Wings Over Scotland

We’ve already noted part of Willie Rennie’s appearance on Newnight Scotland this week, reinforcing the strange phenomenon by which the Unionist parties continue to suggest that an independent Scotland would be a dictatorial state more reminiscent of Zimbabwe than a modern western democracy with a proportionally-elected parliament.

But the full transcript of the segment (provided by our excellent and much-valued new transcribing department) adds a little meat to the bones. It’s fascinating stuff.

(NB YOUR PARAMETERS OF “FASCINATING” MAY VARY.)

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Below is the headline of a story from this morning’s Independent.

We’ve read the article in question several times now looking for the supposed “bad news” for the Scottish First Minister, and we’re having no luck at all. Perhaps you can help us out with it, readers.

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If you weren’t up at 8.45am or so (it’s the weekend), click the image below to hear the interview on Good Morning Scotland on the subject of our Panelbase opinion poll.

The poll was also discussed (again) by prominent psephologist Professor John Curtice, who made a few helpful comments by way of expert advice. We’re new to the polling game, so let’s quickly address them.

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We might have to transcribe the whole thing, because it’s remarkable.

But for now here’s just a brief flavour of Willie Rennie on the subject of an independent Scotland’s membership of NATO, from last night’s Newsnight Scotland (from 5m 30s).

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Newsnet Scotland this morning attacks some comments by BBC presenter James Naughtie in which he remarks disapprovingly on the aesthetic state of Princes Street in Edinburgh. To be honest, we’re with the Beeb’s man on this one – as documented by the splendid Facebook page Lost Edinburgh, the capital’s main thoroughfare is a living catalogue of grotesque crimes against architecture, and the additional havoc wreaked on it by years of needless tram works doesn’t need any detailing here.

The piece does reveal something much more interesting, though.

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We were very proud of a terrific performance from Scotland at Wembley last night, in a highly entertaining friendly the national side was unlucky to lose due to a couple of lapses in concentration at set pieces. We also greatly enjoyed the tremendous atmosphere created by both sets of fans, which we read about in the Daily Mail:

“It seemed the days of booing national anthems had passed. But old habits die hard against the Auld Enemy so Flower of Scotland got the treatment and God Save the Queen was booed in response. Pretty unsavoury all round.”

And also in the Scottish Daily Mail:

“The sing-off was generally good-natured but the Scottish contingent let themselves down badly at the start as a cacophony of boos drowned out God Save The Queen after respect was afforded Flower Of Scotland.”

Wait, what?

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Readers who haven’t recently suffered a blow to the head will probably recall that “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall was quoted in the Scotsman last week (in a story which WAS considered worthy of coverage), bitterly complaining that the Yes campaign had used the phrase “best of both worlds”, which for some reason he appeared to believe was his exclusive possession.

The fine gentleman above was pictured on Glasgow’s Buchanan Street on Saturday. He also appears to be toting some borrowed property. Can you spot it?

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Sweet mercy. We’ve been pretty scathing about the Scottish media over the last few days, but we had no idea that our jibes about the Scotsman in particular now being a spoof site were so literally true.

The image above comes from the Scotsman’s editorial leader accompanying its ridiculous Nate Silver decoy story this morning. We’ve highlighted a line for you.

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In so far as there’s any actual reasoning or hard data supporting the Scotsman’s front-page lead story today at all, it’s when the American pundit Nate Silver claims that “Historically, in any Yes or No vote in a referendum, it’s actually the No side that tends to grow over time, people tend not to default to changing the status quo.”

Shall we just check whether that does indeed “tend” to be true, readers?

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We had a listen to Radio Scotland this morning again. We only caught the end of Good Morning Scotland, but we were still in time to catch them cramming in a piece on today’s comedy Scotsman headline about American psephologist Nate Silver and his vague, generalised comments about polling.

With an absolutely straight face (so far as you can tell on radio, anyway), the GMS presenter asked Silver for his view on “how well the media handles statistics”, while carefully steering the discussion in such a way that neither Silver nor fellow live guest Professor John Curtice had any opportunity to refer to the Panelbase poll commissioned by this site and published last week.

(We have no idea if either of them would have had any desire to, but the presenter’s questions carefully closed off any avenues which might have offered the chance.)

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(No, that’s not a reference to David McLetchie, who was by all accounts a very decent chap and a sad loss to the world of Scottish politics, whatever your persuasion.)

We’ve made a couple of slight changes to this front cover from tomorrow’s Scotsman. Amazingly, neither of them is the headline story. That one, hilariously, is all real.

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