Wings Over Scotland

We linked you yesterday to a quite startling display of cognitive dissonance, as a dedicated Labour activist struggled to reconcile his party’s position on Trident with his own belief in disarmament, reaching some quite extraordinary contortions of logic in an attempt to convince himself that staying in the Union represented the best way of ridding the United Kingdom of weapons which are enthusiastically supported by every major UK political party and the Lib Dems.

But it’s not just mad bloggers who are frantically trying to whip up a sandstorm of spin to obscure Labour’s final abject surrender to the nuclear weapons lobby.

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In Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel “V For Vendetta”, the central character tells co-protagonist Evey: “Silence is a fragile thing. One loud noise, and it’s gone”.

Yesterday we ran a guest post from the Scrap Trident Coalition calling for an end to the Johann Lamont and the Scottish branch of the Labour Party to end its silence on the subject of nuclear weapons.

But though Lamont remains “on holiday” and unavailable for comment on a range of issues (or even completely excluded from discussing them at all), her party has ended her silence for her, with a succession of loud noises nobody could possibly miss.

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It has long been clear that, if they remain in government, the Tories intend to replace Trident, and this week’s Lib Dem Trident Alternatives Review shows that they are also committed to maintaining the UK as a nuclear state in the face of public opposition. But what of the Labour Party?

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This must be a sad day for the deputy leader of the Labour Party in Scotland. After all, we’ve spent much of the last few weeks hearing how very uncomfortable Scottish Labour types are with the idea of their relatives becoming “foreigners”.

So the news that Anas Sarwar’s dad has decided to renounce being a proud Scot and return to his native Pakistan must have come as quite a blow. Our sympathies to the Sarwar family on this terrible and upsetting division. Damn separatists.

We can’t say we were especially upset late last night when the Scottish Sun revealed that Susan Boyle is anti-independence. We doubt her views, or any celebrity’s, will dramatically shape the electorate’s opinions. All the same, the unseemly haste with which the No camp leapt on the news left an unpleasant taste in our mouths.

And if you’ve ever read a tabloid newspaper or watched ITV News any time in the last four years or so, it shouldn’t be terribly hard to figure out why.

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Apologies if the headline falls fouls of anyone’s work filter (although it shouldn’t, as it’s officially legally not a swear word), but we can’t think of a more concise and accurate way of describing the phenomenon illustrated by the comically absurd story that’s being blared all over the Scottish media this morning like news of the Apocalypse.

The price of oil, as the No campaign never tires of telling us, is volatile. Nobody knows what it’ll be in 27 weeks’ time, or even 27 days’ time. Predicting what level it’ll be at 27 hours from now is pushing your luck a bit, and City traders regularly make and lose fortunes betting on that timescale and getting it right or wrong.

So the idea that anyone, let alone the Office for Budget Responsibility, can have even the slightest, vaguest hint of a clue where North Sea oil prices and production will be 27 YEARS from now is – well, see the headline.

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Watchful readers will know that one of the recurring themes on this site is the impossibility of finding any real ideological differences between the three main Westminster-based parties. But to be scrupulously fair, we think we might finally have uncovered one now, in the light of this week’s bizarre Lib Dem policy paper on Trident.

(This is turning into the worst day off ever.)

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Today the Scottish Sun is almost entirely devoted to things idiot celebrities have said to each other on Twitter (or stories about Rihanna’s earrings), while the Daily Record relegates the Lib Dem Trident fiasco to a couple of small side columns in order to splash a double-page “EXCLUSIVE!” spread with the shock revelation that the First Minister of Scotland has sent letters of congratulation to some successful Scots.

(A feature for which it bewilderingly felt the need to waste taxpayers’ money by sending Freedom of Information requests to the Scottish Government.)

The Scotsman goes big on famous people’s favourite churches (people have favourite churches?), and the Herald has a South African, of all people, complaining about Alex Salmond taking a stand against discrimination.

We might take the day off.

Having done it for 22-and-a-half years now, we’re unable to recommend a career in journalism. While there are upsides, it’s a largely arduous and thankless task, and one where pay rates were on a downward slope long before the financial crisis.

However, if for some unfathomable reason you’re really determined that it’s the job for you, let us at least offer you a crash course in the modern art.

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Lord George “Devolution will kill nationalism stone dead” Robertson of Port Ellen is among several ennobled former Defence Secretaries who’ve been busying themselves with writing to the press this week. And for once, it’s not about dog dirt and potholes.

As well as being co-signatory with several other Conservative and Labour peers to a letter in the Telegraph urging the UK to commit to a like-for-like replacement of Trident, Robertson also bothered the Herald with a missive aiming to “nail some wild assertions and fallacies about Scottish public opinion on the subject”.

We could score a cheap point here by noting that the befuddled pensioner apparently thinks the SNP secured 45% of the vote “in the 2010 General Election” – rather than in the Holyrood one the following year – but instead we’ll point out the ermine-clad statesman’s rather more serious attempt to mislead.

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We’ve noted recently how the No camp likes to huffily deny that it ever portrays Scotland as incapable of thriving as an independent country. Here’s a fairly typical example from the Scotsman back in April (our emphasis):

“SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson has claimed the ‘No’ campaign is based on the idea that Scots are “uniquely poor”, “stupid” and “incapable” of self-government.

Last night, Better Together rejected Mr Robertson’s claim. A spokesman said: ‘The only people who peddle this line are the Nationalists. No-one from Better Together thinks that Scotland couldn’t go it alone.’“

We know they’re not great at counting, but they might want to check that figure.

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