Wings Over Scotland

When even the deputy leader of the Scottish Tories complains that the fear-based arguments of the No campaign are getting “silly”, the more optimistic observer might be forgiven for hoping for at least a superficial temporary change in their tone, particularly in the light of the especially bad example which triggered the comments.

You’d think the more optimistic observer would have learned by now, eh?

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Yesterday we passingly mentioned how Home Secretary Theresa May this week claimed that Scots could lose their British passports and be denied dual nationality following a ‘Yes’ vote for independence in next year’s referendum.

Mystifyingly none of the newspapers reporting the story bothered to research the facts behind her claim, so we had to get our investigating hats on.

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Following our visit to the Netherlands and Belgium a couple of days ago, and today’s examination of the (non-existent) threat of border controls between an independent Scotland and the rUK, we thought it’d be nice to finish the week with a whistlestop tour of some more of our favourite international borders.

It’s perhaps worth noting that several of these are between EU and non-EU countries, or even between two non-EU countries. The one above, though, is Denmark/Germany.

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This week, as already noted on this site, we’ve seen another unwelcome deployment of the old “you’d need a passport to visit your granny in Carlisle once the border posts go up” fearbomb. It’s a simple argument that tries to play on both the aversion to borders in trade and travel, and also the fear of immigration.

The reality, as you may have come to expect by now, is rather different.

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Readers will be aware that while we still link to articles in the Scotsman, we rarely encourage anyone to read pieces by Brian Wilson or Michael Kelly. Both generally issue furious, barely-coherent rants consumed by a blind, absolute tribal hatred of anything in any way connected to the SNP and/or independence, and amount to little more than professional trolling.

We’re not going to make an exception for Wilson’s latest, a spittle-flecked diatribe (fuelled by the Scotsman’s favourite useful idiot Jim Sillars) about how the idea that an independent Scotland could have an open border with the rUK is “ridiculous”, and that there would have to be border controls and passport checks. If you really want to read it you can go and find it for yourself.

But we thought it might be interesting to see if we could find a couple of comparable neighbouring countries (eschewing the obvious example of Ireland, which is for some reason apparently invisible to Unionists) and see how they handled it.

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Thanks to the alert reader who pointed us at a Plymouth Herald story today about lovable UKIP candidate and teacher of British children, the charming Ron Northcott.

“Plymouth UKIP man quits after calling Scots ‘workshy addicts’ in Twitter rant

A UKIP politician has “fallen on his sword”, after abusing Scots people on the social media site Twitter. Ron Northcott, a former election candidate in Plymouth for the UK Independence Party, resigned from the party yesterday. David Salmon, UKIP’s Plymouth chairman, said:

“Ron is not talking to any member of the press. I can say that following the appalling behaviour of some Scots against Nigel Farage, Ron was involved in what he describes as banter with a Scot living in London.

His out-of-character remark was unacceptable and he has stood down with immediate effect as a potential candidate for next years elections. We in no way condone his language and the sentiments expressed. He has stepped down and will be leaving UKIP.”

Northcott’s “banter” came to light because this site highlighted it and posted it on Twitter, where at the time of writing it had been seen by over 8,000 people. You can read the now-deleted badinage below.

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We got an email from our Prague correspondent last night, but that’s not the only thing the disgraceful pun in the headline refers to. As Michael Moore was kicked around the playground by Nicola Sturgeon in the first Scotland Tonight debate that same evening, the soggy security blanket he clung to more than anything else was the currency issue, which the No camp appears to believe is now its most powerful weapon.

It’s a two-pronged Trident, if you’ll forgive the even more tortured wordplay in that metaphor. Firstly there’s the scaremongering part containing the (empty) threat that the rUK would refuse to enter a currency union with an independent Scotland, forcing it to join the embattled Euro, and as back-up there’s the claim that if we DID get a currency union, Scotland would somehow end up getting less consideration from the Bank of England governors when it came to monetary policy than the none it gets now.

Let’s take the briefest look we can manage at both of those assertions.

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Never let it be said we don’t do balanced reporting.

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Loveable right-wing extremist Nigel Farage has been the toast of England for the last few weeks. This is what happened when he came to Scotland today.

We’re feeling very proud of our countryfolk right now.

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As we predicted last week, the BNP is now encouraging its members to join UKIP. The image below is taken from a Nick Griffin article on the former’s website. We’ve put it up as a screenshot in order to avoid linking to the site, but if you really want to find the entire piece you can Google for any of the phrases in the extract below.

(We do love the description of Farage as an “internationalist”, though. That’ll put him in good company with all the Labour sorts who insist we need to have Tory governments we don’t vote for in order to show “solidarity” with the rest of the UK, which does.)

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One of the weirdest things about UKIP’s spectacular success in the English local elections yesterday – up from EIGHT seats to 147 – was watching everyone in the unholy “Better Together” alliance desperately trying to downplay it.

From the Labour side came the traditional cry of “It’s ridiculous to separate Scotland from England just because you don’t like who England votes for (and therefore imposes on Scotland)!”, while Tories pointed out that they’d still retained almost 80% of their seats and that anyway it didn’t really matter, because UKIP had no chance of winning a general election and indeed still didn’t have a single MP.

Of course, as we’ve noted already today, they don’t actually need one.

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