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The race that’s never run 112

Posted on April 26, 2014 by

Yesterday, Ed Miliband came to Scotland to yet again trot out the Unionist mantra that an independent Scotland would result in a “race to the bottom” between it and the rUK over Corporation Tax (and to marvel that no interviewer ever pulls him up on the fact that Labour cut the tax twice the last time they were in power and promised to cut it further as soon as they could).

milibandmurphy

We thought it would be interesting to see if that might be true.

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A nice easy one 117

Posted on April 23, 2014 by

Here’s the Scottish Labour finance spokesman Iain Gray on last night’s Newsnight Scotland, discussing Gordon Brown’s speech in Glasgow on pensions because Mr Brown himself refused to answer any questions about it.

As ever with Mr Gray, he packs a lot of entertainment into a short space of time.

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Barely worth the bother 112

Posted on April 22, 2014 by

Even the faithful Scottish media can scarcely rouse itself to hype up Gordon Brown’s latest lumbering “intervention” in the independence debate this morning. The Scotsman buries the story in a corner of page 5, below a big spread about the ongoing implosion of CBI Scotland, and it doesn’t make the Herald’s online front page at all.

scotsmanbrown

(Indeed, even in the paper’s “Referendum News” section it’s only story #6, below the CBI, more attacks on Alistair Darling’s leadership of the No campaign and a vile piece of “FOREIGNERS!” dog-whistle politicking from Labour nonentity Gregg McClymont.)

It’s not too hard to work out why.

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Crowd surfing 176

Posted on April 19, 2014 by

As alert readers will know, we’re slacking off a bit over the holiday weekend, although today we’re hoping to combine pleasure with business – more on that later.

crowdsurf

But we’d also like to have a go at getting you to do some work for us.

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Votes of No confidence 119

Posted on April 16, 2014 by

“Sod it”, we thought, “let’s compile a list after all.

taxiformrmcdougall

Clearly we’re not impartial judges of how the No campaign is being conducted. To assess its performance with any degree of fairness, we must instead take the widest possible sample of opinion from those on its own side. Here goes, then.

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Neither national nor collective 114

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

It’s late, but we couldn’t let this one pass.

nhstogether

Heavens, where do we start?

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The historical debt 198

Posted on April 03, 2014 by

When presented with the evidence that Scotland has been a huge net contributor to UK finances ever since the discovery of North Sea oil, Unionists sometimes protest “Ah, but what about the 260 years before that, when Scotland was just a poor wee backwater with no industry that was bankrolled by England after the Darien disaster?”

(Because most of them don’t actually know the first thing about Darien.)

moncktonukip2

And after this morning’s story, we thought it might be worth checking a few more of the official UK government figures for Scottish revenues and expenditure, up to the point where the Treasury stopped compiling the figures lest they get too embarrassing.

So thanks to yet another alert reader, that’s what we did.

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Project Fear By Numbers 55

Posted on March 31, 2014 by

With less than six months to go until the referendum, Scots are turning more of their attention to the debate. Until now it’s largely been the province of politics nerds such as ourselves, but with the vote beginning to loom on the horizon normal people are starting to study the issues more closely.

fearproj

So we thought it’d be useful to put up a handy reference guide to the core strategy of the No campaign, illuminatingly dubbed “Project Fear” by its own staff. Lacking any positive case for a No vote as Britain suffers through austerity with no end in sight, “Better Together” has by its own admission dedicated itself to terrorising the people of Scotland into sticking with the Union:

“We’re not complacent. But nothing would please the Nats more than us dumping negative campaigning, because they know it works.”

The relentless bombardment of scare stories is so frenetic it can seem overwhelming, but it’s a lot more manageable when you realise that almost everything the No camp says is a variation on one of just 12 basic themes.

So we’ve compiled a catalogue/manual of every fearbomb in their armoury, and alongside each one is the truth that defuses it. Don’t have nightmares.

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The price of the BBC 204

Posted on March 03, 2014 by

We’ve been writing for quite a while now about the absurd-yet-deathless “Project Fear” scare story that an independent Scotland would lose access to BBC broadcasts (and thereby shows like Strictly Come Dancing, Match Of The Day, EastEnders, Doctor Who and, we dunno, Homes Under The Hammer or something), which was given another tired run-through last week by UK government culture secretary Maria Miller.

rte

We’ve pointed out in some detail that it was complete nonsense, because the BBC is a commercial organisation which would actively seek to sell the rights to its output to Scotland, but what we haven’t been able to do previously was put a figure to the likely cost. Thanks to an alert reader, though, we can now fill in that gap.

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Preparing for Project Blue 115

Posted on February 21, 2014 by

A reader comment this morning caused us to go back and double-check the facts in an old post (which turned out to be entirely correct, so that was fine). But for reasons which will shortly become clear, Wings Over Scotland is on a constant mission to distill aspects of the independence debate down to the clearest, most concise summaries possible, and the act of checking spurred us to lay something out.

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What you won’t read today 151

Posted on February 15, 2014 by

The Scottish and UK press has been packed solid for the last 48 hours with strangely uniform assessments of how George Osborne has conclusively smashed the Scottish Government’s position on an independent Scotland’s currency.

poundpapers

We’ve offered our own analysis, and various politicians and professional activists on the No side have been pouring ugly, borderline-xenophobic scorn and sneering on other nations which use some of the alternative options to a formal Sterling union, which is usually a sure sign that they’re scared of something.

So it seemed worthwhile to collect together the views of some proper financial experts in one place for handy reference, because the cosy consensus in the UK media doesn’t seem to be reflected by people who actually know what they’re talking about. Read the rest of this entry →

The angels’ share 139

Posted on February 13, 2014 by

The term “angels’ share” comes from the ancient Scottish tradition of Whisky making and refers to the phenomenon of sealing up a volume of whisky in an oak barrel only to find less fluid in the sealed barrel when it’s re-opened. We can only assume that it was a mite confusing to people in the past to have sealed up a resource and find when they opened it back up that it was less than before.

angels

Specifically, it’s the portion of a whisky’s volume that’s lost to evaporation during the ageing process, which is deemed to have been consumed by angels. But there’s a more modern version of the “angels’ share” at play in modern Scotland, and this one’s a celestial snaffling not of whisky, but of Scotland’s money.

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    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “@Dan – and yet I’m apparently the one talking Scotland down! Why don’t you get yourself to the comedy festival,…Jul 8, 12:56
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “@Xaracen – The plan as described on this blog many many times was to approach C-24. We were all encouraged…Jul 8, 12:51
    • Captain Caveman on Too Tight To Mention: “@Xaracen “@CC, a good outcome in 12 months is that Scotland’s case is being evaluated by the C-24. No-one is…Jul 8, 12:13
    • sarah on Too Tight To Mention: “It wouldn’t have happened under Alex, I’m sure. Every single b…y decision by the authorities in Scotland is rubbish. Hence…Jul 8, 12:09
    • Xaracen on Too Tight To Mention: “No, Aidan, you are mischaracterising the plan. You may be thinking of my mischaracterisation, which I admitted was incomplete, but…Jul 8, 11:56
    • Dan on Too Tight To Mention: “@Aidan at 8:58am Yer being awfy selective bigging up Auld Reekie’s GDP, and it having a shit comedy show where…Jul 8, 11:54
    • Captain Caveman on Too Tight To Mention: “I think Xaracen’s inability and/or refusal to set out even in basic terms what a “good outcome” looks like in…Jul 8, 11:15
    • Anthem on Too Tight To Mention: “OT. But, why are we using American corporates as consultants for road infrastructure around fort William? Aren’t there any Scottish…Jul 8, 10:27
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “Again, there is no point in trying to rewrite history here. Go back and read the posts prior to May…Jul 8, 10:25
    • Xaracen on Too Tight To Mention: “No, Aidan, that was not the plan. I had misunderstood part of it because I was unaware at the time…Jul 8, 09:38
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “@Alf – does Edinburgh not have one of the highest rates of GDP per capita anywhere in the world, higher…Jul 8, 08:58
    • Alf Baird on Too Tight To Mention: “Gaun yersel Aidan, tell us aw aboot oor zero-growth unner-developed and plunnerred colonial economy aye rin bi a bunch o…Jul 8, 07:40
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “Let’s rewind back a bit, go back to any WoS post from May or earlier and the plan was very…Jul 8, 06:18
    • Young Lochinvar on Too Tight To Mention: “Dangerous stuff. The more boxes that are ticked that say “ye just Cannae dae it” and that we are in…Jul 8, 05:07
    • Anthem on Too Tight To Mention: “Brilliant!Jul 8, 01:33
    • Dunx on Too Tight To Mention: “The UK has a veto in the UN Security Council, not the General Assembly . The GA is a talking…Jul 8, 00:41
    • Young Lochinvar on Too Tight To Mention: “I suspect not MB. The problem I have with the Jacobite rebellions is the whole “using” thing the exiled Stuart’s…Jul 8, 00:24
    • Young Lochinvar on Too Tight To Mention: “LOLz 🙂Jul 7, 23:57
    • Stuart on Too Tight To Mention: “Would that be the same UN General Assembly where the UK Government can wield a veto? Why yes it is!…Jul 7, 23:21
    • Xaracen on Too Tight To Mention: “Only one page on JPTI appears relevant, Aidan, and it doesn’t say what you asserted. JPTI states on its site…Jul 7, 22:52
    • sarah on Too Tight To Mention: “Liberation’s case has to be approved by the General Assembly of the UN. That is well known. The route to…Jul 7, 22:28
    • Oneliner on Too Tight To Mention: “Not My KingJul 7, 22:27
    • Confused on Too Tight To Mention: “I like to think of it this way : an analogy Scotland is like Auschwitz (rich industrial area, but not…Jul 7, 22:10
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Too Tight To Mention: ““The foundational function of the State is the monopolistic organization of the power of the sword over a territorial cultural…Jul 7, 22:07
    • James on Too Tight To Mention: “I quite agree, “Chas” is indeed a unionist prick. Well said.Jul 7, 21:56
    • Northcode on Too Tight To Mention: “Leah Gunn Barrett has this to say about the Darien Scheme. The Darien Myth and the Origins of the Union…Jul 7, 21:53
    • Mark Beggan on Too Tight To Mention: “Pity the Jacobites didn’t win. Young English nationalists would be talking of the slaughter of London, the burning of Winchester.…Jul 7, 21:46
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “@Alf – I constantly praise Scotland and talk up its strengths both here and in person. Can the same be…Jul 7, 21:37
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “@Xaracen – it’s on the JPTI website. If you want the actual wording you’ll need to email JPTI or persuade…Jul 7, 21:35
    • Alf Baird on Too Tight To Mention: ““they talk about our history and culture as being ancient guff but not one of them has ever presented anything…Jul 7, 21:19
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