Wings Over Scotland

Scotland on Sunday deputy editor Kenny Farquharson was sticking with all the doggedness of the Inverness Caley Thistle defence to his paper’s bizarre story about Johann Lamont’s “Devo 2.0” plans when we chatted briefly to him on Twitter this afternoon. (Although let’s at least give SoS credit for what as far as we know is a whole new “devo something” suffix.)

The concept is so strange it merits breaking down further.

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It’s nearly time for us to go and watch the League Cup Final, so for the unfortunately benighted among you with no interest in Derek’s Dandy Dons (or Inverness Caley Thistle, or indeed soccerball in general), enjoy some classic shots of Ruth Davidson’s speech just a few minutes ago at what the media has been describing this weekend as a “resurgent” Scottish Conservatives conference in Edinburgh.

That’s the party leader’s keynote address. Captions invited as usual.

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Being a journalist can occasionally present some tricky ethical dilemmas. Today’s Scotland on Sunday carries a story about Scottish Labour’s strife-riddled devolution plans, which attributes this quote to the Scottish branch manager Johann Lamont:

Now, that’s an awkward one for any conscientious reporter. We have to presume that the former English teacher MEANT to say “increase” (or “restore”), rather than “reduce”. But you can’t just casually reverse in print what someone actually said on the assumption that they meant the opposite, so the hapless Andrew Whitaker has to resort to the least-bad option, which is just printing it and hoping nobody notices.

It’s the rest of the article that contains the real nonsense, though.

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Theresa May, the UK Home Secretary, yesterday told the Scottish Conservative conference that a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum would see the UK government putting up passport and immigration controls at the border.

Really? Rather than accept a common travel area, as exists with Ireland, the UK government would instigate full international border arrangements – arrangements which exist nowhere else in Europe – on the UK mainland?

Let’s just consider what that would require.

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At this week’s First Minister’s Questions, Johann Lamont banged repeatedly on a drum that the Unionist parties never tire of thrashing like an Orangeman in marching season – the notion that an independent Scotland couldn’t afford to live as it does now and would have to raise taxes or cut public spending.

Over and over again Lamont demanded the First Minister say which he would do if Scotland voted Yes, implying the choice wouldn’t have to be made inside the Union:

“If Scotland were outside the United Kingdom, I ask again: how would the First Minister pay for that loss in revenue—by cutting services or by raising taxes?”

Ms Lamont’s colleague Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is about to embark on a tour of Scotland, flitting from city to town to village like some demonic ghostly apparation out of “Tam O’Shanter”, frightening Scots with blood-chilling tales of “black holes” and, most especially, unaffordable pensions.

Sounds like we better stay in the safety and security of the UK, then.

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Headline in the Guardian this evening.

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Heavens above, readers. Immersing ourselves as we do in the tepid and murky waters of Scottish political journalism for a living – because it was either that or drowning kittens in a bucket and the hours for that are slightly unsociable – we sometimes imagine that we’ve become inured to even the most fatuously cretinous word-vomiting arse-quackery that passes for analysis in the supposedly intelligent press.

And then we read something like the spectacularly, cosmically moronic mind-sewage Hamish Macdonell just strained and heaved onto the electro-pages of the Spectator this afternoon and realise that the abyss of idiocy has no end, or at the very least culminates in a black-hole singularity from which the light of reason can never escape.

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Major kudos to the hyper-alert reader who covertly recorded the Q&A session after last night’s event in Glasgow where Alistair Darling was interviewed by James Naughtie.

Obviously it’s not exactly broadcast-quality, but it’s perfectly audible for all but the occasional couple of seconds. We were going to catalogue all the flat-out lies Mr Darling told in the 51 minutes, but frankly the “Better Together” chairman was on autopilot and you’ve heard all the untruths – and their respective debunkings – a dozen times before on this site alone.

So while we see if we can summon up the mental stamina to wade through them all yet again, just watch and see how many you can spot for yourselves.

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We’ve talked a bit today about a fascinating poll by Survation for the Daily Mail last month, whose findings got very little coverage in the media, perhaps because they revealed the rather off-message fact of how ineffectual two of the No campaign’s three great pillars of propaganda have been proving.

But there was another interesting snippet in the results, which could confound the flurry of recent polls all showing the SNP with a commanding lead for the 2016 Holyrood election, regardless of whether it’s for an independent Scottish Parliament or a devolved one.

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Below is a spread from Aberdeen newspaper the Evening Express tonight, reporting the findings of a poll about the conduct of the city’s council in recent weeks, covering incidents like the Labour/Tory administration’s mind-boggling attempts to ban Scottish Government ministers from all council-owned property and the controversy over a letter sent out with council tax bills which urged people to vote No.

If you click the image you can read the detailed results. And our more alert readers might come to the conclusion that there’s something odd about the paper’s summary.

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