That was always a pretty silly lyric. But anyway.
We had to switch the telly off after about 10 minutes of the news this morning. The piety was too much to take. So intead we’re just going to quote two things from the avalanche of comment that’s appeared this morning on the death of Nelson Mandela.
The Herald, 5 December 2013:
About 1,000 more and LFI will be bigger than Scottish Labour’s actual membership.
Well done to everyone who correctly guessed that our Mystery Guest last night was indeed Ruth Davidson. If you’d like to listen to Ruth’s 2009 demo reel for voiceover work which accompanied the letter, click the image below.
From that to the leader of a major Scottish political party in just two years. Hats off.
Professor James Mitchell of Edinburgh University, 2 December 2013:
“Under what circumstances would a UK Government (or Scottish for that matter) incline towards cooperation or conflict in its relations with its neighbour? The key is motivations.
The realisation that the No camp’s reaction to the independence White Paper has been based on a massive, scarcely-believable misunderstanding/misrepresentation of reality has thrown a new light on all sorts of things from the past week.
The most recent “BLACK HOLE!” story is a case in point.
As a living embodiment of the posh, braying public-school Tory-boy stereotype, Fraser Nelson of the Spectator used to reside in our “Zany Comedy Relief” links bar until we kicked him out for rarely lowering himself to write about Scotland.
But his guest appearance in today’s Telegraph we enjoyed at least parts of.
In “breaking news” during a dull ding-dong of a debate on Wednesday’s Newsnight Scotland, we were breathlessly told that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had made an important intervention in the debate about whether Scotland should keep paying for railway lines between London and Birmingham, weapons of mass destruction and Ian Davidson’s expenses. (We paraphrase.)
Stopping just short of a drum-roll or mariachi band (yes, those are Mexican, but are you telling us BBC Scotland would know the difference?), viewers were dramatically informed that in a major new development Mariano Rajoy had said… exactly what he’s been saying for most of the last two years.
We’re still dutifully ploughing through “Scotland’s Future”, but in truth we’re not really its target audience. We’re already convinced, and much of it is just like reading our own articles back except in rather blander language. What we can definitely say for certain is that it doesn’t lack detail – the composition of an independent Scotland’s armed forces, for example, is laid out almost down to the rifle.
Naturally, that didn’t stop the No camp from rushing onto the nation’s TV screens within minutes of the press launch ending with their considered, serious and thoughtful assessments of a document none of them had read.
There’s an atrocious piece of journalism in this morning’s Guardian, and on this particular occasion we’re referring to its technical standards rather than any bias or spin. Here are the opening paragraphs:
We’re confused already.
So today we got a response from the BBC to our Freedom Of Information request concerning this story. Those of you who’ve ever sent an FOI request to the state broadcaster before probably won’t need to read any further.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
