Wings Over Scotland

A reader this morning pointed us to an article by the arch-Unionist blogger and pundit Professor Adam Tomkins, who we must once again emphasise in the interests of clarity is almost definitely NOT the gentleman in this picture:

It was a piece from a few weeks ago about the currency debate, which the reader felt made a reasonable and “quite convincing” case, so we went and had a look.

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As people who commission opinion polls occasionally, a thing that puzzles us is why other people who do it ask questions and then don’t talk about the results.

Some polls are done with the intention of being for private consumption only (this is particularly true when they’re commissioned by one side or the other in a debate, rather than by a notionally-impartial newspaper or the pollster themselves), and at other times results will be kept private because the results are unfavourable to the people who commissioned them.

(For the avoidance of doubt, we’ve never withheld any results for that reason.)

But at other times, results will be published but never discussed. Which is why, whenever a poll’s just come out these days, we get ourselves straight over to the polling company’s website and see what’s been left out.

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David Cameron, Prime Minister’s Questions, 30 April 2014:

“I think that what Alex Salmond said [about Vladimir Putin] was a major error of judgment and that all of us in this House should be supporting the Ukrainian desire to be a sovereign, independent country and to have the respect of the international community and party leaders for that ambition.”

(Our emphasis.) It’s not only us finding that just the tiniest bit hypocritical, is it?

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Because this is how a state broadcaster does balanced, impartial reporting.

Now some revision notes to help you.

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Just magnificent work from the Daily Mail today.

Really only a couple of tiny quibbles.

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Today has seen the entry into the independence debate of the magnificently batty Vote No Borders campaign group – not on any account to be confused with the No Borders campaign group, whose aims are to “struggle against borders and immigration controls and strive for freedom of movement for all” and are therefore the very antithesis of what the British state has increasingly come to stand for.

Various puff pieces in the media have given the group free space to advertise themselves as a “grassroots” campaign that is non-party political. But the funding figures mentioned – £150,000 raised before the group had any kind of public profile at all and hope of raising another £250,000 on top – may well cause more cynical readers to detect a somewhat piscine odour.

As we’ve got our journalism hats on, let’s have a sniff.

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Yesterday, we discovered a rather curious anti-independence “listicle” on the popular viral-meme website Buzzfeed. Entitled “Scotland. The UK. 10 Myths. 10 Facts.”, it describes itself as “myth busting” by an author identified only as “YouDecide2014”.

It was shared or retweeted by a variety of Conservative Party special advisers, the 10 Downing Street Facebook account, and even the UK Ministry of Defence.

The crude, extremely biased article gives no indication that it’s written by the UK government. The closest it comes to doing so is right at the end, where it says “Get the facts at www.gov.uk/scottishreferendum“. The Buzzfeed account page makes no reference to the UK government, and the layout makes the piece look like any normal article on the site, although in fact it’s posted on Buzzfeed Community, which is an area where users can post anything they want to without censorship.

We decided to find out more.

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STV Sport has tonight broken the news that Scotland will play England in a friendly international at Hampden on November 18 this year.

Would you like to imagine, readers, the songs the visiting England support might sing if Scotland had voted to continue being ruled by them exactly two months earlier?

If you feel your strength sapping between now and September, remember that.

The Scottish independence debate is characterised by so many gigantic lies from the No camp and the media (no pound, international outcast, bankrupt, cataclysm, etc etc) that there’s rarely time to pick up on all the small, casual, offhand ones that also litter the news-stands and the airwaves and poison any hope of intelligent discourse.

So let’s make an effort with one, just by way of example.

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You can’t make this stuff up.

Yes Glasgow has been inviting No speakers to take part in this Thursday’s event for literally months. They’ve contacted every single MP and MSP from a Unionist party representing a Glasgow seat, asking them to participate. They offered from the very beginning to let “Better Together” co-organise and co-host the debate, which will be chaired by the neutral Electoral Reform Society Scotland.

The only reason that “everyone on the platform is a Yes supporter” is because nobody from the No side is prepared to face the Glasgow public and put their case. The opportunity is still there. We confess ourselves perplexed that they seem determined to refuse it, and then to complain bitterly that the debate is one-sided.

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Can we please buy the Telegraph a new picture to depict “Scottish people”?

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I had no idea what to expect from the UKIP public meeting in Bath tonight. The city is genteel, wealthy and has been solidly Lib Dem for over 20 years. While there are of course some sketchier areas and it hasn’t been immune to the UK’s recent economic troubles, generally speaking it has little to complain about.

So when UKIP booked the 730 downstairs capacity of the Forum (a rather beautiful old Art Deco former cinema from the 1930s) for a public meeting, I hung onto the hope that there was at least a reasonable chance it’d be half-empty.

No luck there, then.

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