Wings Over Scotland

The fact that the millionaire-backed fake-grassroots “Vote No Borders” group arrived on the referendum scene with so little warning got a bit stranger yesterday with the news that the “unpolished voters” campaign has been gestating for almost two years.

Alert readers will recall that Acanchi is the London PR company run by Malcolm Offord and Fiona Gilmore, the directors of VNB. And it seems they’ve been busy.

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Because some of you won’t have seen it yet. This is NOT a spoof.

That’s what they think will persuade people to vote No, readers.

The Scotsman, 24 March 2007:

“Brown: I will save the union

Gordon Brown last night revealed he was placing himself at the heart of Labour’s Holyrood election campaign, declaring it was his ‘duty’ to save the Union from the SNP.

In an exclusive interview with Scotland on Sunday, Brown pledged to spend the six weeks before polling day ‘explaining and exposing’ the Nationalists’ ‘disastrous’ plans.

The Chancellor ruled out any plans to give more power to the Scottish Parliament saying it was not necessary.”

How (some) things change, eh readers?

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This morning’s Daily Mail reports that Alistair Darling has been “sidelined” by the No campaign, with Douglas Alexander drafted into his place. We’ve remarked previously on this site about our bemusement over the reverence with which Mr Alexander’s intellect is regarded by the Scottish media, and we’re none the wiser after this:

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The deeply dodgy fake-grassroots “Vote No Borders” group of wealthy London-based PR people has been rolling out its “unpolished” voters (their term, not ours) again, this time in a series of what must have been fairly pricey adverts in the Daily Record.

The simplistic, often dreadfully-misinformed quotes in the ads have been causing some irritation and anger among Yes supporters on social media, which is understandable but not constructive. After all, many of us have relied on the press for our information about one thing or another in the past too, and learned a bitter lesson.

So let’s see if we can’t actually be polite and helpful instead.

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Surely. At least.

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It’s been fascinating to watch the media slyly turning Chris and Colin Weir’s quite understandable objection to being defamed by loathsome right-wing newspapers and MSPs into an attack on “cybernats”.

But this morning Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph – who we rarely read even for laughs now, so far gone is his grasp on reality – added a particularly deft twist which we thought worthy of note for those who like to study how the press does its business.

And yes, we entirely meant that double entendre.

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Alert readers will have noticed that we’ve been studying the UK government’s latest independence paper today. The 24-page booklet comes with a foreword from the Secretary of State for Portsmouth promising that it contains “the positive case for Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom”, so we thought it’d be fun to share some of our favourite snippets of positivity.

We could do with some cheering up.

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The Scotland Office has today released yet another taxpayer-funded (though we’re not allowed to know how much) document about how rubbish and useless Scotland is. Issued in the name of Alistair Carmichael, it reheats and repeats all the same lines from the previous papers, but this time dumbed down a bit for thickos.

You’d think that having been churning out the same thing for two years, the UK government would have at least managed to get its story straight by now.

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The top five most-read stories on Wings Over Scotland in the last seven days.

1. Quoted For Truth Extra
The first defection to Yes from inside “Better Together” itself.

2. The talk of the town
What Alex Salmond really said to GQ, stripped of media hysteria.

3. What an arsehole looks like
Vile taxpayer-funded scumbag repeatedly abuses decent citizens in public.

4. Character assassination
Journalism, as imagined by a petulant six-year-old.

5. Look away now
Massive story almost totally and inexplicably ignored.

This week’s theme: not pretending any more.

The Sunday Mail has a surprisingly low-key piece today about a new opinion poll commissioned by the paper through the little-known pollster Progressive Partnership (who aren’t a member of the British Polling Council) and conducted by YouGov.

Oddly, it seems to have produced two very different sets of results.

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This morning’s Sunday Herald carries a typically sour and sneery quote from “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall in response to a Yes Scotland release of financial data relating to its campaign funding:

“No-one would criticise the Weirs, who are ­longstanding SNP supporters. However, it is extraordinary that compared to the tens of thousands of small donations received by Better Together, almost 80% of Yes Scotland’s money comes from one source.

We now know why they have been hiding their donations for so long.”

Firstly, of course, he might want to revise that opening sentence, since his campaign’s representative Alex Johnstone MSP seems quite unable to stop criticising the Weirs, repeatedly painting them as gullible and dishonest dupes of the evil Alex Salmond.

But as usual, Mr McDougall’s obnoxious bluster also conceals a cynical misdirection.

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