Wings Over Scotland

We’ve had these sitting around for a few days without getting round to posting them, but as we’re currently knee-deep in the last tranche of data from our Panelbase poll, it seemed as good a time as any to clear the decks.

First up in the ambiguously-named Posterotron is the “respectable” face of British nationalism, in the form of UKIP European-election candidate David Coburn.

Easy, ladies.

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If it’s Wednesday, Labour must have changed their position on their future-devolution proposals again. Following our latest highlighting of the glaring contradictions in the shambolic “Devo Nano” plans, responses have started arriving to your letters.

If you’ve been listening closely, you’ll have heard that the position on whether the Scottish Parliament would be able to reduce taxes below the UK level has see-sawed from “No you can’t” (Johann Lamont MSP, 18 March) to “Yes you can” (Richard Baker MSP, 28 March) and back to “No you can’t” again (Tom Clarke MP, 4 April).

Well, guess what?

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The other (and more complete) view of this story from yesterday:

Remember, readers, when we were all over the papers as “creepy as f**k”, intimidatory “spies” for peacefully and non-confrontationally documenting alleged “Better Together” events with long-distance photos in which we carefully avoided publishing anything that could be used to identify any individuals?

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This is “Better Together” chairman Alistair Darling’s interview on this morning’s Andrew Marr Show. Despite the sort of respectful-verging-on-subservient treatment the former Chancellor received from Marr, who uncharacteristically couldn’t bring himself to interrupt during the 10-minute piece, Mr Darling blinked even more furiously than usual throughout a bewildering flurry of contradictions, non-sequiturs and outright falsehoods.

Even Marr was driven to remark on the wealthy Labour MP’s agitated state by the end of the piece, and while it’s very hard to keep up, we recorded a total of 777 blinks in 10 minutes with our manual clicker. Have a go yourself – we suspect it would actually be possible to get results 100 either side of that figure.

Of course, maybe Mr Darling is just overdue a trip to SpecSavers.

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A pretty unequivocal view from Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times, a man who knows a thing or two about how George Osborne’s mind works:

(From yesterday’s Sunday Politics.)

We appreciate that you’re busy people, readers, so through the miracles of modern technology we’ve actually managed to compress the entire five-minute interview between Andrew Neil and Alistair Carmichael, the Secretary of State for Portsmouth, on this morning’s Sunday Politics Scotland down to just 19 seconds without in any way compromising the accuracy or completeness of its content.

If you watch the whole thing we think you’ll agree we’ve captured the essence.

We’ll be honest with you, readers, we just couldn’t face transcribing Johann Lamont’s latest traffic-accident of an interview, this time 12 unforgettable minutes on Sunday Politics Scotland. But we did have a sudden flash of inspiration.

Above you can watch the interview for yourself. But although Johann’s mangled syntax and non-sequitur approach to answering questions is just too much pain for our poor tortured brain to endure twice in one week, we realised that what’s a lot quicker and easier to do is write down the gist of proceedings.

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We’ve been taking the mickey out of Labour a lot in the last couple of days, which has been thoroughly merited and done with serious intent, but we thought it’d be nice to finish the week with something a bit more positive. Those of you who follow our Twitter account may have seen it already, but if not it’s well worth taking some time out for.

It’s a speech made at a Yes Scotland meeting in Lockerbie by Mark Frankland, who alert readers will recall from his appearance on this site last year, and it pretty much speaks for itself. Get this man on more stages.

The last 40 years of UK politics accurately summarised in 30 seconds.

(From episode 3 of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, still on iPlayer at time of writing.)

For those who missed it, Labour’s official explanation of the “40%” figure.

You’re right. She CAN’T have really said that. Watch it again.

Remember, kids – nationalism is bad. Stay away from the evil nationalists, or they might steal your Union Jack flag, Union Jack t-shirt or Royal Standard.

The only number that can be divided to end up with nothing is zero.

Among supporters of a Yes vote this site has often been an outspoken defender of Newsnight Scotland’s Gordon Brewer. Sometimes prone to lapsing into a poor impersonation of Jeremy Paxman, all hectoring and interrupting and not listening, on top form the BBC man is in our book the finest inquisitor of politicians in the UK, with only Bernand Ponsonby of STV capable of giving him a run for his money.

After last night, we’ve rarely felt more vindicated.

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