We’re given to believe that this is real, not a spoof.
Just when we thought our opinion of them couldn’t possibly sink any lower.
Here’s the Scottish Conservatives deputy leader Jackson Carlaw, fuming on the BBC website yesterday about the £1.3m cost of producing and distributing the Scottish Government’s independence white paper:
So, that’s pretty clear. Even though they’ve spent much of the last two years demanding the Scottish Government answer literally hundreds of questions about independence, the Tories don’t believe that it’s worth spending slightly less than 25p per Scot to actually give the people those answers.
But wait – what’s this coming over the hill? Is it a monster?
We don’t mind telling you, folks, we’re struggling on this one.
But… don’t…
“Whatever the Scottish government says now, the government of an independent Scotland would be forced to raise taxes and cut public services. We are better off together.” (Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury)
Aren’t… haven’t you…
We don’t say it very often, readers, but as a civilised human being with even the merest glimmer of empathy it’s hard not to feel sorry for “Better Together” sometimes. It must be absolute agony for them today, trying to talk about the slightly disappointing GERS figures without screaming “TOO WEE! TOO POOR! TOO STUPID!” at the tops of their voices, which is what they want to do so much they must be able to taste it.
Instead of naked glee, they must do their best to fake concern, and not appear too joyful to be reporting bad news for what they insist is (proudly, of course) their nation. We don’t envy them in having to maintain two faces and lie about their true feelings, no matter how practiced at it they are. The constant vigilance must be incredibly wearing, because dishonesty is exhausting.
The only way to never be caught out, after all, is to never have to remember which lies you told yesterday and to whom. So as always, we’re just going to give you the truth.
Still no sign of any video despite repeated requests, but we’ve finally managed to lay our hands on an audio recording of Alex Salmond’s New Statesman lecture in London last week, including the audience question-and-answer session afterwards.
(The main speech ends at 36m, if you’ve already read it and want to get to the Q&A.)
We’ve just watched three hours of the Education and Culture Committee at Holyrood discussing the report on media bias by Professor John Robertson of the University of the West of Scotland, which featured the good professor himself and senior BBC Scotland executives including Ken McQuarrie and John Boothman.
The contrast between Prof. Robertson’s absolute frankness and candour – openly discussing his political views and his mild autism – and the BBC men’s evasion and obfuscation was quite something to behold. We’ll have some analysis this week.
One finding of Prof. Robertson’s report was that the anti-independence media (or for short, “the media”) had a strong tendency to personalise the Yes debate in the form of Alex Salmond, and a piece in today’s Scotsman provides us with a handy illustration.
This sort of thing just won’t do at all, STV.
Because that closing comment isn’t true, is it?
We seem to have hit a bit of a lull in the independence debate. Even the papers look to be just a touch bored of recycling the same “Project Fear” scare stories for the 14th or 15th time, and it’s hard to keep track of all the identikit “warnings” from various corporations that don’t actually amount to anything more than “if things change we’ll keep an eye on them”, or in other words the bleeding obvious.
Enjoy the calm while it lasts, though, because in 11 days time the phony war is over.
Earlier today we may have given some readers the impression that Gordon Brown’s six-point proposals for the constitutional future of Scotland within the UK were weak, vague and essentially meaningless waffle.
However, now that we’ve seen the recommendations (in a report rather egotistically entitled “Campbell II”) also produced today by Sir Menzies Campbell of the Liberal Democrats, we’ve realised that by comparison Mr Brown has delivered a masterwork of comprehensive, considered and well-thought-out detail.
Get a load – and we do mean a load – of this, readers.
If you work in the media, the great attraction of completely making up stories is that everyone’s forgotten about them a few days later, so you can make up a totally different, equally false version at a later date with impunity.
Alert readers may recall, for example, that last November much of the media decided to claim that Andy Murray was definitely a Unionist.
So naive readers might imagine that when the Wimbledon and US Open winner came out at the weekend and said that in fact he WOULDN’T be publicly revealing his view on independence after all, that might be seen as a bit of a setback to the No camp.
We know better than that, of course.
The top five most-read stories on Wings Over Scotland in the last seven days. (Sorry, we’ve forgotten to do these for a couple of weeks. Things have been a little busy.)
1. The price of the BBC
A realistic analysis of how well off a Scottish state broadcaster would be.
2. Sticking to the script
Labour MSP Makes Idiot Of Self At FMQs Shock.
3. Damn that uncertainty
George Osborne has his eye on North Sea oil money, again.
4. What you didn’t read this week
Major story positive for Yes breaks, media studiously ignores it.
5. All your ducks in a row
…while not only repeating tired old scares, but amalgamating them.
This week’s theme: don’t believe anything you see or hear. Except here, natch.
We’ve commented before on the odd way that newspapers can reveal their bias in the way they phrase their reporting, rather than in the actual content of it, which can be entirely factually accurate. As we noted, a particular giveaway is the angle from which they view statistics, and especially opinion polls.
A poll showing 35% of people backing independence will almost always be reported as “ONLY a third back Yes”, whereas one with the exact same numbers for a different question might be presented as “OVER a third distrust Alex Salmond”. The proportion “one third” is in such a manner portrayed as being both a small and a large one, to suit whatever position the publication wishes to promote.
It’s in such a context that we invite readers to ponder today’s Mail On Sunday.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
