Wings Over Scotland

Now, this is interesting. Alert readers will have noticed (by which we mean “be sick of us banging on about”) the fact that we recently conducted a poll which suggested the Yes and No votes were a lot closer than the media portrayal, and the media blanked it with a bunch of feeble excuses including “you had a satirical option in one of your questions”, “you used leading wording” and “we were all on holiday that week”.

We’re not making that last one up.

The media coverage we got for our troubles was a nasty smear campaign (warning: image Not Safe For Anyone). On the other hand, despite being at the beach and the zoo and goodness knows where else, the Scottish press managed to splash another poll a couple of weeks later, showing a massive lead for No, all over the front pages.

The fishy smell, though, was about to get a lot stronger.

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We’ve been hearing tales today of people who signed up for the top secret “public meeting” of No Glasgow yesterday and received written confirmation that their application had been successful, but were then mysteriously refused admission when they arrived – a curious occurrence when by most accounts there were 70-80 seats going begging in the 400-seater auditorium.

We, naturally, had about 50 spies in the room, one of whom audio-recorded the entire thing. We’re still plugging our way through it – it’s hard to maintain focus when the tired old platitudes you’ve heard a hundred times already drone on and on from the stage, and we keep finding we’ve forgotten we’re listening and have wandered off to do the hoovering or something.

By far the most compelling argument we’ve heard so far, though, came from a gentleman in the audience. It’s transcribed below. Take a moment to read it.

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Well, it’s been quite a week, readers. Over the course of the last seven days, Wings Over Scotland – and in particular myself, as its editor – has been subjected to an unprecedented series of smear attacks from several groups of alarmingly angry people, from “Better Together” activists (sometimes in unholy alliance with a small handful of confused, naive young SNP student sorts) to senior Scottish journalists, failed Tory election candidates, psychopathic stalkers and Rangers supporters.

I’ve personally been called – in the space of just that single week – homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, racist, disablist, ageist, fascist, sectarian, a rape apologist, anti-English, anti-Welsh and a hate-preaching bigot. All are entirely untrue, of course.

(Just about the only people I’m apparently NOT prejudiced against are left-handed unicycling vegan budgie-owners from Fermanagh. Which is doubly ironic, because I really loathe those smug, cack-fisted carrot-munchers.)

If you want to know why, look below.

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We’re just going through some reports from the top-secret “public meeting” of the No campaign in Glasgow today. Scores of empty seats (in a venue holding hundreds fewer than the packed-out Yes Glasgow launch), a fracas involving someone protesting about Trident, and the same tired old lines from the same tired old faces.

The pick of the bunch so far, though, came from Willie Rennie, who warned that “The Nationalists are right about the success of the parliament, but with independence devolution ends”. Yes, of course it does, you hapless balloon. Because when you arrive at your destination, you don’t need to travel any more.

If devolution is “a process, not an event”, then the only possible endpoint of that process is independence. Devolution is the return of more powers to the Scottish Parliament. When all powers are returned, of course there’s no more need for devolution. All the referendum represents is a shortcut – getting where we want to go in one leap without wrangling over the constitution non-stop for the next 40 years.

We can only imagine Willie Rennie burns his toast a lot.

Saturday is notionally our comedy day, but it’s nice to see the Scotsman joining in with the fun this week. We’re rapidly coming to the conclusion that the failing paper is now being operated as some sort of elaborate ironic prank, and the lead home-news story this morning does nothing to dispel that theory.

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A curious facet of the independence debate in recent weeks has been the rise in – mostly, but not exclusively, Unionist – commentators rubbishing the idea that Scots are significantly different in their social attitudes from people in the rest of the UK.

It’s been pointed out that a majority of Scots support the benefit cap (glossing over the fact that it applies to basically nobody in Scotland), it’s been claimed that most Scots back Trident, and most recently that contrary to popular belief, they’re no less Eurosceptic than their English neighbours.

So we were curious when Saga recently conducted a large-sample poll of its members (people aged 50 and above, generally considered to be the most conservative demographic) about their attitudes to the EU, and the Scottish press reported it without mentioning the Scottish results.

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STV this morning reports a speech to be given today by Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson, in which she issues some blood-curdling warnings about the chaotic impact of independence on Scottish trade with the UK.

There are a couple of things Ms Davidson should probably know.

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From the “Better Together” blog today:

“No doubt”? Now, we know that isn’t true, and what’s more we know that almost 70% of Scots don’t believe it either. So who are the No camp trying to fool?

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Okay, with the fundraiser now closed (at a fabulous £5,797) we’re about to send our second poll off to Mystery Professor X for some serious expert scrutiny, but there are still a couple of available slots for good questions.

Now would be a good time to fire suggestions at us in the comments.

About the poll, that is.

We’ve already briefly discussed Bill Jamieson’s article in today’s Scotsman claiming an independent Scotland will be more likely to suffer financial collapse and wouldn’t be able to afford to bail out its banking sector, that its economy will diverge from the rUK due to differing economic policies (making Sterling a millstone round Scotland’s neck), and that Scottish banks would relocate their headquarters to London as a result.

We’ve heard these dire tales of “too wee, too poor” inadequacy a thousand times. “But you couldn’t bail out the banks!” is perhaps the most scratched and worn-out disc in the No campaign’s entire DJ setlist of doom-and-gloom tunes. What we need is some sort of independence Woody Bop Muddy, but while we look for his number let’s yawn our way through this tired old scaremongering cobblers one more time.

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Alert readers will be aware of the occasional service provided by this site whereby we help out time-pressed citizens by letting them know when they can safely stop reading an article in the Scottish media. This morning we noticed a tweet from Unionist/Tory commentator Alex Massie, drawing attention to a Scotsman piece he described as “a v important column on banks. Not ‘Scaremongering'”.

Despite the obvious we respect Massie’s views on a lot of subjects, so we had a look.

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We’ve recently been documenting the No campaign’s increasingly-panicked attempts to avoid, or entirely shut down, the Scottish independence debate by various means.

We were on the sharp end of it again last night, as the usual small group of frothing extremist BritNats and psychopathic stalkers (accompanied this time by a tiny handful of “useful idiots” from the SNP’s youth wing) tried to smear and discredit this site by crudely misrepresenting things I’ve said in a personal capacity over a number of years.

But it’s not just us the anti-independence camp is trying to muzzle.

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