It’s probably fair to say that the voters of Scotland have been feeling a little put-upon lately. In the last decade they’ve been sent to polling stations on no fewer than 12 occasions (Holyrood elections in 2011 and 2016, UK elections in 2010, 2015 and 2017, council elections in 2012 and 2017, European elections in 2009 and 2014, and finally referendums on AV, independence and the EU).
And they’ve been subjected to endless weeks, months or even years of campaigning and haranguing each time. One woman – who only had to endure nine of those 12 – had famously had enough of it.
Yet Scots face possibly three more in the next 12 months or so, if various factions get their way, taking the total to 15 major votes in a decade. And if we want to secure the desired outcome in any of them, we’re going to have to ease the load on folk a bit.
This Wings story from April about a wildly untrue Scottish Daily Mail front-page splash has been entirely vindicated by a correction in the paper today, conceding both of the key complaints we made in our piece.
The Mail has, as you’d imagine, printed the correction rather smaller than the original story, so we thought we’d blow it up a little here for easier reading.
Because we’re sure they wouldn’t want anyone to miss it.
Some new data from the long-running Scottish Social Attitudes Survey was released tonight, and it makes for fascinating reading.
The headline stat is that for only the second year in the 18 years the study has been running, independence is the most popular option for the governance of Scotland:
This doesn’t, however, mean that it’s the majority view, because while independence is backed by 45% the “No” option is split into two – support for devolution (41%) and those ultra-Yoons who want Holyrood abolished (8%).
Now, considering that as recently as 2012 those figures were independence on 23%, devolution 61% and no Parliament 13%, that’s still a remarkable shift in Scottish public opinion in a very short space of time – support for indy has DOUBLED in five years while devolution has dropped by a third.
And indeed, when the survey asked a straight Yes/No question the results came out even closer, at 48% Yes to 52% No – a 3% swing to Yes from the 2016 figures.
We must admit, folks, that our initial reaction to this Scotsman headline from a couple of days ago was simply a weary sigh of “Oh FFS, here we go again”.
Blaming the Scottish Government for a private company’s decision to close down its plant and make hundreds of Scottish workers redundant is just the sort of ludicrous negative spinning we’ve come to expect from the country’s press over the past seven years, so this latest example just seemed like nothing more than par for the course.
But there turned out to be a little more to it than that.
So this story is the front page of tonight’s Evening Times.
It’s a pretty slim piece deploying a Glasgow mother to attack the SNP-run city council over a recent increase in nursery fees, and it sounds like the new higher cost might be a pretty big deal to her.
And no, we don’t even mean the FOUR spelling mistakes in this 42-word tweet.
We mean the bit that we’ve highlighted above in blue. Because what Scottish Labour’s lowest-watt bulb was gloating about earlier today was that Lord Bracadale concluded there’d been no gap created in the law by the Kelly-driven abolition of the OBFA.
And that’s… well, that’s not quite what Lord Bracadale said.
Of all the dishonest memes regularly put around by the Unionist side in the Scottish constitutional debate, the most bare-faced is the notion of the “fiscal transfer”. Part-time pretend economists harp on endlessly about how the UK “transfers” money (the current popular figure is £9bn) to Scotland to balance the books every year, as if it was a munificent gift out of the sheer kindness of Westminster’s heart.
The reality, of course, is that it’s a loan, which Scotland has to pay back with interest. If an independent Scotland ran a deficit – like almost every country on Earth – it could take that loan out from any number of possible lenders and carry on as normal.
But still, let’s indulge them for a moment and assume there really is a £9bn hole in Scotland’s finances. Is there anything we could do to reduce the size of it significantly? Well, since you ask, we have some poll data on that.
Last week we revealed that English voters would happily see Scotland and Northern Ireland leave the UK if it was the price of securing Brexit. But one of the odder things was that those figures included a sizeable number of Remain voters, who don’t want Brexit to happen at all.
We were a little perplexed, so we did a follow-up question asking those people if they’d elaborate a bit and got some interesting replies. One person, for example, answered “The Scottish people are very arrogant and although they want to be separate from the rest of the UK they are happy to take money from England”. Charming.
But there was also another stream of opinion on the subject, and it was revealed in the responses to another question in the original poll.
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Shield of the Americas. The cartels are Toast.” Mar 7, 20:02
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Rugby is a hooligans game played by gentlemen. Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans.” Mar 7, 19:52
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Nine tenths of all rational BTL comments, Alf. Don’t you ever feel an overwhelming urge to mock some of the…” Mar 7, 19:16
agentx on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Yes Scotland were great today and England were crap.” Mar 7, 19:06
David Holden on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Oh well I see Italy has just beaten the mighty England at rugby union only a few years after our…” Mar 7, 18:50
TURABDIN on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “VIVA L’ITALIA…… the «big one», bring it on Donaldo, after your mega dose of viagra of course.” Mar 7, 18:43
Red on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “whatever happened to the Scottish independence movement? When they killed nationalism, which was the intellectual foundation of the independence movement,…” Mar 7, 18:38
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “The majority of their drones have been fired at the UAE. Who also think Starmers a wanker.” Mar 7, 18:25
TURABDIN on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Forget Eurabia, we have Euramerica….. Some one’s end is nigh. Very Sad. Classical reason is cowering in a corner.” Mar 7, 18:17
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “It was on the good ship Dragon The deckhand started cryin’ His lipstick broke Coz he’s a poncy woke As…” Mar 7, 18:13
Alf Baird on Scotland’s Most Frightened: ““you already have a solid track record of mocking anybody” Pot and kettle, Hatey over Scotland, as ‘mocking anybody’ is…” Mar 7, 18:12
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Thousands, Willie? Reports indicate dozens certainly, maybe into the low hundreds in total. But thousands? Naw.” Mar 7, 18:11
Cynicus on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Had you told me last week that France would come to Murrayfield and scored 40 points I would’ve put my…” Mar 7, 17:11
Willie on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Seems that one of the UKs aircraft carriers is being readied in case it needs to head off to protect…” Mar 7, 16:59
Sven on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “I take it our Prime Minister was successful then, and they must have, “Released the sausages” then Mark. Calls for…” Mar 7, 16:38
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Does Milliband know it’s going full speed? That must be slaying the nautical miles per gallon figure. Won’t anybody think…” Mar 7, 16:35
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Not factually accurate, YL. We all know that in the Mad Mullah’s frame of reference, step 2 is: 2. Slay…” Mar 7, 16:22
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “HMS Sausage steaming full speed towards Cyprus. Britannia rules the waves.” Mar 7, 16:19
David Holden on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Well that was a bit special as Scotland beat France at Murrayfield in what has to be one of the…” Mar 7, 16:14
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Actually, Geri, your juxtaposition of R and love reminds me. I was wondering if your recent absence was down to…” Mar 7, 16:08
TURABDIN on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Aaaah…let us psychoanalyze the word SHITHOLES. «they make shitholes and call it peace» an update on an old theme. eneuch…” Mar 7, 15:20
Geri on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “You reap what you sow, hatey. Didn’t the good Lord tell you that? He’d spit you out of the land..…” Mar 7, 15:11
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Perhaps you need to read our history. Centuries of every horror imaginable. Our ancestors fought each other to a standstill…” Mar 7, 15:04
