Wings Over Scotland

Got stuff to write about today. Should really comment on Henry McLeish’s cutting observations about the No campaign, or mock the Daily Record’s hilarious attempt to pretend Johann Lamont’s been driving Labour action over Falkirk all along. But I can’t seem to put sentences together, because I’m still trembling a bit after watching this.

It’s hard to relate it to the Scottish independence debate, except to note that where the US goes, the UK is rarely far behind. (In much the same way that a devolved Scotland ends up following the policies of England within a few years, because without control of your own revenues, taxation and welfare there’s only so much you can juggle a decreasing budget to try to offset the effects.)

I don’t want a “special relationship” any more. I want out.

Relaxing at the splendid American Museum high on the hills at the outskirts of town tonight, celebrating Independence Day on a glorious summer’s evening with a few Budweisers, a barbecue and a couple of hundred ex-pats and well-wishers.

Our turn soon.

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It’s hard to know where to start on picking apart the torrent of misrepresentations, distortions and flat-out untruths that “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall was allowed to get away with in the space of a few short minutes during a rather powder-puff interview on last night’s Scotland Tonight.

So let’s just pick one at random and see how we get on.

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The weekend’s Scotland on Sunday contained another in a long series of doom-laden predictions about the state of an independent Scotland’s defences, including the assertion that current Scottish soldiers would choose to stay with the British armed forces rather than join Scotland’s because it’d be more exciting.

(Along, as independence supporters would expect, with the standard boilerplate that we’d all be killed by terrorists, and the now-traditional dodgy Scotsman poll.)

The Sunday Times, meanwhile, wasn’t being quite so careful.

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We’ve got quite the exclusive for you today, folks. We’re indebted to the alert civil servant who’s managed to smuggle out of Whitehall a copy of the UK government’s draft document of its inaugural greetings to the people of an independent Scotland, to be delivered (naturally) by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague.

Given Mr Hague’s recent comments on how “baffling” the very notion of Scottish independence apparently was, readers may find the practical behind-the-scenes reality reassuring. You can read the speech in full below.

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Willie Rennie made a bit of an idiot of himself last night. He appeared towards the end of the final instalment of Iain Macwhirter’s largely-excellent STV documentary “Road To Referendum”, with the empirically wrong assertion (in the name of the fabled “positive case for the Union”) that “the National Health Service is a United Kingdom institution, it was created by United Kingdom people.”

This, as alert Wings Over Scotland readers will know in some detail, isn’t true. The NHS has never been a “United Kingdom institution”. From the first day of its creation, it was two independent institutions – the Scottish NHS and the English/Welsh NHS.

(It’s now four separate national bodies – Northern Ireland having its own service, with a different name and different responsibilities, and the Welsh NHS having been “divorced” from the English one and devolved to the Assembly in 1999.)

To the Scottish Lib Dem leader’s embarrassment, the NHS therefore proves the exact opposite of what he’s trying to use it to prove – namely, it shows that Scotland can deliver better health services for its people (free prescriptions, personal care, eye tests, dental check-ups, hospital parking) via independence, yet still co-operate smoothly and productively with the rUK where necessary without the sky falling in.

But Rennie’s clanger triggered off another interesting exchange.

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Yesterday we passingly mentioned how Home Secretary Theresa May this week claimed that Scots could lose their British passports and be denied dual nationality following a ‘Yes’ vote for independence in next year’s referendum.

Mystifyingly none of the newspapers reporting the story bothered to research the facts behind her claim, so we had to get our investigating hats on.

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From the one-man gaffe goldmine that is Central Ayrshire Labour MP Brian Donohoe:

We do sympathise, and not just with the unfortunate (but alert) constituent of Mr Donohoe’s who sent us this recent press release. It can’t be easy for poor Brian either, constantly having to remind himself “Commemorate… not celebrate. Commemorate… not celebrate” like a low-rent version of Viz’s immortal Eight Ace.

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It’s not the first time we’ve had to raise this subject. But as the rhetoric ramps up from an increasingly nasty and unhappy No camp, we have to ask again – just what is the Labour Party’s problem with foreigners?

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August 2012:

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We stumbled across this quite by accident yesterday. We think you’ll enjoy it.

The clip is from last year, and was aired on Canadian national news channel Sun News. Douglas Murray is a British writer who claims to be half-Scottish on account of unspecified links to Unionist breeding ground the Isle of Lewis, popular haunt of No-camp luminaries like Alistair Darling, virulent Labour anti-devolutionist Brian Wilson and controversial “Better Together” donor Ian Taylor.

Murray studied at Eton and Oxford and writes for august UK journals like the Spectator and Guardian, as well as appearing on numerous BBC political shows. For some reason, the Canadians consider him an expert on Scottish politics, qualified to inform and enlighten their viewers. See what you think.

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So here’s a funny thing.

“Blair McDougall: We have said – I think Blair has said something similar as well – that we are acting as if PPERA applies to us at the moment, so we are carrying out checks on individuals who donate to us. We will disclose people who give more than £7,500 as per PPERA within a calendar year. I would also say categorically that we won’t accept any foreign donations.“ (Q.1819)

And here it is again, equally categorically:

And again for good measure:

“Better Together campaign director Blair McDougall, who was also appearing in front of the committee, said he would refuse to take cash from foreign donors, but would accept UK-wide donations up to £500.”

(Our emphases.) That’s pretty clear, then – the No campaign will not accept money from “foreign donors”, but will take “up to £500” from people resident in the UK.

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