Wings Over Scotland

We got slightly distracted yesterday by documenting some eye-popping Unionist madness, and completely forgot to finish our investigation into the Guardian’s odd claims that the Scottish Government had “delayed”, “softened” and “compromised” its stance on the removal of Trident from Scotland after independence, and that such a move betrayed nervousness over the feasibility of its goal of NATO membership.

We examined one piece by Severin Carrell, but the paper actually ran two by the same author on the same subject, and the second was just as inaccurate and misleading.

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And this one might just take the entire cake stand and banana hanger.

It’s former Tory MP and junior minister Edwina Currie, speaking about someone called “Alex Salmon” on Radio 5’s Stephen Nolan show on Saturday. (From 2h 16m on that iPlayer link.) We do recommend listening to all six-and-a-half minutes. It sets a very high standard from the off, but somehow maintains it the whole way through. Enjoy.

So, we suppose we have to point out the obvious.

The conduct and result of a Holyrood by-election isn’t strictly within this site’s remit, but the astonishing audacity with which Labour are prepared to flat-out lie to the Scottish public is, because it reflects on everything they say about independence.

So let’s step through the breathtaking piece of literature above.

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You may have noticed we’ve been a bit paralysed by choice today. Bizarre idiocy from the No camp has broken out across so many different fronts at once that we couldn’t decide which one to tackle first.

Labour’s extraordinary attempt to steal the SNP’s clothes in Dunfermline? The Mail’s hilarious editorial on the “bitter attacks” of the “demoralised” Yes campaign? Alan Cochrane’s disintegrating composure and sanity? The cluelessly deranged “Braveheart and Sassenachs” wordspew from Andrew Gilligan in this morning’s Telegraph?

On reflection, the most significant is probably the increasingly noticeable shift in the tone of coverage in the Guardian, the UK newspaper with by some distance the most extensive Scottish reporting. At the weekend we highlighted a truly horrible piece of sub-Daily-Express smearmongering by the  paper’s Scottish correspondent Severin Carrell based – on its own open admission – entirely on rumours and speculation from a couple of Labour activists.

Today, the same reporter adopted a more subtle approach.

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As a wee treat to keep out the winter chill, we’ve got a special double dose of “And Finally” for you tonight, readers. First up, a couple of late entries for our “Unionists Say The Funniest Things” compilation this week, both of them from Labour MSP production line Michael McMahon (Uddingston and Bellshill):

(Click the image for the article in question.)

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In the 1979 general election, the Scottish Conservatives received 916,000 votes. In 1984, only a few years later, the US historian Barbara Tuchman wrote The March of Folly which explored the bizarre fact that governments sometimes act directly against their own interest, and lose the American colonies or the Vietnam war as a result.

She identifies the chief folly as ‘wooden-headedness’ – sticking blindly to a policy despite all evidence that it is failing. Since 1976, the Scottish Tories have been doing just that. Too stupid to realise that they had to act differently or suffer for it. Too poor in imagination to reach for alternatives. And rapidly becoming too wee to be relevant.

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We’ve noted a few times recently that the increasingly bitter, angry and even violent tone of the “Better Together” campaign isn’t the sort of thing you’d normally expect from a movement confident and relaxed about its chances of victory.

But over the space of just the last few days – perhaps enraged by the positivity of the SNP conference – the defenders of the Union have been descending into madness even more precipitously than usual.

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On the day of the march and rally for independence in Edinburgh last month, the BBC’s coverage was token to the point of openly contemptuous. As 20,000 people marched through the nation’s capital to hear the First Minister, Deputy First Minister and others speak in public, the state broadcaster grudgingly provided a few seconds of footage of the march on Reporting Scotland, and then bizarrely gave equal airtime to the “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall and a suspiciously staged-looking leafleting of four or five people by the No camp.

It struck us as weird at the time, and the episode of Reporting Scotland in question curiously never found its way onto the iPlayer, unlike every other one.

And then tonight it happened again.

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We haven’t had one in this series for a wee while, have we?

That’s Labour’s shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Margaret Curran, accusing the First Minister of “misleading” Scots by suggesting she wants to scrap the Barnett Formula. The only possible implication can be that she doesn’t want such a thing.

Let us help refresh your memory, Margaret.

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This week, the University and College Union (UCU) have set out their manifesto for higher and further education in anticipation of the independence referendum. It denounces the funding system preferred by the big three Westminster parties and offers full backing to the Scottish Government’s policy of free tuition, while calling for immigration changes in order to support students and academics coming from abroad to study and work in Scotland.

“It is right that students who benefit from higher-than-average incomes should pay something back, but they should do so through progressive income tax,”

“Business depends on graduates and should make a contribution rather than receiving tax breaks. Higher education should be substantially paid for through general taxation.”

“Scotland does not have great concerns about an immigration influx and should relax rules which could lead to greater recruitment of students, though they may be put off by negative perceptions of the UK system.”

While the report doesn’t say so explicitly, these views put the UCU clearly on the Yes side – immigration and taxation would continue to be powers reserved  to Westminster in the event of a No vote, and the prevailing political climate in England (particularly the south) suggests a very different direction of travel.

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The sun rarely shines on the council estates of Maryhill. But on the rare occasions when it does, they emerge, dragging their Argos Value deckchairs behind them.

The high-rise flats do their best to block the light, but they find a spot in the concrete playground where the sun peeks through. They plant their chairs, flap open their Daily Records, crack open their cans and bask in the thin angle of the sunlight.

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