Wings Over Scotland

Alistair Darling was angry last week, as he was awake. In a tetchy interview with the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland he insisted that “there is no political party in the United Kingdom at the moment that could get away with destroying the NHS”.

He went on to rubbish the idea that the English service was being privatised by the Conservative-led government, and accused the SNP of scaremongering over the issue for opportunistic political gain. So we thought we’d see if we could find anyone else who thought the NHS was in danger of privatisation and destruction.

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The startling lack of “grassroots” support in the No campaign has been a recurring theme on this site. Time and again, people presented as typical members of the public turn out to be dedicated political activists with a vested interest in the status quo.

The “Better Together” website has a long-running series of blog posts under the banner “Why I’m saying No Thanks”. All of the people featured in it are introduced with no mention of any involvment in politics. Out of idle curiosity we thought we’d see if we could find out a little more about them.

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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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I’d waited a long time for an official independence meeting to take place in my home town of Stonehaven, so when I read on Monday morning that Better Together (or No Thanks or SNPSNPSNPBOOO! or whatever they’re calling themselves this week) were holding just such a thing at the town hall that evening, I bounded along Allardice Street with all the enthusiasm I could muster.

Why had it taken until just five weeks before the vote to have such a meeting? I wasn’t sure. But since the Commonwealth Games I’d seen a rise in the amount of Yes signs, posters, car stickers and flags in the town. Maybe Better Together decided it was time to do something. Which side would take claim Stonehaven’s finest creation – the deep fried Mars bar – as their own?

Considering I only found out about it on the day, I thought there’d be hardly anyone there, but to my surprise the town hall was bulging with comfy chairs. Maybe two thirds were full. I felt like I was back at school as almost everybody refused to sit in the first couple of rows for fear of… well, it turned out most of these people were feart beyond belief already.

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Remember the happy days of 2012 when Unionists complained endlessly that the independence debate was in danger of becoming bogged down by arguments about process rather than politics, readers?

We’re now in the third straight day of the No campaign and the media obsessing about a process (an independent Scotland’s currency arrangements) rather than the principle of whether Scotland should choose its own governments.

Above is a double-page spread from today’s Scottish Sun, which has extremely unusually gone with a front-page splash on politics (rather than its usual diet of celebrity freakshows) for the last three days, and which continues to hammer away – as all three opposition leaders did at FMQs yesterday – on the boneheaded demand for a “Plan B” if the rUK rejects a currency union.

The Sun does so despite devoting most of one of those pages to Alex Salmond telling them EXACTLY what Plan B would be, but evidently they’re a bit slow on the uptake, so let’s see if we can spell it out in words simple enough for Johann Lamont, Ruth Davidson, Willie Rennie and Andrew Nicoll to understand.

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It turns out that Jackie Baillie heard this and thought it was a referendum broadcast.

Silly old Jackie, eh readers?

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We encourage readers to keep an eye out for the soon-to-be-released work of the Scottish Research Society. You won’t have heard of them before – they’re only three months old, with just 48 “likes” on Facebook – but they’ve already amassed some serious funds and have registered as campaigners for No in the referendum debate.

The society’s website notes that it “was formed on May 6th, under the Act of 1854, permitting Scientific and Literary Societies to be set up to inform and educate the public on social, economic and scientific matters.”

It goes on to add that “the material contained in the Society’s works, is used to provide accurate and informed commentary on aspects of the issues relevant to the question of Scottish independence. The Society is not a campaign group, but an organisation seeking to inform and provide balance.”

So that’s an interesting start.

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Alert readers will doubtless have noticed that a post yesterday was disrupted by a series of strident and increasingly ill-tempered comments by a particular user, themed around their insistence that a central bank is a prerequisite of EU membership, and therefore Scotland wouldn’t be eligible if it was using Sterling as its currency OUTSIDE of a formal currency union with the rUK.

In fairness, that’s an assertion that quite a few people have made during the debate, and the commenter – eventually, having been repeatedly challenged for evidence to back up his claim – managed to provide a couple of examples, in the form of the New Statesman’s George Eaton and the Telegraph’s Andrew Lilico.

The problem, of course, was that those were just equally empty assertions which provided no evidence. So rather than argue the toss over interpretations of obtuse legalese, we thought we’d just go straight to the horse’s mouth, and we rang Graham Blyth, the Head of Office of the European Commission in Scotland.

Being such important people, we got straight through.

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The Wee Blue Book is extremely close to finished now, readers. We’re just buffing the corners. But we thought you might like to get a head start on one bit of it.

As well as trying to answer all the reasonable and sensible questions that undecided or No voters might have of the Yes side, the book will encourage them to ask a few tricky ones of their No representatives too, because we’ve been waiting two-and-a-half years for the media to do it with no luck.

But as you’ve been so awesome at writing to your MPs and MSPs before, enabling us to (for example) shed some cruelly harsh light on the full shambolic incoherence of Labour’s devolution plans, it seemed only fair that you got to have a go first.

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We got our reply (emphasis added):

“Good afternoon,

Thank you for your recent telephone call to the NHSBT Donor Line.

I can confirm that Scottish independence will not affect organ donation and the system will continue as it does currently.

I hope this answers your query, please let me know if you require any further information and I will be happy to help.

Kind regards,

Tom Kempster
ODR Assistant

NHS Blood and Transplant
Organ Donation and Transplantation Directorate
Fox Den Road
Stoke Gifford
Bristol
BS34 8RR”

Tom didn’t actually say the words “Gordon Brown is lying through his teeth to terrify Scottish people into voting No”, but we think it’s pretty much implied.

We telephoned Organ Donation Scotland on Friday for their reaction to the despicable scare stories being put around by a teenage Labour activist from Liverpool bussed up to Scotland last week by the No campaign.

We’re still waiting for them to get back to us with a quote. But in the meantime, it’s been predictable – but no less disgraceful – to see senior Labour figures repeating the lie. It all seems to be part of a major Unionist offensive on health, doubtless sparked by fears that privatisation of the English NHS will lead to a significant reduction in the Scottish block grant and corresponding damage to the Scottish health service.

The No camp, unsurprisingly, has chosen to fight fear with fear.

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Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson, bless her wee heart, is banging once again in today’s Scottish Sun on the drum she’s made her own personal pet issue of the referendum campaign – the BBC.

The Tory chief – who likes to bash the public sector but has spent almost her entire life funded by the taxpayer, first as a Beeb employee, then as a student at a Scottish university and now as an MSP – notes that viewers in Ireland pay £5.50 a month to access the iPlayer, and that the same fate might befall an independent Scotland.

It sounds a reasonable argument, but like so many of the No camp’s assertions it unfortunately falls to pieces under the pressure of reality.

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