Wings Over Scotland

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones yesterday:

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones today:

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We don’t really want to spend all day discussing things from a single rapidly-declining minority-interest Unionist newspaper, but we spent 69p this morning buying a copy of the Scotsman in order to check some facts on the Susan Calman story, so we’re going to flipping well get our money’s worth.

The paper runs a rather odd piece today, in which the Labour-linked Centre for Public Policy for Regions is called upon to analyse a single Yes Scotland press release relating to the Scottish economy. (A boxout at the end promises a similar treatment for a “Better Together” leaflet at an unspecified point in the future.)

We’ve screenshotted the entire piece here if you want to read it without giving the Scotsman any traffic. But just to give you the flavour of the overarching (or underlying, depending on how you like to look at it) tone, below we’ve stripped out everything except the CPPR’s considered professional assessment.

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Wait, what now? From BBC News:

Several weeks on, we still await answers from the No camp to several serious questions about their biggest donor, Ian Taylor of Vitol. But the ongoing furore (we’re really not sure issuing the Herald with a legal threat worked out the way Mr Taylor hoped it would) over his £500,000 donation has kept attention away from the other substantial contributors to the “Better Together” campaign fund.

Aberdeen local paper the Evening Express has decided to put that right, though.

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We’ve spent a fair bit of time over the course of this website’s existence documenting the multi-media witch-hunts that invariably arise in the Scottish media whenever some obscure and/or anonymous independence supporter on the internet says something slightly intemperate (or even just expresses an unpopular opinion).

We especially enjoy contrasting it against the way that the elected, taxpayer-funded representatives of major political parties can get away unremarked with comparing the First Minister to dictators and genocidal mass murderers (of the sort “Better Together” donors like to give hundreds of thousands of pounds to).

The vast difference in the amount of media weight given to abusive behaviour from British nationalists and that from the independence side (the infamous “cybernats”) has long been a feature of Scottish political debate, but over the last 12 hours the phenomenon has seen an intriguing new twist.

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This is Labour leader Ed Miliband on Radio 4’s “World At One” yesterday:

(From 16m 12s on iPlayer.)

“I think people are asking this very very important question about the country, which is, y’know, are our problems so deep that NOBODY can actually make a difference to them? My emphatic answer is yes.”

Ours is too, though to a slightly different question.

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From this morning’s Scotsman:

That devious BASTARD.

Sunday Herald, 28 April 2013:

“The Better Together campaign has many faults. It is tedious, piecemeal, relentlessly negative, and a factory for an endless supply of scare stores.

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We stumbled across this quite by accident yesterday. We think you’ll enjoy it.

The clip is from last year, and was aired on Canadian national news channel Sun News. Douglas Murray is a British writer who claims to be half-Scottish on account of unspecified links to Unionist breeding ground the Isle of Lewis, popular haunt of No-camp luminaries like Alistair Darling, virulent Labour anti-devolutionist Brian Wilson and controversial “Better Together” donor Ian Taylor.

Murray studied at Eton and Oxford and writes for august UK journals like the Spectator and Guardian, as well as appearing on numerous BBC political shows. For some reason, the Canadians consider him an expert on Scottish politics, qualified to inform and enlighten their viewers. See what you think.

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Emphasis, as always, is ours.

“STATEMENT BY SCOTTISH COOPERATIVE PARTY EXECUTIVE

The Scottish Co-operative Party’s 2011 manifesto is one full of co-operative and mutual solutions to the challenges faced in Scotland, issues of independence, devolution or the constitutional settlement did not feature. The annual Co-operative Party conference has passed motions which promote a view of Scotland playing a vital role in a United Kingdom.

We have noted the personal comments made by Mary Lockhart, a long serving Co-operative Party and Labour Party member. Mary has been a great advocate for co-operative and mutual solutions. Whilst we recognise that members of political parties hold differing, sometimes opposite, positions the views Mary has expressed are not shared by the Party. Mary has offered her resignation from the role of Chair of the Scottish Co-operative Party and the Scottish Executive committee has accepted this.“

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The BBC’s flagship satirical programme “Have I Got News For You” is, of course, comedy. The tone of the opening minutes of last night’s episode was a little uglier and nastier than the usual friendly inter-regional jibes (normally delivered by the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and accompanied by rebukes from the rest of the panel), but it really wasn’t anything to get overly worked up about. Comedy isn’t always cuddly.

It must have been a little uncomfortable for the No camp, though.

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We already know that the No camp has, shall we say, a bit of difficulty when it comes to basic arithmetic. But rarely do they demonstrate it so eagerly as they did last night.

We very much appreciate their helping to make our job easier.

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