Wings Over Scotland

Scottish nationalist style:

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You’re not too late to catch Alistair Darling’s latest unveiling of “the positive case for the Union” via a live webcast on the “Better Together” website this morning. As we write he’s 10 minutes late, and the audience is rocketing towards triple figures.

We’re all playing bingo. Come and join us.

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We’ve spoken before of the difficulty of empirically demonstrating anti-independence bias in the Scottish and UK media, because of the relative rarity of directly comparable situations. So today we’re pleased to see one of them present itself.

Michael Gray of National Collective recently visited Scandinavia and did a nice bit of journalism, securing quotes from a number of senior Danish politicians to the effect that an independent Scotland’s membership of the EU would be “a mere formality” and that the subject was “a non-issue”.

Good news. But how does it help us illustrate media bias?

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Oh dear, here we go again. The latest Scotsman/SoS poll yesterday afternoon:

And here it is this morning:

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It’s “Follow Friday” on Twitter (as it is every Friday). So for those of you still scared to take the plunge into this most modern of communication tools, we thought we’d put together a handy one-stop list of 50 of Scottish politics’ most significant tweeters, and see if we can get you started.

(Click the images to visit the pages.)

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We know we go on about this, but it’s pretty important. A few days ago Edinburgh University held an independence debate which was unusually mature and reasonable in its tone (probably because of the absence of any representatives from Labour).

One of the six panellists was Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie, and one of his contributions contained a couple of notable truths, one more significant than the other.

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In the introduction to the chilling “V For Vendetta” (the brilliant comic book, not the awful movie), author Alan Moore wrote some words that have stayed with us:

“I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It’s cold and it’s mean-spirited and I don’t like it here any more.”

That was in 1988, and as far as we know Alan Moore still lives in Northampton. Perhaps he couldn’t think of anywhere better to go. But two pieces in today’s papers illustrate the bleak phenomenon he was talking about better than we could hope to explain, and it’s more true now than ever. You should read both of them if you want to understand modern Britain. Here’s the cause, and here’s the effect.

If you think it’s a coincidence, maybe you need to open your eyes a bit.

A couple of weeks ago we noted something rather curious in the Daily Record. Interpreted a certain way, it seemed as if the ultra-Unionist paper was tentatively preparing the ground for a possible seismic event. Some readers poured scorn on the assessment, but we’re not sure it’s going to be as easy to dismiss a second time.

Today’s edition carries a lengthy piece by political editor and fervent SNP-basher Torcuil Crichton, based around the “Home Rule” vision of iconic 1920s Labour MP James Maxton. You can read the whole thing here, but the key passage is hiding at the end – in fact, in the very last paragraph.

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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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A couple of weeks ago we went to the rather excellent “Propaganda – Power And Persuasion” exhibition at the British Library in London. If that’s a bit too much of a trek for you, the book only costs £4 more than entry to the exhibition and contains a large proportion of the content. Sadly, though, it misses the single best exhibit.

The piece in question is a small, scruffy hand-written piece of paper on which press baron Viscount Northcliffe had scribbled half-a-dozen cardinal rules of propaganda – as part of his work in that role during World War 1 –  in terms so clear and concise it took our breath away. Photography was banned at the show, and the lines were so good we may yet have to go back and pay another nine quid in order to copy them down.

We’re pretty sure Scotland on Sunday’s Euan McColm has read them, though.

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There’s a rather odd opinion column by Des Clarke in the Daily Record today. Entitled “Let’s be proud Scots and get our own proper version of America’s Independence Day”, readers might reasonably assume it had something to do with, well, independence.

Instead, the 500-word piece talks about pretty much anything else. Des, a DJ for London-based radio network Capital FM, throws out an almost-complete bingo card of Scottish stereotypes – kilts, Jimmy hats, deep-frying, Buckfast, it’s all there – while bemoaning the lack of a Scottish national holiday like the one the Americans have every July 4th to celebrate winning their independence from the UK.

But impressively, he manages to make not a single reference, even obliquely, to the fact the Scotland is going to be actually voting on independence next year, which one might imagine would provide the perfect excuse for just such an annual shindig.

We’re not saying it’s sinister. It’s just a bit weird.

We might have to make this a regular mirror strand to “Quoted for truth”. We’re struggling to get our heads round a particularly dim-witted piece in today’s Scotsman by Gregor Gall, a left-wing academic who the paper notes is “professor of industrial relations at the University of Bradford and lives in Edinburgh”. (Tough commute.)

It’s full of all manner of illogical cobblers (we have a feeling that we saw The Illogical Cobblers supporting Birdland at the Edinburgh Venue in about 1989, but that’s another story), from which one passage really leaps out with its underpants on its head.

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