Wings Over Scotland

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.

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Our old pal Euan McColm of Scotland on Sunday and ThinkScotland (also a stalwart of BBC/STV punditry, and formerly of the disgraced News Of The World) thinks you’re all just a figment of our imagination, readers.

If you’re not following, the implication (also made by James Mackenzie of “Better Nation”) is that we’re taking the money out of the fundraiser as soon as it comes in, then paying it back in ourselves as a new donation to artificially inflate the total.

(Although we’re not quite sure WHY we’d be doing that, as it would only result in us losing a sizeable chunk of the money we already had in commission every time we “recycled” it, and it would dissuade people from donating because they saw we’d already hit our target, and finally it’d mean that we then had to fund all the things we promised to do without actually having the money to pay for them.)

We’ve offered to show Mr McColm the books, on the condition that he writes an article for Scotland on Sunday or the Scotsman, openly and directly accusing us of what he implies in the tweets above. Let’s see how that goes.

We’ll have some comment on that for you when we’ve prised our jaw off the floor.

If we should be fortunate enough to exceed the target in our imminent fundraiser, readers, we promise we’ll use any extra money to try to make this happen.

In truth, the “Better Together” campaign jumped the shark a long time ago. Whether it was #500questions, or the mobile-phone roaming charges story (the moment when even a supportive media started saying “Oh, come on”), or any of literally dozens of others, the fact of the matter is that it’s been engaged for at least a year now in some sort of 110m Shark Hurdling event.

Or perhaps some sort of Shark Pentathlon, starting with a Shark Long Jump, followed by the Shark Hurdles, Shark High Jump, Shark Triple Jump and culminating in a Shark Pole Vault. Frankly, on current form the only way the No campaign could get any more clearance over the shark is with a nuclear-powered pogo stick.

But still, you have to admire the way they keep trying for a new record.

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Can’t wait to read these two stories in the morning.

Goodnight, readers.

We’re not sure which of The Scotsman and Murdo Fraser of the Scottish Conservatives was most confused this morning. Reporting on the second half of its intriguing ICM poll (which put the gap between Yes and No votes as low as six points), the paper publishes some data about the attitude of Scots to the EU.

Excluding don’t knows, the results provide a clear 16-point margin for Scotland remaining in Europe, at 58% to 42%. (The raw numbers put it only slightly lower, at 46 to 33.) But for some odd reason the newspaper chooses to reveal this vote of confidence under the bafflingly negative headline “A third of Scots would back exit from EU”, without even an “only” in there to reflect the implication of the stats.

Weirder still is Murdo Fraser’s reaction, though.

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(Source here.)

When we started the week with news of the UK government’s statement on debt, we wondered aloud whether it would be a game-changing moment. Judging by the No camp’s reaction since then, shrieking and flailing and lashing out blindly in all directions simultaneously, our question’s been answered.

It’s been hard to keep track of it all, but we’ll have a go.

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This is hereditary Westminster Labour MP Anas Sarwar in yesterday’s Evening Times:

“Now, it’s been said by some that there is no passion in the case that we are better together as part of the United Kingdom.

Well, the people saying that obviously haven’t been at any of the rallies I have been at across Scotland, and where I spoke about an idea much bigger than independence; the pooling and sharing of resources across the UK for the benefit of everyone in the UK.”

Hang on – “rallies”? Were we watching the wrong channel when we missed the tens of thousands of people packing the streets for the Great Rally Of The Union? Were we passed out in a cupboard for the whole time when the Anas Sarwar Evangelical Roadshow filled football stadia in every corner of the land with crazed disciples waving Union Jacks and chanting “POOL AND SHARE! POOL AND SHARE!”?

Rallies? What on Earth is the truth-averse wee twerp talking about? We need a doctor.

It’s our own fault for reading a Brian Monteith column in the Scotsman, but:

“Am I the only person that finds it rather rich that Alex Salmond is so keen on debating the views of David Cameron, an Englishman with an English constituency, when he consciously arranged for the views of tens of thousands of people on the Scottish electoral register to be excluded from taking part in the referendum? Why did he not wish to hear their views?”

Hang on – Alex Salmond did what now? As far as we know, if you’re on the Scottish electoral register you get a vote in the referendum. What happened? Which “tens of thousands of people” are we talking about here? Shouldn’t this have been in the news or something? We hate trying to catch up after the holidays.

We got a letter from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office today. We opened it, read it, and – if we might paraphrase for a moment – it said we were suckers.

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