Continuing our daily serialisation of HJ Paton’s fascinating 1968 book “The Claim Of Scotland”, courtesy of splendidly alert and dedicated reader Wilma Watts.
We’re enormously grateful to the alert reader who uncovered this little gem. “The Claim Of Scotland” is a book published in 1968 and written by one Herbert James Paton, a philosopher and a senior civil servant at the Admiralty and Foreign Office, who sadly died the following year.
If you click the image above, you’ll find a scanned PDF of the foreword, contents and first chapter, which at just 14 pages is a modest task of reading. Prepare yourself to marvel at how little times have changed since this pre-North Sea oil age, and to smile ruefully at a few of the sentences you’ll encounter.
Since we’re talking about The Independent today, we thought those of you who don’t follow us on Twitter or Facebook might like to see their latest editorial cartoon.
No, we’re not making that up.
Our more downmarket readers may have noticed this piece in today’s Scottish Sun:
But we were tickled to learn this morning, from a very well-placed inside source, that the advertising agency involved had also (genuinely) presented as part of their report a graphic demonstrating the current public perception of the No campaign.
You can see it below.
That was always a pretty silly lyric. But anyway.
We had to switch the telly off after about 10 minutes of the news this morning. The piety was too much to take. So intead we’re just going to quote two things from the avalanche of comment that’s appeared this morning on the death of Nelson Mandela.
If you don’t have time to read 170,000:
“Xmas dinner at the food bank”. The best of both worlds, there. Sleep well.
So today we got a response from the BBC to our Freedom Of Information request concerning this story. Those of you who’ve ever sent an FOI request to the state broadcaster before probably won’t need to read any further.
You may have read today that “Better Together” is planning a major “newspaper-style” leaflet drive for the release of the White Paper next week. Thanks to our ever-alert spies in the No camp, we’ve managed to secure a leaked copy of the text. You can read it below.
It’s already been in the comments, and it’s all over Twitter, but it’d be remiss of us not to give as many people as possible the chance to enjoy this.
Blair McDougall’s a big Rangers fan. See if you can spot him anywhere.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
