Wings Over Scotland

But hey, at least we finally cleared up whether Labour like the SNP or not.

Dear Mr […]

Thank you for the letter, the text of which you copied from wingsoverscotland.com.

I should point out that September’s vote is not a choice between independence and Labour’s vision of increased devolution of powers: it is about whether or not Scotland would be better off separate from the UK and the EU.

In the event of Scottish voters rejecting independence, there will no doubt be an extended debate about the future of devolution. While I understand why some are fixated on tax raising powers the SNP Government, at least, seems to consider such matters as irrelevant, since it has declined to use the tax varying powers Holyrood has had since 1999.

The sad fact is that those of a nationalist bent will view any devolution settlement short of full independence as unsatisfactory. It is of absolutely no surprise therefore that some supporters of the Yes campaign are unhappy with the devolution commission’s proposals.

Best wishes.

Tom Harris MP

But still, it seems to us that constituents are entitled to a somewhat better response to a set of legitimate, clear questions than a load of Nat-bashing snark from their elected representative. We’ll keep you updated with any other replies we hear about.

Readers probably won’t be astonished to learn that we’ve still heard nothing from anyone in Scottish Labour in response to our six simple questions about their “Devo Nano” proposals. We’ve waited three full days now and haven’t had so much as an acknowledgement of receipt or a reply to any of our tweets, so it seems safe to say we’re not going to get one.

So now it’s up to you.

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Sorry we’ve been a bit post-light today, readers. The phone’s barely stopped ringing, and when it did it was only for long enough to scratch the surface of an avalanche of tweets and emails, all concerning this week’s zany goings-on with the Glasgow Subway. Suffice it to say that you haven’t heard half of what’s transpired yet, but we hope to bring you the full story pretty soon.

For now, for anyone who missed them, STV, BBC and the Guardian.

So, who wants to play a wee fun quiz game over how many responses we’ve had from the members of Labour’s Devolution Commission to our polite request for clarification of some issues regarding their post-No taxation policy?

(a) None, still not even a single form acknowledgement of our email?

(b) Oh, you got it already.

It’s almost as if they wanted to pretend it didn’t exist, isn’t it?

The advert below is being distributed by Glasgow Subway to its passengers today.

But that’s okay, because it’s not “political”.

We’ve noted several times recently an increase in the intensity of the No campaign, which has really been ramping up the rhetoric and menace since the turn of the year. But it’s also been accompanied by a growing sense of denial, as every poll showing a shift towards Yes is dismissed with the use of ever-more-selective comparisons.

Last night as part of its coverage of the latest polling, Scotland Tonight retweeted a comment from Oliver Milne, the Chair of Scottish Labour Students:

You know how we love to check facts, readers. Let’s check the facts.

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We think we might have just worked out why Scottish newspaper sales are in irreversible decline, readers. It’s because if you buy the papers for about two weeks you can just keep them in a drawer, bring them out a few weeks later and read all the same stories again without having to pay for them twice.

Because in the Scottish media, every day is Groundhog Day.

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Still not a single email, nor even a simple acknowledgement, in response to our list of polite, factual questions about Labour’s proposals for “enhanced” devolution. We also tweeted every member of the Devolution Commission with a Twitter account yesterday to ask if they’d be replying, and haven’t had a response from any of them.

Tune in tomorrow for the latest developments!

There’s an interesting survey over on the Herald at the moment. Self-selecting and therefore non-scientific, it’s nevertheless quite intriguing, with (the paper notes) strong support for the Scottish Government’s positions on childcare, Trident, renationalising the Royal Mail and encouraging more flights from Scottish airports, but opposition to its plans to cut Corporation Tax.

A couple of the other results, though, are reported a bit more oddly.

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Our collection of toe-curling Johann Lamont interviews from Labour’s party-conference weekend wouldn’t be complete without the longest one, in which the BBC’s Brian Taylor proves that while he might be a toothless pussycat as an analyst, he takes no prisoners as an interviewer.

It’s been impossible to avoid a negative tone in the last few days, readers, because the Scottish Labour conference is like a dark storm-cloud of hatred, raining grimy, toxic lies and hypocrisy into the political landscape, and the print media wallowed around in the evil, sucking glaur it produced until everything was thick with concealing mud that plugged the yawning holes in the party’s promises.

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So far we’ve had no replies – not even automated form ones – from any of the members of Scottish Labour’s “Devolution Commission” we emailed these questions to. They’re fair and reasonable questions, asked politely on behalf of 200,000+ Wings readers and all Scottish voters, and there’s no conceivable excuse not to answer them. We’ll be keeping on at this until we get some. The email we sent is below.

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We’ll be honest with you, readers, we just couldn’t face transcribing Johann Lamont’s latest traffic-accident of an interview, this time 12 unforgettable minutes on Sunday Politics Scotland. But we did have a sudden flash of inspiration.

Above you can watch the interview for yourself. But although Johann’s mangled syntax and non-sequitur approach to answering questions is just too much pain for our poor tortured brain to endure twice in one week, we realised that what’s a lot quicker and easier to do is write down the gist of proceedings.

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