Wings Over Scotland

It seems that today marked the official start of the much-vaunted “lovebombing” campaign aimed at persuading Scots to stay in the UK by showing them how much they’re loved by the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The opening salvo did some unfortunate and costly collateral damage, but luckily the Union had a white knight following close behind to smooth over any injured feelings.

Would you like to meet him, readers?

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From this morning’s Independent:

“‘Poll tax mark II’ pushes Britain’s poorest into debt

Up to 70,000 low earners, single parents, and disabled people are being pursued by bailiffs over their failure to pay the ‘new poll tax’, according to figures revealed for the first time.

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The following paragraph closes an article in today’s Observer.

“Kelly Gibson, 36, a homeless Big Issue seller on busy Sauchiehall Street, perhaps summed it up best: ‘I think that maybe we’ve got too much to lose. If they can’t explain to me how Scotland will be richer, how do I know that I will be better off?'”

We’re almost lost for words. But not quite.

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Sorry we haven’t posted much today, folks, but with a pulsating League Cup semi-final and then Scotland’s first game in the Six Nations (about which events we shall speak no more) it’s been a big day for sport. You know, this stuff:

We hate to be so petty and chippy, but after 40-odd years it wears you down. We’re pretty sure it’s a mistake they’ll stop making if we’re actually a proper country.

So we’ll just leave this here:

And then we’re off to bed.

[EDIT: Story confirmed with Jessica Bridges at Ladbrokes press office.]

Jim Murphy in the Daily Mail last week on the appalling “cybernats”:

“It’s time for the SNP and the First Minister to finally rein these people in. Washing their hands of them and pretending they don’t know who they are will no longer do.”

And this is a Labour spokesman in 2012 when a user of a Labour Facebook page had wished death on Alex Salmond’s 90-year-old father:

“This desperate smear campaign falls at the first hurdle because this Facebook page is not owned, managed, or operated by Scottish Labour, and it will not detract from the rantings and ravings of SNP candidates – sacked or otherwise – online.

Political parties are responsible for their candidates and officials, but members of the public must be responsible for their own behaviour.”

So, as far as we can follow: it’s nothing to do with Labour if its supporters – in a Facebook group subscribed to by all the party’s most prominent Scottish MPs, MSPs and activists – wish for Alex Salmond’s dad to die, but as soon as some random nat calls Jim Murphy a “w*****” (whatever one of those is), it’s no longer a private matter and the SNP and First Minister must take direct personal responsibility and action?

Have we got that about right?

Well, jings, crivvens and help – so to speak – wur boabs. How did we all manage to miss this one in the Sunday Times last month? We assume it’s meant to be comic.

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John “Chicogo” Barrowman knocks ’em dead as the special mystery celebrity guest at the “Better Together” Burns Night celebrations, which we are not making up:

 (Edit by Jack Foster.)

We normally have a fatwa on all poetry here, but as it’s Burns Night we’re making an exception – this magnificent effort by William Duguid was just too good to pass up.

Had we but known in time we’d have slipped it to John Barrowman, so to speak.

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When someone sent us a collection of tweets in the immediate aftermath of the Clutha tragedy late last year, we decided not to use them. It wasn’t for any great moral reason – we’ve previously highlighted despicable No-camp scumbags making political capital out of the deaths of innocent people – but we were just too sickened and sad (as most Scots were) to waste a moment’s thought on such human dregs.

As the Daily Mail ploughs on with its crusade against “vile cybernats”, though, it seemed worth pointing out for the record just what sort of a place the internet really is, and how pathetic its catalogue of mild swearwords and distaste is in that context.

Stop reading now if you’re easily upset.

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Much gratitude tonight to alert reader “Albamac”, who’s not only compiled the whole of “The Claim Of Scotland” into a single very small (1MB), easy-download PDF file but has converted it in the process into one with cut-and-pasteable text for quotability. We’ve uploaded it to the Repository, and you can also download it from this direct link.

Big love once again too to Wilma Watts who made our serialisation possible in the first place, and to the sadly-deceased Herbert James Paton for writing a book that for the most part could have been released yesterday. We highly recommend it as a starting point for any undecideds you know who might not want to jump straight into the debate with something as openly partisan as this site. Having read it, we suspect they’ll be hungry for more truth, and then you can send them our way.

Welcome to another glorious new dawn in the Union.

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