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The Unionist Commandments 113

Posted on October 07, 2013 by

As we watched the remarkable events of last month at Abertay University in Dundee, we were struck by something about the speech from Labour peer Lord Robertson, who was speaking against the motion “It is time for Scotland to become an independent nation state”. (Click image below for audio.)

abertayrobertson

His 15-minute address to the audience of 200+ students, we gradually realised, was a sort of compact distillation of the entire argument that’s been put forward by the No camp over the entire last year-and-a-bit.

If you ever needed to direct an undecided voter to the complete case for the Union, in the words of its own advocates, you couldn’t do much better than the couple of thousand words that Robertson put to the young people of Dundee.

To that end, it seemed worthwhile to get it down in writing for posterity and reference purposes, and to break it down into its constituent parts in the process.

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The news we knew 188

Posted on October 02, 2013 by

We’re not quite sure why the UK government has chosen this year, of all years, to start disaggregating tax receipts by nation, breaking down the UK’s income according to how much of it came from each of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and even calculating oil revenues on a geographical basis.

taxgraph

You might well imagine that such an exercise could only serve to provide fuel for the independence movement, and the initial release of figures (probably the only one before the referendum) certainly seem to confirm that impression.

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Massive oil leak discovered 184

Posted on July 11, 2013 by

We have a bit more respect for Professor Brian Ashcroft than most of the No camp’s scaremongers (indeed, we’ve even run an article of his on Wings Over Scotland), so we looked with interest at the latest entry on his blog yesterday, a piece with the fairly self-explanatory title of  “Has Scotland already spent its oil fund?”

norwayfund

It purports to examine what Scotland’s financial position would have been had it been independent for the last 32 years, in response to a Scottish Government document (which was backed up by fullfact.org) showing that Scotland had been a large net contributor to the UK over the period, but arrives at a bizarrely tangential conclusion.

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The unhappy few 84

Posted on June 27, 2013 by

Seasoned readers will recall that on occasion we’ve pondered the mystery that is the membership of the itself-enigmatic entity sometimes called “Scottish Labour”.

redabacus

Establishing how many members the party actually has is a puzzle that has eluded the best and brightest in Scottish journalism for years, but thanks to a tip from an alert commenter Wings Over Scotland may be able to make the breakthrough today.

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Negative recollection 66

Posted on June 27, 2013 by

The longer this site goes on, the more we realise we could really do with some sort of proper indexing system, rather than relying on our bullet-riddled memory to be able to recall the details of something we wrote a year ago.

memoryloss

So in the week that the “Better Together” campaign celebrated its first birthday, and we learned that it refers to itself internally as “Project Fear”, we thought we’d collect a few of our favourite impressions of it from its own supporters (and the odd neutral) in one place where they might be easier to find.

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Quoted for reference 87

Posted on June 19, 2013 by

Because we get really weary when sneering Unionist politicians and commentators line up continually to pretend that the Yes campaign is promising a land of milk and honey after Scotland becomes independent.

roadtosalmond

So as it’s our special “Road To Referendum” day and an apt quote from the First Minister helpfully presented itself, we’re just going to leave this here:

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Recycle, repackage, repeat 112

Posted on April 23, 2013 by

It would appear that we’ve reached the point where the anti-independence campaign has officially run out of arguments, and is being forced to reissue its Greatest Hits.

scotsmanbanknotes

The headline on the left is from January 2012, the one on the right is yesterday’s.

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Just for the record 167

Posted on April 09, 2013 by

We were a little mystified, on watching last night’s newsgasm about Margaret Thatcher, to see the degree to which Tories were suddenly punting the ancient Labour line about the SNP being somehow responsible for her becoming Prime Minister in 1979, and therefore by implication for everything that happened subsequently.

Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph, Michael Forsyth and Ruth Davidson have all been enthusiastically joining the usual parade of absurd Labour pantomime sorts like Lord Foulkes over the last 24 hours or so, which struck us as a mildly odd joint bit of anti-independence smearing, reliant as it is on people not realising that the two parties are cynically colluding while making diametrically opposite points.

alliance

We don’t think the electorate is quite that dim, though of course it’s never wise to overestimate people who would repeatedly elect Michael Forsyth and George Foulkes in the first place. So we’re just going to leave this here:

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The Nuclear Deterrence FAQ 128

Posted on April 05, 2013 by

When we’ve reached the point where even the Daily Telegraph is calling the British Prime Minister a liar, it’s probably about time someone laid out the facts about the UK’s nuclear weapons, and in particular how they relate to Scotland.

Let’s see if we can keep it brief.

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The oil debate for busy people 58

Posted on March 29, 2013 by

We know you don’t have all day. Let’s see if we can clear this up in under 600 words.

nsoil3

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Raising the level of debate 73

Posted on January 16, 2013 by

Ten days ago, Scottish Labour “deputy” leader Anas Sarwar issued a press release in his capacity as head of Labour’s referendum campaign, noting that “[Nicola Sturgeon] is right to say there has been a lot of negative campaigning. We will be raising the level of debate and ensuring that Scotland gets the level of debate it deserves.”

Here are some extracts from Sarwar and his independence-fearing colleagues’ contributions to yesterday’s epic House of Commons “debate” (in which one side got a little over 10 times as long to put its case as the other) on the motion giving the Scottish Parliament the power to conduct the independence referendum.

Make your own judgement as to how they did, and the level of debate they apparently consider Scotland deserves.

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Trident to be moved to Mars 40

Posted on January 09, 2013 by

Wait, sorry. We got confused. As far as we can establish from some recent official statements by the UK Government, the No campaign and the media, Mars is in fact the only place that the Trident weapons system definitely WON’T be going if Scotland votes for independence. Let’s have a quick recap on where we’re up to.

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