Wings Over Scotland

As yet we’ve had no replies from anyone to our invitation to the Yes and No camps to conduct a public head-to-head independence debate. Dennis Canavan is on holiday at the moment, but none of Blair McDougall, Alistair Darling, Blair Jenkins or the official Yes and No campaigns have bothered to respond at all, despite both regularly proclaiming that they want to get the public more involved in the discussion.

It’s a dismally poor show from both sides. We’ll keep you posted.

We just had to have a lie down after wading through Tory councillor Tom Kerr’s speech in Bathgate last night. We don’t know if we dare inflict the full incoherent horror of it on you, to be honest. But something quite interesting happened after it.

A local activist stood up and asked Blair McDougall if David Cameron was prepared to debate Alex Salmond on independence, and his answer was enlightening.

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Tonight saw the launch of “Better Together Bathgate”, the No camp’s debut foray into our beloved hometown. The email advertising the event, sent out on the 15th of July, said “I hope to see you at the on 28th June” [sic], which might help to explain the rather sub-spectacular turnout of around 40 hardy souls from a town of 16,000.

Of that 40 or so, several (perhaps as many as a quarter) were dastardly pro-Yes spies. And we know that for certain, because one of them was ours.

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We don’t like to resort to personal abuse or crude language on this website, but we’re really struggling not to use the phrase “clueless thick comedy twat” here. Dammit.

Blair McDougall is the director of the “Better Together” campaign. He’s rumoured to be paid £100,000 a year. Yet his skills don’t appear to extend to reading the news.

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It has long been clear that, if they remain in government, the Tories intend to replace Trident, and this week’s Lib Dem Trident Alternatives Review shows that they are also committed to maintaining the UK as a nuclear state in the face of public opposition. But what of the Labour Party?

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Careful readers will be aware that this site primarily concerns itself with the activities of politicians and the media. Doing so can of course leave the way open to accusations of paranoia and conspiracy theorising. So we thought it might be interesting to share with you the findings of Transparency International’s 2013 survey into the public perception of corruption in the United Kingdom. (Part of a global poll.)

The only three bodies thought to be corrupt or extremely corrupt by a majority of the UK population were political parties, Parliament and the media, with the media coming off worst out of the three. (Next up, incidentally, were “business” with 49% and “public officials/civil servants” with 45%.)

Perception isn’t necessarily fact, of course. But at the very least, it’s not just us.

This must be a sad day for the deputy leader of the Labour Party in Scotland. After all, we’ve spent much of the last few weeks hearing how very uncomfortable Scottish Labour types are with the idea of their relatives becoming “foreigners”.

So the news that Anas Sarwar’s dad has decided to renounce being a proud Scot and return to his native Pakistan must have come as quite a blow. Our sympathies to the Sarwar family on this terrible and upsetting division. Damn separatists.

We can’t say we were especially upset late last night when the Scottish Sun revealed that Susan Boyle is anti-independence. We doubt her views, or any celebrity’s, will dramatically shape the electorate’s opinions. All the same, the unseemly haste with which the No camp leapt on the news left an unpleasant taste in our mouths.

And if you’ve ever read a tabloid newspaper or watched ITV News any time in the last four years or so, it shouldn’t be terribly hard to figure out why.

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We’re going to pop out for a quick bit of sun before it gets completely insanely hot. While we’re gone enjoy this, in which a hapless Labour stooge pens a quick diatribe of cut-and-pasted “Better Together” drivel for what he almost certainly expected to be a sympathetic audience on the anti-independence “progressive” site Left Foot Forward, and promptly gets the most comprehensive and one-sided shoeing from commenters we’ve seen in quite some time. We can only assume “Newsbot9” is on holiday.

(PS The CTU is one of many unions serving members in both the UK and Ireland.)

Apologies if the headline falls fouls of anyone’s work filter (although it shouldn’t, as it’s officially legally not a swear word), but we can’t think of a more concise and accurate way of describing the phenomenon illustrated by the comically absurd story that’s being blared all over the Scottish media this morning like news of the Apocalypse.

The price of oil, as the No campaign never tires of telling us, is volatile. Nobody knows what it’ll be in 27 weeks’ time, or even 27 days’ time. Predicting what level it’ll be at 27 hours from now is pushing your luck a bit, and City traders regularly make and lose fortunes betting on that timescale and getting it right or wrong.

So the idea that anyone, let alone the Office for Budget Responsibility, can have even the slightest, vaguest hint of a clue where North Sea oil prices and production will be 27 YEARS from now is – well, see the headline.

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An alert reader today pointed us towards internet traffic analysis site Alexa.com, and in particular its statistics for the Yes and No campaigns’ official websites. There was an interesting quirk (or at least one that might pass for interesting in the silly season).

Can you spot it?

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Today the Scottish Sun is almost entirely devoted to things idiot celebrities have said to each other on Twitter (or stories about Rihanna’s earrings), while the Daily Record relegates the Lib Dem Trident fiasco to a couple of small side columns in order to splash a double-page “EXCLUSIVE!” spread with the shock revelation that the First Minister of Scotland has sent letters of congratulation to some successful Scots.

(A feature for which it bewilderingly felt the need to waste taxpayers’ money by sending Freedom of Information requests to the Scottish Government.)

The Scotsman goes big on famous people’s favourite churches (people have favourite churches?), and the Herald has a South African, of all people, complaining about Alex Salmond taking a stand against discrimination.

We might take the day off.