Wings Over Scotland

We’ve known and documented for some time now that Scottish Labour’s attitude towards “foreigners” is, well, let’s be super-generous and say “ambiguous”. But this photo from nine days ago made even us take a sharp breath.

The woman on the left is the Labour MP for Aberdeen South, Dame Anne Begg. She received her DBE in 2011 “for services to disabled people and to equal opportunities”. But who’s her No-campaigning pal?

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An interesting piece in the Herald today:

Right there, in just two sentences, the spirit of the Union: English people think they should have been allowed to force the Scots to remain in the UK against their will.

If 70% of English people voted against independence (or even in fact, if just 70% of the 56% who think they should have had a vote did), it would have vastly outweighed even 100% of Scots voting Yes. That, readers, is the respect the people of England have for Scottish self-determination and democracy. Every single Scot could have voted for independence, and England’s view is that they should have been able to, and would, force Scotland to stay in the UK.

We’re just going to leave it at that.

We couldn’t help but notice Labour peer, Stalin-moustache enthusiast and celebrity Bobby Ball lookalike Lord/Baron Robert Winston standing at the front of the party’s boorish stag-party gathering of MPs and MSPs in Glasgow yesterday, as Ed Miliband railed against the dastardly SNP and insisted that the NHS wasn’t under threat.

(We didn’t see Andy Burnham among the MPs in the footage, so we assume he was still down in London telling anyone who’ll listen that the NHS is under threat.)

And we couldn’t help wondering whether the peer’s presence was a tacit endorsement by Miliband of his proposal to charge people £120 a year to visit their GP.

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An extraordinary letter sent out to members by trade union USDAW this week:

It’s not extraordinary that the union should choose to take a No position. It’s perfectly entitled to do that, and to advise its members of its view. It’s the last paragraph that blows us away. Not just the ironic juxtaposition of “Don’t let others decide what is best for you” with a direct instruction as to which way to vote, but the suggestion that “if you don’t know – then you should vote NO”.

Call us old-fashioned, but our reaction to not knowing something important is to try to find out. USDAW could have said “If you don’t know, here are some sources of information from both sides that you might find helpful” and added a couple of links to, at the very least, the Scottish Government’s white paper and the UK government’s “Scotland Analysis” reports.

Instead, it tells its members to remain ignorant and just do what they’re told. We can’t be alone, surely, in finding that a truly tragic place for the proud and honourable trade union movement of these islands to have found itself in.

Earlier today we showed you a clip from a press conference in which Alex Salmond schooled the BBC’s Nick Robinson in some basic financial facts about Corporation Tax, and went on to make a serious allegation about wrongdoing between the BBC and the UK Treasury, in which he claimed that the latter had broken Parliamentary rules by leaking market-sensitive information about RBS.

The BBC dutifully reported the story later in the day.

And as far as we can gather, the First Minister has everyone bang to rights.

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Who’s this? A bunch of lairy, pissed-up neds on a stag weekend?

Nope. Labour members of the Scottish and UK Parliaments, out “campaigning” in Glasgow today. This is their job. You’re paying them to do this. Be proud, Scotland.

Here’s an image we made back in October 2012:

It’s based on a graphic from the movie version of “V For Vendetta”.

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We just watched, jaws agape, as the BBC news channel gave Scottish Labour an uninterrupted 50-minute party political broadcast for no immediately obvious reason. It mainly took place at Loanhead Miners’ Welfare, and featured speeches from a warm-up man, then Johann Lamont, and finally Gordon Brown.

The ostensible event justifying this extraordinary coverage lasted just 2m 36s.

And having sat through the whole circus, we still have no idea what it was for.

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Here’s the BBC News website quoting defence secretary Michael Fallon today, on the announcement of a £3.5 billion order for almost 600 new armoured vehicles:

“‘Nato was formed on the basis that Europe would pay her way. Like any insurance policy, defence only pays out when you pay in.

US taxpayers won’t go on picking up the cheque if we choose to prioritise social welfare spending when the threats are on our doorstep.’

BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale said the comment on threats was a reference to Russian military intervention in Ukraine.”

Let’s study that for a moment, shall we?

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Here’s “Better Together” chief Blair McDougall in today’s Herald:

“Launching the [#PatronisingBTLady] video yesterday, Better Together campaign director Blair McDougall said: ‘The key factor for people isn’t the love of our country – as both Yes and No voters love Scotland. The key factor is the love of our families.’“

Let’s just read that through again. He’s saying that his campaign can’t use “love of our country” as a campaign weapon because people on both sides love their country. So instead he’s going to use “love of our families” as a distinguishing characteristic.

The only possible conclusion that can be drawn from those statements is that Yes supporters don’t love their families. It’s a bold gambit, we’ll give him that.

As readers of this site will be well aware, 40 years ago the UK government economist Professor Gavin McCrone analysed the effect of North Sea oil on the finances of a notional independent Scotland, which at the time seemed a real and possibly even imminent prospect. His assessment was so alarming to Westminster that its findings had to be kept secret from the Scottish public for over three decades.

With the information suppressed, Scotland remained in the UK (and was even refused modest devolution despite voting for it in a referendum), resulting in the imposition of a series of Conservative governments elected on English votes, beginning with Margaret Thatcher’s turning-point victory in 1979.

Ironically, we have Mrs Thatcher’s government to thank for the collation of the data which demonstrates the true state of Scotland’s finances within the UK, in the shape of the GERS figures (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland).

The data was subsequently collected into the Scottish National Accounts Project, which provides the figures (Excel document) for the following analysis. What it reveals provides a surprisingly unambiguous statement of Scotland’s financial condition, and one which is agreed across a broader political spectrum that you might imagine.

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It’s a fact – and we imply only correlation, not causation – that most of Scotland’s least pleasant people are to be found on the No side of the independence debate. The BNP, the SDL, Britannica, Holocaust denier Alistair McConnachie, the Orange Order and all manner of other Loyalist nasties cling to the Union Jack and a distaste for “foreigners” that they share with the most senior levels of Scottish Labour.

So far, however, it must be noted that “Better Together” has been pretty diligent about disassociating itself, at least publicly, from such groups. But as the referendum draws closer and pressure increases, it’s getting tougher and tougher to keep a lid on the nasty underbelly of the Unionist movement.

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