Wings Over Scotland

Today’s Daily Mail carries a dismal article under a hysterical essay of a headline reading “Homes vandalised, accused of stealing jobs and an atmosphere of discriminatory intimidation: The savage racism turning Scotland into a no-go zone for the English”. (It actually describes a couple of minor incidents, spread over several years, affecting a single elderly couple in Stirling, without a shred of evidence that they were in fact motivated by their Englishness.)

There are undoubtedly small pockets of anti-English racism to be found in parts of Scotland, like there are small pockets of every kind of racism and prejudice found in every country in the world. But why would any Scottish person ever be driven to feel animosity towards the English – our friends, our family and our neighbours?

Not just because of a few isolated nutters on Facebook, surely?

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Alert readers will already be aware that former Labour MP, minister and nuclear-power lobbyist Brian Wilson is one of our least favourite figures in the independence debate.

A man utterly consumed by tribal hatred of the SNP – even by the standards of Scottish Labour, which is no mean accolade – his Scotsman columns are some of the most mendacious, bilious propaganda to be found in the country, to the extent that we don’t even link to them in our “Zany Comedy Relief” section.

Today, however, he’s outdone himself in spectacular style.

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…you probably write for the Express.

Yesterday we posted a couple of tweets observing the fact that the Scottish media had conspicuously ignored the phenomenon that is The Wee Blue Book. (We’d have made more of the total blanking had we been even a little bit surprised.)

Despite having extensively reported almost every other document published about the referendum debate (such as Sir Tom Hunter’s almost-impenetrable digital-only effort), the press saw nothing at all newsworthy about a 72-page book that’s been downloaded over 400,000 times online and which a small team of complete amateurs had managed to fund, print and distribute more than 250,000 physical copies of in a matter of days, with demand still far outstripping supply.

But it turned out we were being a little unfair.

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If anyone was still harbouring any doubts as to the significance of last night’s poll news, they would surely have been dispelled by this serious, thought-provoking and perceptive analysis on the BBC news channel’s “The Papers” roundup last night.

Of course, the poll might be a rogue. It might just be a temporary bounce from the second Salmond-Darling debate. And it still shows No in front. The Yes campaign will have to redouble its efforts in the last couple of weeks, not start congratulating itself.

But the one thing we can surely all agree on, right across the political divides, is that the most important aspect is whether someone might at some point have been slightly rude to Andrew Lloyd Webber on Twitter or not.

We thought this deserved a wider audience after the Herald’s appalling front-page lead scare story today by Michael Settle and Kate Devlin, channelling Jim Murphy MP:

“SCOTTISH POLICE FEDERATION
5 Woodside Place, Glasgow, G3 7QF

MEDIA RELEASE

The Scottish Police Federation represents all police officers in the ranks of constable, sergeant, inspector and chief inspector, police cadets and special constables, over 18,500 people, 98% of all police officers in Scotland.

To: News Editor
Date: 1 September 2014
Subject: Independence Referendum

In response to the suggestion of absolute carnage in and around polling stations on the 18th Sept Brian Docherty, Chairman of the Scottish Police Federation said;

‘The independence debate has been robust but overwhelmingly good natured and it would prove a disservice to those who have participated in it thus far to suggest that with 17 days to go, Scotland is about to disintegrate into absolute carnage on the back of making the most important decision in the country’s history.

Politicians and supporters of whichever point of view need to be mindful of the potential impact of intemperate, inflammatory and exaggerated language, lest they be seen to seek to create a self fulfilling prophecy‘

ENDS”

Oooft. ‘Nuff said.

The Daily Record, 27 Aug 2014:

“[Gordon] Brown said SNP proposals to cut corporation tax would benefit large companies, including energy firms.

‘The biggest beneficiaries of the SNP’s tax policy are the shareholders and directors of the privatised energy companies in Scotland,” he said. ‘”When you look at the Scottish National Party policies, inequality and poverty will survive until doomsday if Alex Salmond is all that confronts it.”

And Mr Brown again in the Observer, 31 August 2014:

“You’ve got to look at what the SNP is proposing. They’re dining out on Scottish traditions of equality to suggest that Scotland will always be more just in the policies we implement, but their only tax proposal is to cut corporation tax for the richest companies in the country.

They want to cut corporation tax by 3p in the pound. That’s less for health and pensions, not more.”

Veteran readers will know where we’re going next.

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From today’s Financial Times:

“Buyout groups Blackstone and Blue Water Energy are providing $500m to Siccar Point Energy, a new UK-focused oil company, in one of the largest ever private equity investments in North Sea oil.

Investment in the UK North Sea reached a record level of £14.4bn last year, raising hopes that oil and gas production could start to pick up again after years of decline.

‘This is one of the most opportune times to buy assets in the North Sea,’ said Jonathan Roger, chief executive of Siccar Point. ‘The market is very buoyant.'”

Sounds terrible. No wonder Gordon Brown’s so depressed.

Thank goodness there are only 18 days of the independence campaign remaining. We’re not sure we have the capacity to absorb much more idiocy like the below.

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If you’ll forgive one of my very rare switches to the first-person view, readers, I’ve found the last few days in the independence referendum particularly weird.

That’s because my current life is curiously mirroring my previous one as a videogames journalist. The gaming community is at present mired in a convulsive orgy of the most mindboggling horror over something called “GamerGate”, which I couldn’t even begin to decribe adequately to you, because frankly you wouldn’t believe me and I’m not sure the words exist to do it justice anyway.

By way of illustration of that fact, this article on games website VG24/7 is, genuinely, by far the best, most accurate summary and analysis of the situation that I’ve read. (Twitter followers will already have seen me tweet a couple of random samples of what’s going on. I urge you, if you can, to endure the entirety of that second link, and note that it’s had almost FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND views.)

But while proving that the sort of abusive insanity pervading the world of videogames makes even the absolute worst of indyref name-calling look like two kittens with woolly hats on having a meow-off over who gets first shot at a saucer of milk, the core principles are the same – a tiny handful of total boneheads having their actions blown out of all proportion by the press in a shock-horror frenzy bearing no relation to the actual experiences of 99.9% of people.

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Several papers today report that “Better Together” are filing a complaint with the BBC about the audience at Monday’s debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling, alleging bias in both audience composition and question selection – claiming that 10 questions favoured the Yes side to only three favouring No.

We’re not really sure how a question can favour either side, but the sour-grapes move does raise an interesting issue, which we’re going to illustrate with an example from the debate the BBC ran the following evening in Edinburgh.

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An alert reader drew our attention to a piece in the Telegraph on Monday.

“The pro-UK Better Together campaign said it plans to “turn majority support into a majority vote” by contacting every household at least three times over the next month and every undecided voter at least four times.

Up to a million postal voters will be contacted and more than 25,000 activists will be working to mobilise support for No ahead of polling day. The campaign will also be using advertising on websites such as Facebook to reach 500,000 undecided women.”

Lordy, where to start?

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