Wings Over Scotland

Brigadoon is the story of a Scottish village which only appears for one day every hundred years. GERSland, on the other hand, is a country – similar to Scotland in many ways – which has appeared, albeit fleetingly, every year since 1999.

GERSland too suffers from Caledonian Antisyzygy – it is simultaneously like Scotland and unlike it. It is not Scotland as we know it and it’s not a glimpse of an independent Scotland either, despite the dogged insistence of countless journalists, analysts and commentators less insightful than Wings Over Scotland’s on presenting it as such.

It is, as the lawyers say, sui generis, or a special case.

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A couple of paragraphs in a Vince Cable story (to over-dignify the piece in question) from today’s Scotsman are quite amusing if you swap the order they come in.

“The first day I took up my job as the chief economist at Shell I was given a plaque which had an Arabic saying and when I pressed for a translation, they said ‘All those who claim to predict the future are lying, even if they are later proved right’.”

Righto.

“Business Secretary Vince Cable last night warned that an independent Scotland’s reliance on revenue from oil would result in savage public spending cuts or tax rises, as he addressed the Liberal Democrat Scottish conference.”

Oops!

…about the full extent of the modern Labour Party’s complete and utter betrayal of the poor and vulnerable and its wholesale capitulation to Tory ideology, read this.

The media (and some of the more gullible elements of the blogosphere) recently got itself into a lather about Douglas Alexander’s latest contribution to the independence debate – excellently rebutted by novellist and playwright Alan Bissett – which presented his vision of a post-referendum Scotland that voted No to independence.

Here’s an alternative picture. But unlike the typical “Better Together” scare story, these are not fabricated fantasies. Many are happening right now, while others are merely under discussion and in preparation.

This is what you’re voting for if you vote No.

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A little compare-and-contrast to contemplate.

This is from the Scottish Government document about setting up a new constitution in an inclusive process after a Yes vote in a referendum:

“…a constitutional convention should consider how to further embed equality and human rights within the constitution and the extent to which the people of Scotland should have constitutional rights in relation to issues such as welfare, pensions, health care and education.”

This is from a recent speech by Theresa May:

“…and we need to stop human rights legislation interfering with our ability to fight crime and control immigration. That’s why, as our last manifesto promised, the next Conservative government will scrap the Human Rights Act, and it’s why we should also consider very carefully our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights and the Convention it enforces.”

I can’t decide for you, but I know which one seems more appealing to me.

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Vince Cable in today’s Herald:

“Millions of Scots will lose out on an RBS share bonanza worth up to £800 if they choose independence, Business Secretary Vince Cable has warned.

The Treasury is considering giving every taxpayer in the UK shares in RBS as part of a give-away ahead of the next general election. Coalition sources calculate the windfall could be worth £400 to £800 per person.

Coalition Cabinet minister Mr Cable said his Liberal Democrat party backed the payout to ensure taxpayers benefit from 2008’s billion-pound bailout of the Edinburgh institution, although he cautioned the Coalition not to “rush” the process.

Asked if Scots would get a chance to benefit in an independent Scotland, he said: “No. It is at the moment vested in the British Government.”

Even leaving aside the astonishingly crude bribery/blackmail aspect, we’re still a bit confused. Unionists constantly tell us that RBS is “Scottish”, and that therefore an independent Scotland should take on all of its debt. But apparently the people of the rUK will still own the whole bank, so they’ll get all the shares and the profits.

Sometimes, readers, it really does seem like the No camp is devoting most of its anti-independence efforts to putting us out of a job.

A lot of independence supporters are getting excited today about this clip of Labour shadow-cabinet MP Helen Goodman telling the BBC that Labour would keep the bedroom tax. They’re right to highlight it, but most are doing so for the wrong reasons.

Goodman’s position is that Labour WOULD still implement the hated tax, but would only penalise people for over-occupying their housing if they’d been offered smaller accommodation and refused to move. Opponents of Labour are observing the hypocrisy of the party raging against the tax in public while admitting they’d retain it, which is fair enough, but also misses the real point.

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As we’ve mentioned before, it really has been a revelation to discover that the Daily Record’s iPad app – which gives you the entire printed paper, not just the selection of stories that reach the Record website – is free on weekdays. Today, for example, it brought us a large not-online Page 2 piece on former Tory cabinet minister Liam Fox’s idiotic hardline policy suggestions for the party, which were expertly ridiculed by Conservative commentator Alex Massie yesterday.

Thanks to Mr Massie’s splendid work, there’s no need for us to bother with Fox’s comments. What we noticed instead was the Record’s analysis of them.

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Power Of Scotland is a newspaper about the power industry, given away as a business supplement with The Times. An alert contributor pointed us to an intriguing article in the latest edition from regular Scotsman columnist Peter Jones, offering a more nuanced account of the industry’s view of independence than you might expect.

If you’re pressed for time we’ve pulled out a couple of the more interesting passages.

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Poe’s Law, which we only discovered on Wikipedia this morning, says that “without a clear indication of the author’s intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and an exaggerated parody of extremism”. Or in other words, there’s a name for when people are so batshit crazy you can’t satirise them, because you simply couldn’t invent anything madder than what they say for real.

It’s in that context we invite readers to consider a recent story in the Scottish Sun.

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Catastrophe! Scottish independence (surely “separation”?) will destroy your old-age pension, says yesterday’s Scottish Daily Express.

We suppose we better vote No to keep them safe, then.

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This is a thing that really just happened.

“Former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will have a statue erected in her honour in her home town of Grantham in Lincolnshire.

A plan to raise more than £200,000 for a statue and renovation project at the Grantham Museum has been unveiled.

Labour councillors had called for a town centre statue after the Conservative-majority authority voted against the move last week.“

Emphasis ours, because otherwise you’ll probably think you read it wrong.