Wings Over Scotland

We can’t even be bothered linking to Brian Wilson‘s latest load of “will-this-do?” money for old rope in The Scotsman. We also can’t be bothered refuting any of its infantile, defamatory lies, which would all embarrass any grown-up newspaper that retained a shred of pride in its content. And we’re not going to occupy any more of our valuable time demolishing the central argument, when Brian has so helpfully done it for us himself right in the middle of his own article.

HEADLINE
“Shetland has the right to go it alone”

COPY
“There is little evidence that Shetland particularly wants to be independent”

There is? That’s that all sorted out, then. We’ve got a long queue of drivelling eejits to deal with today, Brian – have a lollipop and move along, there’s a good wee lad.

Scotland on Sunday today carries an interview with Michael Moore, in which the Scottish Secretary rather undermines the No campaign’s constant demands for “detail” about an independent Scotland by admitting that the Westminster government will refuse to discuss matters like Scotland’s possible share of UK debt in advance of the referendum. There’s an even stranger passage shortly afterwards, though:

“Moore also signalled that his government would play hard-ball if Scotland did vote for independence – a scenario that would force the UK administration to negotiate an independence settlement with the Scottish administration. In the event of a Yes vote, Moore said the UK government would have to “prioritise” the interests of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish and would be unable to give the Scottish Government everything that it wanted.”

Well, duh. If Scotland votes for independence, then any UK government minister will by definition be acting on the sole behalf of “the English, Welsh and Northern Irish”. Their ONLY responsibility will be to try to get the best possible deal for those people, in a negotiation in which Scotland is on the opposite side of the table. Anything else would plainly be a gross dereliction of duty.

It’s a bit like Ally McCoist saying that if The Rangers were to be drawn against Celtic in the Scottish Cup, he would “have to prioritise the interests of Rangers fans and would be unable to give Neil Lennon everything he wanted” – true, for sure, but as much of a big fat waste of time and newsprint as leading with the front-page headline that the Sun is hot and the sea is wet.

Scotland on Sunday’s circulation fell by almost 20% in the last year.

Two ostensibly-unrelated stories from today’s Scottish press leap out at each other with such force you fear the collision could almost create an actual thunderstorm.

“Benefits reform ‘to force 1 in 4 into poverty'”, roars Scotland On Sunday’s second-top story above a curiously makeover-ish picture of Margaret Curran and news of a report by the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations which predicts that hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable women (in particular) will be pushed into financial catastrophe by the Westminster government’s benefit cuts.

Curran is then quoted as attacking the UK coalition because it’s “prepared to cut the incomes of hard-working Scottish families at a time when people are already struggling to make ends meet”, and demanding “welfare reform that works”. Which makes a story in this morning’s Sunday Herald all the more bewildering.

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Hello. Someone directed me to your blog today, which I’d have posted this on if I could have been bothered with registering for a “LiveJournal”, “TypePad”, “AIM” or “OpenID” account, whatever the heck those are. But I can’t – at my age I’d rather have a root canal than waste my time signing up to yet another obsolete social-media network for the dubious privilege of commenting on someone’s website – so I’ll write it here instead. You’re welcome to any extra traffic the link will bring you. Consider it a gift.

I don’t consider your post to be “scaremongering”. I consider it a heartbreakingly sad example of something we used to refer to as the “Scottish cringe”, and which is also sometimes known by the term “Stockholm Syndrome”. For someone so evidently young, the terrified conservatism, fear of responsibility and absence of ambition displayed in your post is far more tragic than it is when those much older and more comfortably set in their ways than you recoil in terror from the idea of change.

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February 2012: “Don’t worry, Scotland – the Olympics might be costing you millions of pounds, but look at all the extra tourism you’ll be getting from it to compensate!”

What could possibly go wrong? Bring on the bonanza!

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I’m a fairly placid chap, readers. I really am. I’ve been around a bit, seen a few things. It takes a lot to raise my blood pressure. You’ve been reading this site for over a year and you know the only thing that’s really got under my skin is Craig sodding Levein.

But tonight I’m just about boiling over with rage. When it came down to it, four Liberal Democrat MPs – including the one I’ve voted for for the last 20 years – rebelled against pretty much the most evil thing any UK government’s done for about a century. Four. They couldn’t even be bothered to try to make it look good.

I’ve already got my most upbeat Spotify playlist running just to stop myself screaming profanities into the night out of the window. I should probably delete the last hour’s tweets. (But won’t.) So post cute pictures of kittens. Tell a few jokes or heartwarming stories. Anything, anything at all that’s nice and beautiful and good and suggests maybe this entire country isn’t just a stinking, rancid sewer full of subhuman scum.

I hate these people so much – these vicious, monstrous Tories, these treacherous Lib Dems, these grubby, cynical Labour hypocrites – that I’m scaring myself a little.

Oh dear, BBC.

That’s a very poor effort at impartiality indeed.

Inspired by Iain Macwhirter’s words in the Herald today, we knocked something up.

Click for full-size high-resolution image. Kids/teetotallers version below.

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Against our better judgement, we found browsing the Twitter feed of the Labour MP for Glasgow South (remember him?) on Friday for the first time in several months, after some irresponsible person (specifically this one) drew our attention to the fact that Tom was still boasting proudly about the Downfall-parody video clip that got him in trouble last year. And a couple of things struck us as at least vaguely interesting.

One was the “biog” entry below the avatar, which is a variant on a well-known chant often aired by fans of defunct Glasgow football club Rangers FC – “Nobody likes us, we don’t care”. It seems an odd, confrontational attitude to adopt for someone who relies entirely on being liked by the public to still have a job.

But it was the rest of the feed that revealed the oddest thing.

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In a slightly surprising development reported late this afternoon by the Guardian, the Ministry of Defence appeared to suddenly and officially confirm what most supporters of independence have asserted for some time: that if Scotland becomes independent the rUK will lose its nuclear deterrent, as it has nowhere else to put it.

In a surprisingly direct response to a question from CND, the Ministry revealed that “the safety arrangements for Devonport [naval base near Plymouth, widely regarded as the only possible alternative berth for the submarines] do not permit the presence of submarines carrying Trident nuclear warheads”, and that “The MoD’s safety experts are not considering changing that“.

It was already known that even if the submarines themselves could be docked in Devonport, there was no possibility of replicating the Coulport weapons base without years of work costing billions of pounds, but the MoD’s unexpected revelation, as well as being an apparent reversal of the Ministry’s position of a year ago, is a dramatic intervention with radical and complex implications for the independence debate.

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There’s an absolutely despicable article on Labour Uncut today that we’re reluctant to link to. There’s a Google Cache version here, and in case it dies we’ve reprinted the whole thing below (sue us, Labour Uncut) so you don’t need to give the site traffic.

For the most part it’s a tedious rehash of the tired old “votes for 80 million expat and diaspora Scots” routine, but it’s enlivened with some ugly, base abuse of the First Minister, or “the fat, failed economist from Hollyrood” [sic] as author and Labour member Ian Stewart refers to him. The worst part, though, comes just before the end.

“At a time when the French voters of London have their own seat in the National Assembly, when serious moves are being made to press for a similar accommodation in the Irish Republic, not to mention Sinn Feinn’s mooting of some kind of a say for the wider diaspora, what do we get? Oh yes, the chance to maybe need a passport to visit granny.

Perhaps Mr Salmond made his attitude clear to these millions when he organised the great “Homecoming 2009” a while back – when it was clear to all that if your accent was in English rather than American, you had best not bother.”

This, we feel wholly confident in asserting, is a defamatory and libellous statement. The notion that Alex Salmond ever suggested, let alone made it “clear to all”, that English people weren’t welcome at Homecoming 2009 is one utterly unsupported in fact, and a normally-respectable site like Labour Uncut should be ashamed to have printed an open and direct accusation that the First Minister is a racist.

The battle over independence will get ugly in the next 18 months. We hope the Yes side doesn’t descend to the depths of Mr Stewart, and that the aggressive provocation of the Unionists doesn’t lead to the spilling of blood in Scotland as it continues to do in Northern Ireland. If it does, forgiveness will be a long time coming.

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Yesterday we reported the excellent news that US media giant CNN’s travel arm had named Scotland their No.1 travel destination of 2013, a move likely to generate many millions of pounds in increased tourism business for the Scottish economy. And to their credit, both the Scotsman and Herald also covered the story.

(Though neither of them apparently recalled the extensive coverage they’d given to the Holyrood opposition parties savagely attacking the Scottish Government for spending money on two trips to America to promote Scotland there in 2012.)

The Herald’s piece was so tiny and buried it attracted no reader comments (or none were approved), but the Scotsman’s more prominent article did. Why not take a moment and glance below to revel in the warmth, joy and positivity with which the publication’s Unionist readers welcomed this unequivocally happy development?

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