Peter Arnott in The Global Dispatches, 29 January 2014:
And that, readers, is why it matters that I live in England.
We do hope none of these shock troops get caught up and hurt in the lovebombing.
Scottish independence: Cable warns of VAT on food
Caroline Flint warns that independence would mean £875 on energy bills
Warning of risk to transport links after Yes vote
No camp in grocery price rise claims (NB unrelated to VAT)
RBS would move to London if Scotland breaks away
That’s all just today. Anyone sound frightened to you?
Here’s the Herald today on YouGov’s latest independence polling:
All absolutely true. But is it the whole truth?
Yesterday, a wealthy American man who as far as we know won’t have a vote in the referendum expressed a personal opinion about independence which made the front page of half of Scotland and Britain’s newspapers, was trumpeted all over the TV and radio, and got “Better Together” very excited.
This morning some idiot based in Luxembourg honked about it on BBC Breakfast news, throwing in his own clueless and ill-informed (and of course, unchallenged) view. We’re having some difficulty working out why we’re supposed to care about either man’s position, or why they were given lots of free airtime to espouse them.
On the eve of Wings Over Scotland’s 2000th post, we thought we’d celebrate.
Because today we learned something strange.
It seems that today marked the official start of the much-vaunted “lovebombing” campaign aimed at persuading Scots to stay in the UK by showing them how much they’re loved by the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The opening salvo did some unfortunate and costly collateral damage, but luckily the Union had a white knight following close behind to smooth over any injured feelings.
Would you like to meet him, readers?
There’s both good and bad news for the embattled Scottish Labour “leader” in today’s newspapers. But before we get to that, we’d like you to watch this.
The gent posing the rather lengthy question is Sean Clerkin, the man Iain Gray hid from in Subway. We must admit we’re not quite sure why he thinks Johann Lamont has anything to do with Atos sponsoring the Commonwealth Games – something which would presumably be a matter for the Scottish Government and/or Glasgow City Council, neither of which she controls – but the Labour MSP’s reaction is remarkable.
We were a little perplexed this morning by the Daily Record’s banner headline.
And not just because of the unusually generous use by the Labour-supporting paper of the term “SNP Government” (rather than “Scottish Goverment”) on a good-news story.
It’s not as if the Financial Times doesn’t have history with dropping great big payloads of high explosive into the middle of the independence debate late on a Sunday night. But a piece coming up in Monday’s edition (and online tonight) is going to choke a few breakfasts in London tomorrow morning.
The following paragraph closes an article in today’s Observer.
We’re almost lost for words. But not quite.
Sorry we haven’t posted much today, folks, but with a pulsating League Cup semi-final and then Scotland’s first game in the Six Nations (about which events we shall speak no more) it’s been a big day for sport. You know, this stuff:
We hate to be so petty and chippy, but after 40-odd years it wears you down. We’re pretty sure it’s a mistake they’ll stop making if we’re actually a proper country.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
