Wings Over Scotland

We’ve noted on numerous occasions previously that one of this site’s prime functions is merely to remember things – to serve as a repository of fact which can be referred to when politicians or the media try to mislead people about what happened in the past. It was a thought we were struck by again on reading The Times this morning.

Because as we beheld Kenny Farquharson’s account of the SNP’s manifesto launch, and how its emphasis on the word “RE-ELECT” was unfamiliar and “very different” to their last Holyrood manifesto launch, we were sure that wasn’t how we recalled it.

So we checked.

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While we’re on the subject of Ruth “line in the sand” Davidson of the Ruth Davidson No Surrender To The SNP Anti-Referendum Party making U-turns, we thought we might remind you of another one, this time from rather more recent history than 2011.

Just nine months ago, apparently Ms Davidson’s view was that “it would be wrong for the Tories to stand in the way” of another referendum “if the SNP gets a democratic mandate from the public”.

Sounds like a firm, resolute commitment to democracy and the incontrovertible right of the people of Scotland to determine their own destiny. Stirring stuff. We approve.

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The Scottish Conservatives manifesto for Holyrood, 2011:

But maybe it’s different if you’re openly campaigning to lose.

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Not so very long ago, someone said this:

Of course, it’s not that day any more.

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Because this just happened:

And that’s about as close to a guarantee as you’ll get, readers.

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Kezia Dugdale gave an interview to Good Morning Scotland earlier today that viewed from above would probably look rather like the runway at Baghdad Airport in 1991.

If we tried to pick out all the individual bomb craters in one post, readers’ eyes would glaze over long before the end. So we’re going to have to do it in bits.

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We were mucking about doing some other stuff today when we came across these. We thought they looked quite striking all put together.

No other reason than that, really.

A message of hope for Good Friday from everyone’s favourite Labour activist:

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“Dry your eyes. On your feet.”

Sometimes the world’s random turns throw up a charmed piece of timing. That was the first tweet that I read on 19th September 2014, sitting on the side of the bed, eyes burning, wondering what on Earth I could possibly do with a day for which I’d bought champagne, but which broke my heart before dawn.

I’d resisted Twitter for a while, then fallen in love with it, weirdly comfortable with the disembodied voices of strangers. Small phrases, 140 characters: at its best, little postcards that made me smile, laugh or think.

For whatever reason, that tweet cut through, its arrival perfect to give me a virtual shake. I’d tell the writer – if I knew who they were – that I managed to carry out half of their instruction to us hollow-eyed, political orphans that day, though I failed miserably for a while on the first bit.

Today we should have become independent. We’re not, and it’s not okay, but since I don’t think we can ignore the power that time and timing can possess, and since words are all I’ve got, I’d like to tell you a story.

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Scotland isn’t independent today.

Let’s not get fooled again.

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From a BBC report on the 2004 Scottish Labour conference:

And to give the former First Minister his due, he wasn’t wrong.

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We don’t normally ask you to watch videos as long as this, readers. (Although at 4m 22s it’s still not War And Peace.) As a rule the key part of any TV discussion can be boiled down to a few seconds, but this one needs to be taken in at a bit more length.

It happened on last night’s Question Time from Dundee, and was already 10 minutes into a discussion about whether there might be a second independence referendum and what might trigger it, in particular the prospect of Scotland voting to remain in the EU in June but the rest of the UK voting to leave, dragging Scotland out forcibly.

At that point, host David Dimbleby made an inexplicable intervention, abandoning his position as supposedly neutral moderator to pluck a “fact” out of thin air with which to attack the SNP’s John Swinney. Here’s what unfolded.

Wait, what?

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