Wings Over Scotland

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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Here’s the footage of Alistair Darling’s interview in Glasgow with James Naughtie a few days ago. If you want to spend 35 minutes of your life watching a man totally dodge every question asked of him, it’s your lucky day.

Naughtie does ask a few decent ones, particularly on the currency and EU, but Darling just waffles his way past all of them (a particular trick we’ve noticed among Labour politicians lately is saying “Let me just say this and then I’ll answer your question”, whereupon they trot out some boilerplate and then don’t answer the question), and Naughtie doesn’t ever press him any further.

So, y’know, saving the £20 was probably the smart call.

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Major kudos to the hyper-alert reader who covertly recorded the Q&A session after last night’s event in Glasgow where Alistair Darling was interviewed by James Naughtie.

Obviously it’s not exactly broadcast-quality, but it’s perfectly audible for all but the occasional couple of seconds. We were going to catalogue all the flat-out lies Mr Darling told in the 51 minutes, but frankly the “Better Together” chairman was on autopilot and you’ve heard all the untruths – and their respective debunkings – a dozen times before on this site alone.

So while we see if we can summon up the mental stamina to wade through them all yet again, just watch and see how many you can spot for yourselves.

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Some Friday-night entertainment, courtesy of an alert reader.

Remember, folks – a No vote in September is a vote to give UKIP a major influence over your life. A Yes banishes them forever. Your decision.

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It’s a really slow news day today, so here’s an extended report from the Met Office.

The outlook in the event of a No vote: this is as good as it gets.

Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail on Wall Street Journal Live yesterday.

“I would be very surprised if at the end of the day the Scots will vote for independence. It’s a fantasy, it’s a romantic fantasy, it’s fuelled by fantasy, by resentment, by all sorts of issues.”

Shall we take five minutes out from hating the English and give her a surprise?

Standard Life, about which the entire Scottish media got incredibly excited about yesterday when they made a rather unremarkable statement which could be spun as a threat to leave Scotland if it voted Yes, employs around 5000 people north of the border. The aviation business, on the other hand, underpins the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Scots. Does it have a view on the subject?

That’s Willie Walsh, head of International Airlines Group (which owns British Airways), responding to a rather loaded question from BBC News by saying he’d regard independence as “a positive development”. That’s pretty interesting in itself, given that airlines are much more important to the Scottish economy than one insurance company, yet we have a strange premonition that it won’t attract the same headlines.

But it ties into politics a bit more directly than that too.

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EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE:

SATIRE:

REALITY:

At least, we THINK we’ve got those the right way round.

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We must admit, we’re perplexed by Scottish Labour’s apparent and oft-expressed belief that the Welsh (Labour) First Minister is the ultimate authority on currency unions. We’re not aware of any financial expertise on his CV, and as he’s not even a Westminster MP his opinion will carry no weight in any negotiations on the matter.

So we’re not sure why his view is singled out, from the entire population of the UK, as having special relevance. Still, Johann Lamont seems pretty worked up about it.

Let’s all agree: from now on, anyone who says “An independent Scotland would have to join the Euro!” is either deliberately lying or a dribbling slack-jawed imbecile without the faintest idea of what they’re talking about.

As such their views should be dismissed with contempt, and ideally they should be chased out of town by an angry mob with pitchforks and flaming torches. We’d say Dr Zuleeg was pretty unequivocal and definitive on the subject here.

Alert readers may recall a piece from earlier today in which we mused on the curious and perhaps unique unwillingness of the people of Scotland to seek more powers over their own lives. It was in part triggered by a curious moment from last night’s BBC Scotland independence debate from Kelso in the Borders.

A gentleman in the audience had asked the assembled panel of politicians “what they understand by the word ‘nation’, and which nation or nations do you belong to?”, and Labour MSP Jenny Marra’s reply was illuminating and perplexing in equal measures.

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