Wings Over Scotland

As far back as I can recall, I haven’t believed in anything.

I’ve had no over-riding passion for change, I’ve felt jaded and disconnected from the establishment, from the institutions. Westminster and the political scene of the UK was framed by a “they’re all the same” mentality. All I saw was greed and corruption in people who didn’t represent my view of the world, but that’s just how it is, right? It’ll always be the same, we can’t change it.

But maybe we can.

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One thing we noticed over the last week or so was the near-total lack of campaigning on the streets of Scotland’s cities and towns, from either side. So if you were inspired by the rally and fancy making a more active contribution, why not pop to your local printers, make a few copies of this excellent wee leaflet, and get busy?

You can get 1,000 A6 copies printed for £22 here (5,000 for £40). Hand ’em out or just leave them in strategic locations (with permission, of course). Let’s get the word out.

Right-click the image to get the full PDF version, ready for printing.

Because we keep telling you what a No vote really means:

“That is why I am talking quite passionately about getting English Labour MPs back up the road and for me, sitting down with Neil [Findlay] and Richard [Simpson] and Rhoda [Grant] and others and saying, let’s get health policies that can be consistent across England, Scotland and Wales.

Wouldn’t that be a good thing, pulling in the same direction as opposed to pulling our separate ways?

Devolution, in its early days, was about doing something different and it needs to enter a different phase where we start talking again more about a UK-wide policy because in the end, that helps everybody.”

That’s Labour’s shadow health secretary Andy Burnham talking to Holyrood Magazine this week, in comments strangely unpublicised in the rest of the Scottish media.

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One of the recurring themes we hear from people about the independence debate (from Yes, No and Don’t Know folks alike) is a bewilderment about the alleged amount of grassroots campaigning undertaken by the No camp. “Better Together” is fond of making extravagant claims on its website about its number of volunteers, events and leaflets, yet almost nobody we speak to has ever seen any of them.

So we were interested to receive an email from a reader this week.

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In a piece entitled “Scottish Labour leader says nationalism is a virus”, the Courier yesterday reported that Johann Lamont’s speech to the Labour conference “appeared to allude to the European 20th century fascist movement”.

And it did, although perhaps not in the way the Courier probably meant.

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There’s been a certain amount of hoo-haa within the independence camp this morning about a Telegraph piece reporting comments by Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran in which she appears to cast doubt on whether devolution has been a good thing for Scotland at all.

We’re not sure why, because they’re nothing we weren’t telling you almost a year ago.

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Okay, one last thing. This is the best footage of Saturday we’ve seen:

(Oh, and the Scottish Police Federation are now tweeting a crowd figure of 20,000.)

Okay, we’ve got a LOT of housekeeping-type stuff to get on with, so the next couple of days might be a wee bit quiet. We’ll need to be dealing with the ridiculous goings-on at the Labour conference this weekend at some point, but for now let’s just round up the last few issues regarding Saturday’s awesome independence march and rally and get it all out of the way.

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[We’ve got something special for those of you who can’t make it to the march in Edinburgh today (or are reading en route). Julie McDowall pens the Herald’s brilliant online dating blog, but there’s a lot more to her writing than that.]

There is a groove on my skull. I can run my fingertip along it.

On your first day in a call centre they present you with a headset. You might chuckle when you first wear it, pretending to be Madonna or a helicopter pilot. But the chuckles die at the end of the shift when you lift the metal band and ruffle your hair, feeling the dent on your head.

And it can hurt, so you start to unclamp the contraption between calls and hang it round your neck, but a manager is soon gesturing wildly at you with the ‘hood up’ signal. Get that metal band clamped back onto your head. You may not remove it.

After a few years, a permanent line is engraved on your skull. You are branded.

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We’ve been meaning to mention this curious extract from a “Please send us cash!” mailshot that “Better Together” sent out this week:

It’s the middle sentence that caught our eye. We’re reasonably sure that the Scottish Government isn’t allowed under either Electoral Commission or Scottish Parliament rules to “spend millions of pounds of public money on propaganda campaigns”.

And while we also know that there are very few rules about political organisations telling lies to voters, one of the few that DOES exist is a prohibition against falsehoods where “the specific statement in question is part of a direct solicitation for money”, which this quite clearly is.

We might just have to drop the ASA a wee line.

We just noticed this from The Observer in January 2012:

“Since Labour lost the general election in May 2010, Alistair Darling has been enjoying the relative calm of life as a backbench MP.

After David Cameron reignited the debate about independence a week ago, demanding that Scottish National party leader and Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, come clean over the timing and scope of a referendum, Darling was immediately punted as the best man to lead the “no” campaign. He is respected, he is not a Tory, and he is a fervent unionist. Perfect for the job. But he wants none of it.

“I will play my part, certainly. But I don’t want to do that. I am too busy as a Westminster MP. This campaign has to be run in Scotland.”

A man whose word can clearly be relied on, there.

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[Over the coming months we aim to bring you the breadth and depth of the Yes vote under our “Perspectives” tag, because there’s no such thing as a “typical” Yes supporter. Yesterday we heard from 15-year-old Saffron Dickson. Today it’s the turn of one of the many English people living in Scotland who want out of the UK too.]

I saw a poll last week that gave the Yes campaign for an independent Scotland a 1% lead. The last time I looked, the No camp had had it by a country mile. Is this phenomenal turnaround any kind of surprise? Not in the slightest.

In an era of such abject political mediocrity, Alex Salmond stands out like a giant redwood among a field of saplings. It’s hard to imagine how far behind he would have to be for the No campaign to feel truly confident of success. A few weeks before the last Scottish Elections he was 20 points adrift, but when the ballots were counted he won by a country mile.

I’m no kind of betting man, but if I was, it would be a no-brainer as to where punt my cash. Not only is Salmond the standout politician of his generation in terms of getting ballots into boxes, the lineup who are going try to take him down aren’t even close to being in the same league. All of which makes it seem more than likely that Scotland will be its own nation in a year’s time.

It occurred to me the other day that I’ve now spent a third of my life up here as a “white settler”. I’m now a well and truly established immigrant. My English roots, though, don’t deny me the chance to have a vote on Scotland’s future and, unless something changes in a big way, that vote is almost certainly going to be Yes.

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