Wings Over Scotland

We’ve been getting very confused today by the (New) Sunday Herald. Last night the paper’s “Investigations Editor” Paul Hutcheon tweeted that this morning’s edition would carry an “exclusive” on how a psychologist was telling the SNP to avoid using the word “independence”. Mr Hutcheon was clearly pretty excited about this breaking story, as he plugged it again a few hours later, and has gone on to tweet about it no fewer than 31 more times (figure correct at time of writing) during the course of the day.

But weirdly, this great “exclusive”, rather than being splashed all over the front page as you might expect, didn’t manage to make the online edition of the newspaper at all.

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We were intrigued by a piece we read on the Sunday Mail’s website today. It centred on last Thursday’s session of First Minister’s Questions, when Labour MSP Michael McMahon used (rather improperly) a constituency question to make a political attack on Alex Salmond. The FM slapped the question down, angrily noting that McMahon’s allegation about Salmond calling HMRC on behalf of Sir David Murray with regard to Rangers was categorically untrue, and later issuing a statement pointing out that his only call to HMRC came eight months AFTER Murray sold the club to Craig Whyte.

In the Mail’s story McMahon’s subsequent posture was full of bravado, insisting that he wasn’t about to apologise. “I stand by my comments and Alex Salmond knows they are true, as his response showed how much the truth gets under his skin”, he retorted, but what he said next demonstrated an admirably bold and inventive redefinition of the term “standing by my comments”. See if you can spot the difference.

FIRST MINISTER’S QUESTIONS VERSION:

“The First Minister was quick to call HMRC for his friend Sir David Murray“

“I STAND BY MY COMMENTS” VERSION:

“The First Minister has shown in the past that he is happy to come running to the aid of his bigwig friends when they are in trouble. For example, the way he tried to pressurise HMRC to apply special treatment in the wake of the damage caused to Rangers by his pal Sir David Murray.”

Keen students of the English language may have spotted a subtle alteration there. In the first version, Salmond was allegedly trying to use his influence for the benefit of Sir David Murray personally, on account of their supposed close friendship. In the second, the First Minister was allegedly trying to assist Rangers Football Club, owned by Craig Whyte, to recover from damage CAUSED BY Sir David Murray.

(This would presumably imply that Salmond was also a friend of Craig Whyte, an assertion which must be sailing fairly close to defamation in the current climate. And since Murray has repeatedly publicly claimed that both he and Rangers were “duped by” Whyte, it’s rather stretching the bounds of plausibility to imagine that Salmond could have been helping Whyte at Murray’s behest or on his behalf.)

Wings Over Scotland would like to applaud Michael McMahon for his bold and courageous refusal to back down on this issue, and that furthermore we’re standing by those comments when we point out that in fact he’s a contemptible liar who even lies about his lies in an impressive illustration of the fine art of meta-lying, in order to cover up what was in reality a weasel-worded and entirely craven retraction of them. And you can, or possibly can’t, quote us on that.

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When you’re a journalist, it’s not uncommon to see your work hacked to bits in the time between being emailed to the commissioning editor and appearing in print. We long ago lost count of the number of times we’ve had vital explanatory passages chopped out leaving subsequent sections orphaned and incomprehensible, or the number of abominable, remedial-level grammatical errors and typos we’ve had inserted into our immaculately-proofed copy by a hapless young sub-editor from the generation when schools gave up teaching kids how to spell.

One of the most annoying things, though, is seeing your stuff go out with a headline that bears no relation to what the piece was supposed to be saying. It happens to the great and the good as much as to cub reporters and journeyman hacks – star Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker and the Independent’s high-profile political/feminist writer Laurie Penny have both suffered in recent weeks – and it drives writers crazy.

So we were only mildly startled to be browsing this morning’s Scotsman and see this:

The article itself features the words “independent” or “independence” six times, and mentions the concept of “separation” only once, in the sentence “This isn’t exactly the separatist fanaticism painted by some opponents”. That sentence is fairly obviously a critical reference to the Unionist camp’s dogged use of the word “separation” as a pejorative, intended to imply isolation, parochialism and xenophobia.

Hassan’s piece isn’t a partisan call to arms for either side, nor even one about the language of the referendum debate, but a calm, considered plea for a much wider, non-political, mature discussion of the sort of Scotland we want to see in the future (ie the same article Gerry’s been writing over and over again for the last year or more).

We can’t say with absolute 100% certainty that the article’s headline – which takes a sledgehammer and pneumatic drill to that happy notion and smashes it to a pile of ironic rubble – is indeed the work of the Scotsman (we’ve asked Gerry and await reply) but at this point we’d be happy to have a tenner on it.

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It’s been remarkable watching the awkward reactions of Alex Salmond’s detractors to his appearance at the Leveson inquiry yesterday. Over two hours of questioning didn’t manage so much as a scratch on the First Minister, with even ardent Unionist hacks forced to admit that Salmond was “skooshing” the proceedings and describing it as an “effortless stroll” for the SNP leader. Even the Herald’s Iain Macwhirter, a normally-intelligent commentator recently driven half-demented by hatred for Murdoch, was forced to concede that Salmond had sailed through unharmed.

With opposition politicians and activists (and even some supposedly-loyal nationalists) having long been forecasting a humiliating inquisition for Salmond at the hands of Robert Jay, there’s currently a great deal of sour muttering and embarrassed shuffling of feet going on in Unionist ranks, personified on Newsnight Scotland last night by Labour’s unfortunate Paul Martin, who didn’t seem to quite know what to do with himself except mumble some vague waffle about there having been no conclusive proof that the Scottish Government maintaining cordial relations with one of Scotland’s largest private-sector employers would likely be beneficial to Scottish employment.

The depressing thing about the opposition’s reaction is its sheer petulance and intellectual bankruptcy, typified by a thoroughly dispiriting argument we had yesterday. It doesn’t matter how comprehensively, how often or by whom the SNP are cleared of any sort of wrongdoing, or how many rational, logical, sensible explanations for things are offered – Labour and the other opponents of independence simply turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, flatly refusing to accept any reality they don’t like and endlessly repeating their demands for “answers”, even though they’ve just been given them.

For the record and easy reference, though, we’ll quickly run through them again below.

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It’s been months since we freed an interesting piece of writing from behind a paywall, but this opinion column from today’s Times deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in the nationalist cause, and we can’t claim to be experiencing any great guilt about depriving News International of 0.0000001p in order to bring you it.

It’s an analysis of Ed Miliband’s bizarre “Englishness” speech yesterday (which gets odder and odder the more you examine it), and aside from making the lazy, clumsy but common error of asserting that Labour can’t win in England alone it’s a thoughtful and interesting piece highlighting the contradictions between Miliband’s assertions and depictions of Englishness and his Unionism. Read it below.

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At least, that’s the impression you’d get from today’s Guardian. Not one but two pieces by Severin Carrell are both illustrated with pictures of the Deputy FM this morning – one in front of a Saltire for good measure – with very little justification to be found in the text below.

The first piece, which is prominently displayed on the front page of the Guardian website doesn’t even feature a quote from the Health Secretary – she gets just a single passing mention in the fourth paragraph – while the second at least does include a couple, but not until seven paragraphs in.

You can’t avoid pictures of Sturgeon whichever of the paper’s four articles on the outbreak you choose – every single one has her image on either the story or itself or the “related” column, sometimes doubled up. It’s clear that the reader is meant to associate the outbreak with Sturgeon, and while it’s a slightly more nuanced approach than Carrell has adopted previously, there’s no mistaking the intent, especially when it’s backed up by innuendo from reliable Labour rent-a-quotes:

The first case of Legionnaires’ Disease in Edinburgh was identified on Sunday, and the 16 cooling towers thought to be responsible were discovered and sterilised on Sunday night and Monday morning, despite the public holiday. We’re not sure how much more rapidly Lord Foulkes imagines the Scottish Government could have acted, but with the help of friendly media the subtle smear will seep out anyway. The Scotsman’s first “SNP accused” headline can surely only be hours away.

We’ve seen lots of UK media running stories about US satirist Jon Stewart’s mocking report on American coverage of the Diamond Jubilee, fronted by an extra-oily Piers Morgan. It’s pretty funny, but sadly everywhere we’ve seen it posted (except Gawker, which only has the first four minutes of eight) uses the same broken embedded stream, so you can’t actually watch it. Until now, that is.

YouTube’s fiendish software somehow knew that it was a clip of a copyrighted show and immediately threw a prissy little huffy-fit, which stops us embedding it here, but you can right-click on the image and download the video file, or just left-click to watch.

(We recommend the former for speed and convenience – if you choose to stream by left-clicking, there’ll be a pause of a few minutes while it buffers before playing.)

Enjoy some chuckles, and note with passing interest that to our cousins across the pond, the words “England” and “UK” are still interchangeable. Either that, or they have a surprisingly astute grasp of how little Scotland cares.

Speaking as a professional journalist, the most flattering thing that can happen in your career is when major publishers pay you to write features. The second-best form of flattery is imitation, and at Wings Over Scotland we’re getting increasingly used to it.

Our more seasoned readers will recall examples such as the New Statesman’s enthusiastic “borrowing” of our popular Alex Salmond Dictator-Comparison Bingo piece, which they at least had the courtesy to acknowledge in print, albeit belatedly and after quite a lot of people shouting at them on Twitter. (It was such a good idea the Caledonian Mercury did its own tribute too.)

We’ve also been gratified to see other people finally picking up on the core and crucial observation about the nature of the independence referendum that we’ve been pushing since November 2011. (We won’t claim the credit for it being at the heart of the Yes Scotland campaign itself – we’re sure they knew it all along.)

Today, though, the thing we’re finding oddly familiar is a piece in Scotland on Sunday called “Will the SPL survive without Rangers?” The title and theme will ring an obvious bell with the over 20,000 viewers who’ve read our all-time most popular post, but the specifics are the really intriguing part, focusing as they do on the fact that several teams in particular wouldn’t be as badly damaged by the possible demise of Rangers as most of the media commentariat insists.

If we mention that the teams in question are Dundee United, Dundee, Hearts and Hibs, you’ll perhaps catch our drift. It’s nice to get paid for your analytical insight and research (and tracking down Dundee’s attendances from over half a decade ago was a tougher task than you might think) rather than just having other people take advantage of it, but setting the mainstream media’s agenda is at least some modest consolation.

Just a quick one, as we’re obviously very busy today putting out our Union Jack bunting and preparing our street party. Kenneth Roy of the Scottish Review, along with Peter “Moridura” Curran, is one of the Cranky Old Men of the nationalist movement, and we have to admit we often find his work rather hard going, for all its worthiness – not least because of the abominable, near-unreadable layout of the SR website.

It’s currently running a series (comprising an unknown number of parts) about the Lockerbie bombing, and the first piece was a bizarre, crotchety attack on the grammar of the Scottish Government’s official statement about the death of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The second, however, which we link to in its slightly less eye-mangling reproduction on Newsnet Scotland, is unmissable.

If you’ve got Lockerbie fatigue, don’t worry – it’s only passingly about the events of that grim night in 1988. Instead, it sends out a powerful and damning message about democracy, and in particular the public accountability of governments to the people. The message could be summed up as “use it or lose it”, but if you read nothing else today we urge you to read Roy’s rather more evocative illustration.

Okay, we’ve steeled ourselves. We’re going back in. In this feature we’re going to attempt to pick out the few interesting snippets that could be gleaned from the abysmal shambles of last night’s referendum debate, because underneath all the juvenile squabbling and monkey applause there were a couple.

Don’t believe us? Put your foot through the telly after 20 minutes? Read on.

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I’ve been a nationalist pretty much all my life, or at least since I was old enough to grasp the basic concept of politics (probably from about the age of 10 or so). Leaving aside any precocious notions of specific policies, I’ve never been able to grasp the basic concept of a people who consider themselves to be a nation being afraid to actually stand up and take responsibility for running that nation themselves.

If you think you’re a country, you shouldn’t be having foreigners pick your government for you. And if you don’t, you need to accept that you’re just a region with ideas above its station, and act accordingly – no more “national” football teams, no rugby teams, no flags, no anthems, no different laws or any of the rest of it.

To me, the idea goes far beyond anything so base as cowardice, and belongs instead in the realm of “simply too mad to understand”. It’s like not believing in gravity or evolution or the Earth being round and orbiting the Sun – that is, once someone’s pointed it out to you, it’s just a bit mental to keep disputing it.

Nobody can have two countries, or at least not simultaneously. You can be a citizen of somewhere, carry a passport for it, live there for as long as you like, or whatever else, but countries are like wives and livers – you can only have one at a time. You can change your nationality, if that’s what’s in your heart, but not have two at once. I’ve only agreed with Norman Tebbit about one thing in my entire life, and it’s that.

I’m Scottish. I’m British too, just like I’m from West Lothian and from Europe and from the Northern Hemisphere and plenty more things, but only one of them is my country. As such, I believe that it’s a self-evident truth that the government of Scotland should be chosen by the people of Scotland, and the people of Scotland alone.

But occasionally, just very occasionally, I have the misfortune to witness something like BBC Scotland’s “Big Debate” last night, and I’m not so sure we can be trusted.

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The Scottish media’s response to Friday’s launch of the Yes Scotland campaign in an Edinburgh cinema has been, as you might expect, extensive and varied.

Some of the coverage was dismayingly predictable, some of it rather more surprising.

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