Wings Over Scotland

Archive for the ‘scottish politics’

Why we shouldn’t do walking away 107

Posted on March 04, 2014 by Andrew Leslie

When former chancellor Alistair Darling said the following during the currency row, he should have known better (and no doubt did):

“The nationalist threat to default on debt if they don’t get their way on currency is reckless. The impact of Alex Salmond’s default would be to say to the world that we cannot be trusted to honour our debts.”

The empirical fact is that an independent Scotland would not be defaulting, reneging on, or walking away from anything. That’s because the UK government has already taken full responsibility for all debt accrued up to the date of Scottish independence.

So we can just forget about it, right?

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Tags: Andrew Leslie
Category analysis, comment, scottish politics, uk politics

Agents on the scene 344

Posted on March 04, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

So, wow. Still in its first week, the Wings 2014 fundraiser broke £100,000 last night. We suppose that means we better start fleshing out our “stretch goals” a bit.

And if you’re one of the 99% of readers who haven’t donated yet – perhaps because you’re wasting your money on trivialities like feeding your family or paying bills or something – this is where you can offer us some help that’s just as valuable instead.

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Category admin, scottish politics

Remember what they think of you 114

Posted on March 04, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

Prominent New Labour writer Dan Hodges has a piece in the Telegraph today (because where else would a New Labour commentator have a column?) about UKIP now being an openly racist party. It contains the following passage:

“Last May Farage visited Edinburgh, where he was met by a small but aggressive mob of protesters. Eventually he had to be escorted from the scene by police for his own safety.

Directly accusing the SNP of being behind the protest, Farage described the protesters as ‘racist Nazi scum’. The incident was, he said, ‘deeply racist and displayed a total hatred of the English’.

And he’s right. He wasn’t targeted on the basis of his race, but on the basis of his nationality. And as he said, that was racist.”

We’ll leave aside that the protest was nothing to do with the SNP or Scottish nationalists, that it was organised by a radical left-wing group and that one of the two men arrested in connection with the incident was in fact English himself. None of those factual inconveniences are allowed to get in the way of Hodges’ bigotry.

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Category comment, idiots, scottish politics, uk politics

Damn that uncertainty 139

Posted on March 03, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

From today’s Press & Journal, for those of you outside Aberdeen.

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Category scottish politics, uk politics

The price of the BBC 204

Posted on March 03, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

We’ve been writing for quite a while now about the absurd-yet-deathless “Project Fear” scare story that an independent Scotland would lose access to BBC broadcasts (and thereby shows like Strictly Come Dancing, Match Of The Day, EastEnders, Doctor Who and, we dunno, Homes Under The Hammer or something), which was given another tired run-through last week by UK government culture secretary Maria Miller.

We’ve pointed out in some detail that it was complete nonsense, because the BBC is a commercial organisation which would actively seek to sell the rights to its output to Scotland, but what we haven’t been able to do previously was put a figure to the likely cost. Thanks to an alert reader, though, we can now fill in that gap.

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Tags: project fear
Category analysis, culture, reference, scottish politics, stats

The difference a day makes 96

Posted on March 03, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

Scotland on Sunday yesterday:

The Scotsman 24 hours later:

Rinse, lather and repeat for the next six months.

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Tags: vote no get nothing
Category analysis, scottish politics

The Eton Rifling 177

Posted on March 02, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

Heavens above. We thought that being reduced to sending out chain letters might have been some sort of rogue effort, but it seems “Better Together” really is as desperate for cash as it’s appeared to be in recent months, with barely a week going by that we don’t get an email from Alistair Darling, chatting about some aspect of the debate before suddenly going “SO WE NEED MONEY! MONEY! SEND MONEY NOW!”

But the piece above appearing in this week’s Sunday Times (where we initially missed it because it was in the “UK News” rather than the “Scottish News” section) was backed up by another piece of extraordinary panhandlery.

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Category scottish politics, wtf

The case as it is 72

Posted on March 02, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

If you missed it live, here’s the audio recording of the debate held at the Volunteer Rooms in Irvine on Friday. (The event wasn’t video-recorded, despite Clan Destiny Films having a high-quality camera team there, because the Labour MP for Central Ayrshire, Brian Donohoe, refused to give his permission.)

Click the image for the two-hour MP3 file.

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Tags: vote no get nothing
Category audio, comment, scottish politics

The meanings of life 81

Posted on March 02, 2014 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

This week’s edition of the Sunday Herald is a “referendum special” marking 200 days of the campaign to go (although actually it doesn’t have an awful lot more referendum coverage than a normal issue).

There are lots of things worth reading – as ever, we recommend spending a modest 69p for a digital copy via PressDisplay – but what really caught our eye were the two interviews with the heads of the Yes and No camps, Blairs Jenkins and McDougall.

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Tags: project fear
Category analysis, comment, scottish politics