Wings Over Scotland

Supporters of independence are enjoying an unusual feeling this morning – enjoying an issue of the Daily Mail. A screaming front-page headline warns of a “CRISIS” in the No campaign, and a double-page spread inside lays into “Better Together” chairman Alistair Darling, while Professor John Curtice lambasts the work of the ex-Chancellor and his team of “Abominable No Men” to date, noting that:

“To be effective, a campaign message needs three qualities. It needs to tell voters something new about a subject that matters to them, it has to be delivered by a credible source and it should not be widely disputed. The No side’s messages have fallen flat on all three grounds.

The No side often gives the impression constant criticism of independence will win the day. Maybe it is time for it to think again.”

And in fairness, the Unionist camp has reacted positively.

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Sorry we’ve been a bit post-light today, readers. The phone’s barely stopped ringing, and when it did it was only for long enough to scratch the surface of an avalanche of tweets and emails, all concerning this week’s zany goings-on with the Glasgow Subway. Suffice it to say that you haven’t heard half of what’s transpired yet, but we hope to bring you the full story pretty soon.

For now, for anyone who missed them, STV, BBC and the Guardian.

The advert below is being distributed by Glasgow Subway to its passengers today.

But that’s okay, because it’s not “political”.

We think we might have just worked out why Scottish newspaper sales are in irreversible decline, readers. It’s because if you buy the papers for about two weeks you can just keep them in a drawer, bring them out a few weeks later and read all the same stories again without having to pay for them twice.

Because in the Scottish media, every day is Groundhog Day.

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There’s an interesting survey over on the Herald at the moment. Self-selecting and therefore non-scientific, it’s nevertheless quite intriguing, with (the paper notes) strong support for the Scottish Government’s positions on childcare, Trident, renationalising the Royal Mail and encouraging more flights from Scottish airports, but opposition to its plans to cut Corporation Tax.

A couple of the other results, though, are reported a bit more oddly.

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Earlier this week we noticed the curious lack of media coverage of the “Devo Nano” report. As the document spelling out Labour’s “more powers” offer to Scotland in the event of a No vote, its release was ostensibly the most important milestone so far in the independence debate, so we found it very strange to see it get such a muted reception, particularly from the Daily Record.

Two days later the explanation arrived, in the form of the so-called “Red Paper”. Described by some journalists as a “mini-manifesto”, it was a 64-page uncosted wishlist of vague feelgood notions like reducing child poverty. (A brave, daring and controversial step there to be sure.) And this time the papers were all over it.

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Alert readers will know that one of this site’s key themes for the last several months has been examining the true meaning of Labour’s pledge to “pool and share resources” within the UK if Scotland votes No – pointing out that as Scotland is one of the wealthiest parts of the UK due to its oil resources, “pooling and sharing” means diverting more Scottish money to poor parts of England and Wales.

(Northern Ireland already gets the biggest share of UK spending.)

And those same readers will also have noted our ongoing puzzlement at the continued failure of any Scottish reporters or broadcasters to question Labour on that point. But is it possible to solve this unfathomable mystery?

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An extraordinary front-page headline in today’s Herald blares “Miliband pledges positive case for Union as No inject love into debate”. (We apologise to any readers we may have just inadvertently upset with the thought of Ed Miliband “injecting love” into them while they’re still digesting their breakfast.)

The article’s rather shy on details of Ed’s positive case, but luckily the Guardian has it.

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Yesterday, as the full (lack of) magnitude of Labour’s feeble devolution proposals became apparent, we wondered how they’d go down with the Union’s supporters in the media. We’d been detecting a certain anxiety over the last few weeks, a feeling that those in the press who back a seriously beefed-up settlement were uncomfortable with what it was becoming increasingly clear was going to be delivered.

So we were genuinely unsure which way the newspapers would leap. Would they flog Devo Nano for all it was worth, hyping it to the heavens as the only thing they had to go with, or would some be so dismayed at Labour’s quivering, lettuce-limp absence of ambition that they’d turn on the party in disgust?

The truth was somewhere in between.

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Well, this is the month of the Mad March Hare, we suppose.

First we had Bernard Ponsonby telling us that the referendum was a choice between independence and a completely imaginary “more powers” option. Next up was Hamish Macdonell in the Spectator, oddly hallucinating that David Cameron had announced “devo max” when in fact he’d announced devo nothing at all.

At the weekend (and, we suspect, all this week) there were journalists insisting that Johann Lamont was offering Scots major advances devolution when in fact she was essentially offering the 2009 Calman Commission with a new ribbon tied on it.

But the winner is surely David Torrance in today’s Herald.

“This was the first Scottish Conservative gathering I can remember in quite a while where there were visible signs of political life. Ms Davidson made the best conference speech of her leadership, actually connecting with her audience, while usefully the venue, Edinburgh’s shiny EICC, didn’t conform to type by being dusty and half-empty.”

Our emphasis. But, um…

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Heavens above, readers. Immersing ourselves as we do in the tepid and murky waters of Scottish political journalism for a living – because it was either that or drowning kittens in a bucket and the hours for that are slightly unsociable – we sometimes imagine that we’ve become inured to even the most fatuously cretinous word-vomiting arse-quackery that passes for analysis in the supposedly intelligent press.

And then we read something like the spectacularly, cosmically moronic mind-sewage Hamish Macdonell just strained and heaved onto the electro-pages of the Spectator this afternoon and realise that the abyss of idiocy has no end, or at the very least culminates in a black-hole singularity from which the light of reason can never escape.

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Below is a spread from Aberdeen newspaper the Evening Express tonight, reporting the findings of a poll about the conduct of the city’s council in recent weeks, covering incidents like the Labour/Tory administration’s mind-boggling attempts to ban Scottish Government ministers from all council-owned property and the controversy over a letter sent out with council tax bills which urged people to vote No.

If you click the image you can read the detailed results. And our more alert readers might come to the conclusion that there’s something odd about the paper’s summary.

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