Wings Over Scotland

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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Oddly, despite much trailing of it before publication, we haven’t seen any major coverage of Alex Salmond’s lengthy interview with the New Statesman last week in the media. We kept forgetting to go to the shop for a copy, but today we downloaded the magazine’s iPad app, which contains the full interview among its free content.

That being the case, we’re comfortable with reprinting it for the purposes of discussion. We’ve tidied the formatting up for ease of reading – the NS’s sub-editor/style guide compiler needs shooting, frankly – and added our own commentary (in red) where appropriate. A few quibbles aside, it’s a fascinating and quoteable piece. Have a read.

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A new voice in the referendum debate – ladies and gents, Professor John Curtice!

Thank goodness. We hadn’t seen him on TV in hours, we thought he’d died.

Each bright new day brings a fresh game of Spot The Magnus Gardham Headline here at WingsLand Towers, but we were a bit thrown by this morning’s front page.

“Economists say indyref could drive investors away” is pure Magnus, but that four-word qualifier tacked on the end is a bit out of character. What could be going on?

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Today’s editorial leader in Scotland on Sunday is really interesting, from a language nerd’s perspective (ie very much on our turf). Entitled “A warning to No campaign”, the column – nominally on the subject of pensions under devolution – purports to criticise said group, noting that “the Better Together campaign, by repeatedly presenting the idea of change as a threat, is doing Scotland no favours.”

But lurking just barely below the surface is an entirely different agenda.

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A recurring source of amusement for the independence camp is the weekly reader poll in Scotland On Sunday. Time and again the surveys fall victim to deeply-implausible sudden surges in backing for the Unionist option, often in the middle of the night and usually after Yes supporters have drawn attention to less favourable standings.

(The paper’s deputy editor Kenny Farquharson once memorably tried to explain away 25,000 overnight votes – in a poll which had attracted about a tenth that many* in the entire preceding week – as having come from American and Canadian readers, all having inexplicably decided to vote at once on the same day.)

A fairly typical example of the phenomenon, from back in April, can be seen here, but the No campaign’s IT black-ops department appears to have suffered from a bit of an itchy trigger finger this morning and pushed the bounds of credibility a little too far.

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Scotland on Sunday, 17 June 2013:

“[Johann Lamont] can be awful on telly. One recent encounter, in which she was asked repeatedly whether or not she favoured keeping Trident, has been transcribed on a politics blog and makes grim reading – a masterclass in prevarication, hesitation and the making of fudge.”

It’s nice to know those horrible hours of painstaking effort pay off sometimes.

Here’s the Labour diehard, former Lord Provost of Glasgow and regular Scotsman columnist, Michael Kelly, on last night’s concluding episode of “Road To Referendum”:

As befitting a tribal dinosaur of the old Scottish political school, Kelly popped up to proffer a vintage line that’s fallen out of favour with the No campaign, namely that Scotland is too wee and too poor to go it alone. But it was something else he said in the same segment that caught our ear.

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