Remember about ten months ago, when there was a great big five-alarm hoo-ha in the Scottish media about pensions, based on the EU law that pension schemes operating across national borders had to be fully-funded at all times, which we were told would cause all sorts of dreadful chaos if Scotland was independent?
We ask because the Scottish media has now had two full days to pick up on a story which appeared on the website of The Actuary magazine this week, but oddly hasn’t.
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Tags: whitewash
Category
analysis, media, scottish politics
Here’s a story on the front page of the Guardian website.
Below is the headline you see when you actually click on the link.
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Category
comment, media, scottish politics
As we noted last week, Eton- and Sandhurst-educated Sir Norman Arthur, figurehead of the No campaign’s latest high-powered grassroots fundraising drive, has a very impressive military record – Commanding Officer of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, Commander of the 7th Armoured Brigade, General Officer Commanding of the 3rd Armoured Division, General Officer Commanding of Scotland and mentioned in despatches during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
It’s just lucky the IRA didn’t have Twitter, or things might have been different.
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Tags: smears
Category
comment, media, scottish politics, uk politics
We’ve been known to remark from time to time that “Better Together” often has a little trouble getting its scare stories straight. “You won’t be allowed into the EU!” somehow manages to co-exist with “You’ll have to join the Euro!”, while “You wouldn’t be able to bail out the banks!” runs right alongside “All the banks will leave!”
So we take our hats well and truly off to all concerned for helpfully jamming them all together into one big mad super-scare today.
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Tags: project fearwouldcouldery
Category
analysis, media, scottish politics
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
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
From today’s Press & Journal, for those of you outside Aberdeen.
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Category
scottish politics, uk politics
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
