We know you’re not really very big on boring old politics while there are still reality TV “celebrities” alive and desperately punting their “leaked” sex tapes, Scottish Sun On Sunday, but we could probably do with just a little bit more to go on than this:
Investors Chronicle (part of the Financial Times group), 25 July 2014:
(Our emphases.) We all suspected as much, of course. But the Investors Chronicle isn’t exactly a renowned fount of Scottish-nationalist propaganda – for 150 years it’s been making its living out of telling the City of London how to get richer. If you want to find out what the UK’s wealthy elite REALLY think about the North Sea’s prospects, you won’t find a much better indicator.
So if it’s telling its readers to dive in on oil companies which had a big DROP in profits last year (you know, the freak low year for oil tax receipts that the UK government just loves to use as the foundation for its theatrically gloomy analyses of an independent Scotland’s finances), it’s probably worth taking note.
There’s an article on the BBC website today with the self-explanatory title of “Scottish independence: How would the UK fare without Scotland?”
On the left is what it said yesterday (that losing Scotland would be bad for the UK). On the right is what it says today (that losing Scotland would be good for the UK).
Does anyone know what calamity befell Scotland’s economy overnight?
Yesterday a number of news outlets including the Scotsman, the Courier and STV all carried a scare story from Gordon Brown about independence ending cross-border organ transplants. Curiously, none of them had thought to check the allegation with NHS Blood & Transplant, so we did it for them, and got the unequivocal and unambiguous answer back that “Scottish independence will not affect organ donation and the system will continue as it does currently.”
You’d imagine that the publications concerned would have wanted to put their readers’ minds at rest by publishing that categorical reasssurance today, wouldn’t you?
You know how the rest goes by now, readers.
Alert readers may have spotted that today’s Sunday Herald features Professor Adam Tomkins and myself for its weekly “In The Hot Seat” interviews with opposing figures in the independence debate. The paper’s Investigations Editor Paul Hutcheon flew down from Glasgow on Wednesday, and we had an interesting and enjoyable two-and-a-half-hour chat on the subject of the referendum and politics in general.
Obviously it’s not easy to edit that down to a short 1,000-word article. But just for fun, I thought it might be enlightening to compare the content of the two columns.
From today’s Sunday Times.
Kerry Gill in the Scottish Daily Express, 17 July 2014:
“Two months to go until the referendum, but acrimony will last for years
Our emphasis. It sure is a mystery where this “acrimony” is coming from, eh readers? Perhaps, if we all have to get along together after the referendum, it might possibly be better not to engage in furious, unhinged rants where you call your opponents a bunch of racist bigots. Just a thought, like.
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.
The media and the No camp, in so far as those are two different things, got incredibly excited today about some comments made by new European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in which he said that the EU wouldn’t undergo any further enlargement for the next five years.
“Juncker deals blow to Alex Salmond’s EU claims” (Telegraph)
“Independence: Juncker deals blow to Scots EU plans” (Scotsman)
“Alex Salmond’s dream of staying in the EU dealt a blow by new President of the European Commission” (Daily Record)
“Blow for SNP as Junker [sic] rules out EU expansion” (Express)
“Unionists hail Juncker ‘hammer blow’ to Scotland’s EU place” (Financial Times)
So far so mundane. And then something odd, but welcome, happened.
To be fair, the article in today’s Sunday Mirror isn’t shy about setting out its position.
“In the end it will all come down to two little words. One of which will save our 300-year union with Scotland. The other will rip it to shreds. If Scotland’s Bravehearts vote YES on September 18 it will tear apart that union which has seen both countries’ men march shoulder-to-shoulder in two world wars.
It’s all in there – “tear apart”, “rip to shreds”, Braveheart, two world wars, Rule Britannia blah blah etc – inside the first 100 words, so you know what’s coming. Although we’re pretty sure you’re not supposed to leave umbilical cords attached for centuries.
But as it turns out, that’s the most sensible part.
We assume Danny Alexander has been writing for the Record this morning.
We still haven’t been issued with our special UK Goverment Scottish Independence Costs Calculator by the Treasury, but we nevertheless still feel fairly confident that £550 million minus £250 million is £300 million, not £3 billion.
Our ever-alert readers will almost certainly recall – for it was only four days ago – this piece, in which we noted the Scottish media’s curious reluctance to cover what looked like a pretty blockbusting story.
Professor Sir Donald Mackay of the pro-devolution think tank Reform Scotland, an extremely distinguished businessman and adviser to the UK government, wrote a stinging article for the Sunday Times rubbishing the Office for Budget Responsibility’s gloomy forecasts for North Sea oil revenue in the coming decades, and suggesting that the real figures were likely to be over £8 billion a year higher.
Despite the enormous effect such a sum would have on the economy of an independent Scotland – wiping out the highest estimate of its deficit at a stroke and leaving it with an annual surplus of hundreds of millions of pounds – the rest of the media uncharacteristically didn’t swipe the ST’s story for their Monday editions.
But then the OBR issued a new forecast.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
