The No campaign is fond of mocking the SNP’s insistence that an independent Scotland could be a member of NATO while still getting rid of Trident. The USA in particular, it’s frequently argued, would simply not stand for the Scots taking the strategic base at Faslane out of the North Atlantic picture while still seeking the benefits of the alliance’s military presence and protection.
If only there was some sort of precedent we could examine.
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Tags: Angus McLellan
Category
analysis, scottish politics, world
We were passed this Scottish Government document through our sinister network of cyber-agents, from an operative who wished to remain anonynous. It’s a list of official complaints made about inaccurate and misleading articles in newspapers since the 2011 Holyrood election. As we’re talking about bias today, we offer it up for your perusal and interest. We’re only surprised it’s so short.
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
The Times got rather huffy with Alex Salmond this week, when in a speech at a Nigg engineering yard the First Minister made the not-entirely-controversial suggestion (or in the Times’ view, “an unprecedented attack”) that the Scottish and UK printed press was biased against the independence movement.
(Or, as the irony-bereft paper impartially put it, “him and his plans for separation”.)
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Category
analysis, comment, media, scottish politics
The Herald publishes a rather interesting story today, revealing that according to professional media analysts Brandwatch, almost three quarters of social media users in Scotland are planning to vote Yes in the referendum.
(For some reason the Herald chose to publish the piece under the headline “Davey doubts Scotland will reach green energy target”, which we’ll put down to the heat, and to emphasise the notion that the high level of support was “despite” the SNP.)
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Category
analysis, comment, media, scottish politics
We have a bit more respect for Professor Brian Ashcroft than most of the No camp’s scaremongers (indeed, we’ve even run an article of his on Wings Over Scotland), so we looked with interest at the latest entry on his blog yesterday, a piece with the fairly self-explanatory title of “Has Scotland already spent its oil fund?”
It purports to examine what Scotland’s financial position would have been had it been independent for the last 32 years, in response to a Scottish Government document (which was backed up by fullfact.org) showing that Scotland had been a large net contributor to the UK over the period, but arrives at a bizarrely tangential conclusion.
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Category
analysis, reference, scottish politics, stats
We’ve spoken before of the difficulty of empirically demonstrating anti-independence bias in the Scottish and UK media, because of the relative rarity of directly comparable situations. So today we’re pleased to see one of them present itself.
Michael Gray of National Collective recently visited Scandinavia and did a nice bit of journalism, securing quotes from a number of senior Danish politicians to the effect that an independent Scotland’s membership of the EU would be “a mere formality” and that the subject was “a non-issue”.
Good news. But how does it help us illustrate media bias?
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Category
analysis, europe, media, scottish politics
Oh my goodness. Our deep-cover source inside the “Better Together” HQ has well and truly surpassed themselves this time, with a leak of the No campaign’s latest poster so early that it doesn’t even have the “official” logo in place yet.
We’re in trouble now, folks.
Tags: project fear
Category
leaks, scottish politics
This is getting spooky now.
Scottish Labour quasi-leader Johann Lamont at FMQs last month.
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Tags: and finally
Category
culture, disturbing, pictures, scottish politics
We’ve explored the “Kinnock Factor” previously on this site, but some numbers from the latest YouGov weekly polling surprised even us today. Labour’s lead over the midterm Conservative-led government is still falling – to just 6% this time – and Ed Miliband’s personal ratings are even worse than David Cameron’s, but that wasn’t it.
You’ll probably want to click on that image to enlarge it.
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Tags: Kinnock Factor
Category
analysis, scottish politics, stats, uk politics
In a week that will end with the finals of the incredible wheelchair tennis at Wimbledon, it was perhaps understandable that people might not have noticed the UK government sneaking out the announcement that the five remaining Remploy factories in Scotland are to be closed as part of its reform of welfare provision.
(The minister involved, Esther McVey, made very clear that welfare provision was how the government saw the factories, rather than legitimate businesses which happened to be subsidised by the taxpayer, like the UK’s railway companies and banks.)
If only we had a Labour administration at Westminster to protect them, eh?
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Tags: Scott Minto
Category
comment, scottish politics, uk politics
