption they’ll be swallowed anyway.

Allan Massie in today’s Telegraph may have set a new all-time record, though.

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A Radio 4 “Point Of View” programme by the writer and philosopher Roger Scruton on Friday evening attracted quite a lot of social-media ire from nationalists. We can only assume they were so angered by a few crass factual errors (“The Scottish economy is subsidised by the English”) and Dr Scruton’s rather patrician manner that they didn’t bother to listen all the way to the end.

“Suppose then we English were finally allowed a say in the matter, which way would I vote? I have no doubt about it. I would vote for English independence, as a step towards strengthening the friendship between our countries.

It was thanks to independence that the Americans were able at last to confess to their attachment to the old country, and to come to our aid in two world wars. Independence is what real friendship requires. And the same is true for those, like the Scots and the English, who live side by side.”

We can’t say we find anything there to disagree with. After some of the cross-border ugliness and bad feeling that’s been whipped up by the actions of Unionists lately, the only outcome of the referendum that will allow the people of Scotland and England to regard each other with dignity and mutual respect in the future is a Yes vote. Crawling pathetically back to London with our tail between our legs won’t do it.

To save time, just take everything we said last week and repeat.

Perhaps the most telling thing, though, about this week’s edition of what now appears to be the BBC’s official late-night No-campaign propaganda slot is that Iain Martin used to be the editor of the Scotsman. Readers can draw their own conclusions.

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SATIRE:

REALITY:

At least, we THINK we’ve got those the right way round.

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It takes a startling amount of arrogance to try and impose your morality on someone else. We no longer send our privileged white men to the dusty, dirty parts of the globe to educate the natives, to show them how to speak and eat and dress and worship. British toffs don’t hack their way through jungles any more, subduing spear-wielding tribes with Browning machine-guns and renaming their rivers after tubby queens.

The map is no longer Empire pink, and the British zeal for moral crusades has largely faded with it. But in the Telegraph yesterday, the charming David Cameron took us on a nostalgic trip back to glorious, Union-Jack-fluttering Victoriana.

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