Wings Over Scotland

Surely. At least.

Read the rest of this entry →

This clip comes from yesterday’s “Good Morning Scotland”, around 2h 35m in.

It features Professor Paul Collier, who is apparently the Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and therefore an obvious choice for the BBC as a go-to guy on the subject of Scottish politics.

We think you’ll find it a stimulating and thought-provoking opinion.

Read the rest of this entry →

Remember, readers, how last year “Better Together” tried to ridicule the fact that we’d put a satirical line about “space monsters” into one of the questions in our first Panelbase poll? Remember how it was the most absurd, stupid thing imaginable?

That was the UK Secretary of State for Defence, yesterday.

Read the rest of this entry →

We honestly don’t understand how anyone with electricity in their house or a newsagent anywhere within a 30-mile radius can possibly come to say things like this:

“[Independence] is a view not shared by IT teacher Elaine Coates, originally from Glasgow but now in Tettenhall. The mother of three has lived in England for 30 years but has no strong views on independence.

‘I just don’t see how it will work, I think Scotland would be crazy to do this,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t have any oil so how is it going to get its income? Whisky and tourism, probably, but that’s it.'”

Firstly, Elaine, we’d have to say that “it would be crazy” DOES actually sound like quite a strong view on independence to us. But in all seriousness, leaving all snark and sarcasm aside, how on Earth does a human being living in the UK in 2014, seemingly not inside any sort of secure institution, come to believe something like that?

Ms Coates isn’t some lone madwoman. Other people, also not resident in mental hospitals, say the same thing. And we get that lots of people aren’t into politics. But when it comes to ignorance about your own nation, being unaware that Scotland has oil is somewhere on a par with not knowing that Great Britain is an island. How in the world do you go through decades of adult life without ever picking up on that fact?

It’s not a rhetorical question. Can someone actually explain it to us?

One of the great things about this site’s sky-high viewing figures is that on the rare occasions when we might be, for example, out having a walk in the park to get over the crushing disappointment of somehow losing yet another Scottish Cup semi-final, our ever-vigilant readers will remain alert.

Otherwise, we might have missed this.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s late, but we couldn’t let this one pass.

Heavens, where do we start?

Read the rest of this entry →

Our email inbox this week has been packed with people sending in their Labour MP’s or MSP’s responses to our questions about the party’s proposals for the devolution of taxation (aka “Devo Nano”) in the event of a No vote.

With the exception of the very first reply – an arrogant, rude, dismissive effort from Tom Harris – until this evening all of them have been the exact same text except for minor variations in the introductory sentences, with some members choosing to insert little digs at this site but others being more polite to their constituents.

But tonight everything changed.

Read the rest of this entry →

We’ve had a second response from a Labour elected representative to a reader, regarding our six simple factual questions about the party’s “Devo Nano” proposals for the Scottish Parliament. This one’s from Richard Baker, regional MSP for North East Scotland and Labour’s former Shadow Finance Secretary.

We were extremely surprised by its contents. You can read the reply, stripped only of two paragraphs of introductory waffle about Keir Hardie, below.

Read the rest of this entry →

Sorry we’ve been a bit post-light today, readers. The phone’s barely stopped ringing, and when it did it was only for long enough to scratch the surface of an avalanche of tweets and emails, all concerning this week’s zany goings-on with the Glasgow Subway. Suffice it to say that you haven’t heard half of what’s transpired yet, but we hope to bring you the full story pretty soon.

For now, for anyone who missed them, STV, BBC and the Guardian.

Heavens above, readers. Immersing ourselves as we do in the tepid and murky waters of Scottish political journalism for a living – because it was either that or drowning kittens in a bucket and the hours for that are slightly unsociable – we sometimes imagine that we’ve become inured to even the most fatuously cretinous word-vomiting arse-quackery that passes for analysis in the supposedly intelligent press.

And then we read something like the spectacularly, cosmically moronic mind-sewage Hamish Macdonell just strained and heaved onto the electro-pages of the Spectator this afternoon and realise that the abyss of idiocy has no end, or at the very least culminates in a black-hole singularity from which the light of reason can never escape.

Read the rest of this entry →

From the Norwich Evening News, 4 March 2014:

“‘It is ridiculous that independence for Scotland is even being given consideration at all.

Much blood was spilled over centuries to bring the home nations together.

It’s disrespectful to the honour of those that suffered to think that a cross on a ballot paper can undo that. National pride and patriotism is what being a Scot is all about, and there is not a nation in the world that has more of it than Scotland. We don’t need economic independence to prove it.’

Blair Ainslie is managing director of Great Yarmouth-based offshore firm Seajacks. He hails from Dunbar, East Lothian and moved south of the border in 1979.”

That one’s making our head spin.

Read the rest of this entry →

Heavens above. We thought that being reduced to sending out chain letters might have been some sort of rogue effort, but it seems “Better Together” really is as desperate for cash  as it’s appeared to be in recent months, with barely a week going by that we don’t get an email from Alistair Darling, chatting about some aspect of the debate before suddenly going “SO WE NEED MONEY! MONEY! SEND MONEY NOW!”

But the piece above appearing in this week’s Sunday Times (where we initially missed it because it was in the “UK News” rather than the “Scottish News” section) was backed up by another piece of extraordinary panhandlery.

Read the rest of this entry →