Wings Over Scotland

We haven’t studied the McCluskey report in detail, and we’re awfully tempted – after 16 months of scrutinising the many abysmal failings of Scotland’s media – to cynically assume that if it’s got them so uniformly up in arms it must be a good thing. But we’ll try to resist the kneejerk reaction.

For now we’ll merely pass comment on a very odd piece against the proposals by Iain Macwhirter in the Herald, ostensibly listing reasons “Why Scotland should be afraid”.

“George Galloway called Tony Blair a murderer – but he won’t be able to say that in print or online. Some of the descriptions of Brian Souter, during the ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign against the promotion of homosexuality in schools, would be actionable, as would many of the remarks made by his supporters. Feminists who say silly things like ‘all men are rapists’ could be in the dock , as would loud-mouths like Ray Winstone who said he was ‘raped by taxes’.”

Um, and these are supposed to be BAD things, are they? If those are really the potential consequences of the report’s implementation, if such counter-productive and divisive and idiotic debasement of intelligent discourse would suddenly become a punishable act, then sign us up right now. Because given that we currently live in a country where this can happen, we’re not sure we’ve got anything to lose.

The media (and some of the more gullible elements of the blogosphere) recently got itself into a lather about Douglas Alexander’s latest contribution to the independence debate – excellently rebutted by novellist and playwright Alan Bissett – which presented his vision of a post-referendum Scotland that voted No to independence.

Here’s an alternative picture. But unlike the typical “Better Together” scare story, these are not fabricated fantasies. Many are happening right now, while others are merely under discussion and in preparation.

This is what you’re voting for if you vote No.

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When the Daily Record lost Magnus Gardham to the Herald, they made sure to call on a like-for-like replacement. Torcuil Crichton, the newspaper’s self-styled “man in Westminster” (and who has never approved a single comment on his political blog in almost five years), is Gardham’s only rival as the most virulently and overtly Unionist staff reporter – as opposed to opinion columnist – in the Scottish media.

A story under Mr Crichton’s name today, though, is unsubtle even by his standards.

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Students of the Scottish media weren’t exactly surprised when the BBC’s Glenn Campbell published a story yesterday lunchtime (12.07pm) entitled “Scottish independence: Luxembourg warns against ‘going separate ways'” and opening with the more specific line “The government of Luxembourg has warned against Scotland becoming an independent country.”

Experienced observers were considerably less than astonished when the government of Luxembourg issued an angry denial a few hours later (reported at 5.57pm), claiming that their minister’s words had been misrepresented by the UK state broadcaster. News site Wort.lu reported:

“Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister has backtracked on a comment about Scotland’s independence which was quoted in the British media, saying it was misinterpreted.”

So far so standard, then.

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It can be hard to keep up with the Scotsman’s constant “finessing” of its news stories. For example, last night we followed a link to an interesting-sounding piece with the headline “UK’s Scots independence claims ‘on very thin ice'”.

It led to a David Maddox article on Professor David Scheffer’s recent comments suggesting that the UK Government’s official position – that an independent Scotland would inherit a worst-of-both-worlds share of the UK’s debt obligations, but none of the UK’s memberships of international bodies – was somewhat less than robust.

So when we saw the same story prominently featured on the front page of the paper’s website this morning, something seemed amiss.

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(Apologies to Chomsky and Herman.)

A standard-issue scare story in the Scotsman today was cast in an interesting light following an email we received last night from an alert reader, who’d been contacted by “a business owner in Moray” after the latter received an unsolicited communication from the official “Better Together” campaign.

We’ll let the reader tell the rest of the story.

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This sort of thing does seem to be happening with disturbing frequency at the august offices of the Scotsman these days. Yesterday’s paper ran a story under the stark headline “EU budget cuts ‘will favour the English’, says SNP”.

[EDIT: Also spun into a truly vile column by Michael Kelly today.]

You’ve been playing this game a while now, readers. See if you can guess which words from the headline don’t actually appear anywhere in the story.

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It might have taken three days, but we got there in the end. After:

And before:

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It’s always a matter of concern when supposedly impartial newspapers put out stories which appear more openly partisan than a party press release, and doubly so when the author is a staff news reporter rather than an opinion columnist. (As the latter are under no obligation to exercise impartiality, or indeed even to feign it.)

So it’s actually rather rare to see a smear piece as blatant as the one penned by David Maddox for the Scotsman today. Advertised on Twitter with the words “Does the Declaration of Arbroath have any significance beyond Scotland for the SNP? The evidence suggests not”, there are so many odd things about the story we’re going to have to make a list.

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Headlines can be the bane of a writer’s life. Often – including on this site – an article will go out with a different title to the one the author originally envisaged, as part of the subbing process. Occasionally (if the sub-editor or editor isn’t very good at their job) the title can be one which the author feels misrepresents what they’ve written.

We have no idea whether or not that’s the case with a column in today’s Scotland On Sunday, penned by folk singer Karine Polwart, which goes under the eye-catching headline “Why I’ll vote Yes despite the SNP”. We’ll simply observe that there’s a fairly important word in that title which doesn’t appear at all in the actual article – and that indeed the thing the word describes is not referred to, or even obliquely implied, anywhere in the author’s words – and leave you to arrive at your own conclusions.

In this site’s view, the single most important truth that YesScotland will need to convey to the Scottish electorate if it wants to win the 2014 independence referendum is the reality of what a No vote will mean for devolution. It’s a theme we’ve covered extensively, and will continue to highlight because it’s the core thing the Unionist campaign don’t want people to know.

All three London-run parties are engaged in the pretence that if Scots reject full control of their own affairs they’ll be showered with new powers by Westminster, despite that premise collapsing under the slightest scrutiny. But today an alert reader pointed us towards something that reveals a much more convincing reality.

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We’re becoming increasingly concerned that perhaps Scotland SHOULD extinguish any remaining vestiges of independence and allow itself to be incorporated into a Greater England, if our education system is anything to go by.

We’ve highlighted on several occasions a catastrophically poor grasp of arithmetic in the Scottish populace, although for some reason it seems to be restricted to those intending to vote No in the referendum.

“20 times 10 is 500” is bad even for Rangers fans, though.