Alert readers may recall that when the UK government announced plans for a £55m jamboree to mark the beginning of World War 1, on a date conveniently before the independence referendum rather than the traditional Remembrance Day in November, the more cynical of Yes supporters were immediately suspicious and/or angry.
But despite David Cameron initially announcing it as a “Jubilee-style” event that would tap into the celebratory spirit of the Olympics and might feature a star-studded football match (rather clumsily between Germany and England, rather than Britain or the Allies), the assurance was given that it would in fact be a sombre event respectfully commemorating the sacrifice of the dead, and definitely NOT a jingoistic festival of Britishness designed to influence the outcome of the vote.
Above is the video released by the “Military Wives” choir for the occasion, featuring Eamonn Holmes, Alan Titchmarsh, a George Formby impersonator and a dancing dog singing “Pack Up Your Troubles”, a jaunty song about what a jolly lark war is.
It’s a Bank Holiday and frankly there’s absolutely bugger-all of any interest in the news today, so I hope you’ll forgive me a personal indulgence, readers. I’ve only used the personal pronoun for a couple of Wings articles out of over 2,300 in the site’s two and a half years of existence, because the independence debate isn’t about me. But a curious piece in today’s Herald by David Torrance merits such a response.
If you don’t see what it’s got to do with that video*, bear with me.
We’re off to watch the Scottish Cup semi-final now, so to keep you all entertained for the next couple of hours here’s a little something we put together at the request of columnist and broadcaster Lesley Riddoch, and for anyone who was listening to Radio Scotland’s “Headlines” this morning.
Hopefully we won’t need it ourselves by 3.30pm. #COYR
A chance comment on Twitter this afternoon gave us a fun thought – with over 230,000 readers a month, could we get a song to No.1 in the charts by ourselves now, as both publicity and a rallying call for the Yes movement?
We got lots of suggestions for songs with apt lyrics about Scotland’s relationship with the UK and catchy tunes, so as democrats we’ve decided to have a poll to pick what would be the best choice if we should decide to attempt the project.
For those of you with Spotify, click the image to open.
(Full 30-track playlist here. It’s an open collaborative one so feel free to add your own suggestions, or to make a YouTube version for those without the app.)
In the light of the Electoral Commission setting higher limits for referendum campaign spending, Labour’s Richard Baker, Dr. Richard Simpson and Alistair Darling embark on an urgent fundraising drive outside The Rangers’ next away game in SFL 3.
(We might have gone with this, but it doesn’t seem to be possible to embed YouTube video at a specified starting point, at least in so far as we don’t know how to do it.)
There are, we’re certain, some twists to come yet in the “Rangers” story. But while we’ve been able to pretty clearly identify and understand the motivations of all the concerned parties in events to date (and our assessments and predictions have accordingly almost always been bang on the money), we’ve finally run into a logical roadblock where we just can’t make sense of anything.
Because we can no longer for the life of us figure out what the SFA is playing at.
