Wings Over Scotland

We established earlier today that Ruth Davidson’s leadership of the Scottish Conservatives appears to be some sort of performance-art comedy stunt. With that in mind, we’ve managed to capture some footage of her appearance at the “United Kingdom In Action” session of the Tory conference as part of what appeared to be some sort of improv panel (also featuring Ruth’s double-act straight-man David Mundell and supporting artists from the other three parts of the country), and here present some shots of her barnstorming routine in front of an ecstatic near-sell-out crowd.

Once again, we lazily interactively invite you to suggest captions in the comments.

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This week, we’ve been wondering just how much of a coincidence it was that Johann Lamont’s dramatic, rushed-sounding policy speech out of nowhere (surely that terrible pinched-from-the-Tories “something for nothing” line can’t have been the result of any extended scrutiny?) happened three days after the first independence rally.

Saturday 22nd September 2012 will go down in history as the moment the starting gun was fired on the referendum campaign for real. The event was a chance to show the public of Scotland that it wasn’t only “weirdy beardies” and “cyber-nuts” who support independence but everyday hard-working people just like the majority of other Scots.

And we can’t help but ponder whether the event put the wind up Scottish Labour a lot more than they spent that weekend frantically trying to pretend.

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We decided it was about time we took in some of the Labour conference, and tuned in this morning in time for the special “Better Together” session, when the party devoted around 40 prime-time minutes early on a Tuesday morning to emphasising just how much the UK values Scotland and Wales (although apparently not Northern Ireland).

Several dozen people crammed into a hall with a capacity of 9,000 to hear Gordon Matheson, Margaret Curran and Johann Lamont represent North Britain, followed by a token Welsh bloke we’ve never heard of and finally the fragrant Dame Tessa Jowell to celebrate “Team GB” and the success of the Great Patriotic Olympics.

The crowd, as you’ll see below, went wild.

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Johann Lamont seems a bit confused today over whether her cap fits or not. Can you help the Scottish Labour “leader” get dressed in time for her big important speech?

Scottish Labour mouthpiece the Daily Record is currently running a long series of horror stories about Atos “Healthcare” and their appalling persecution of the sick and disabled. We heartily and sincerely commend the Record for doing so, even if it usually fails to note that Atos were unleashed on the poor and vulnerable by a Labour government, and occasionally just outright lies about it.

You might expect, then, that the valid concerns of the Record and its readers would be earnestly reflected by the nation’s Labour MSPs when the Scottish Parliament debated the issue of Atos’ conduct of Work Capability Assessments yesterday.

You’d be wrong, of course.

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We’ll leave the competing estimates of numbers to the organisers and the Scottish media. What matters the most is that there certainly seems to have been a modestly respectable turnout for the first independence rally in Edinburgh.

(Which is an all the more commendable showing given that the march isn’t part of the official YesScotland campaign and was very poorly publicised until the last 48 hours.)

Happily, this wee fella wasn’t on his own.

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So we’re halfway through “an unprecedented weekend blitz of campaigning” by the No camp, trying to persuade Scots to stay in the Union (but without being Unionist, of course). Twitter was alive on Saturday morning with Unio- sorry, Better Together activists all loudly (and oddly uniformly) proclaiming the “great response” they’d had on the streets of Scotland from voters, and publishing the pictures to prove it.

For those of you who couldn’t make it out to one of the “events” yourself, here’s a taste of the sort of pulsating, dynamic and above all positive action you missed.

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(Actual story.)

They tried their best, bless ’em. Held it in as long as they could.

But it always comes out – twice in three minutes, on this occasion – in the end.

We hope you’ll forgive us this last one, just for fun.

All the best odysseys begin in a hedge.

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