Wings Over Scotland

If we’re being honest, Irish Times, it’s not the phrase we’d have chosen:

And this one might just take the entire cake stand and banana hanger.

It’s former Tory MP and junior minister Edwina Currie, speaking about someone called “Alex Salmon” on Radio 5’s Stephen Nolan show on Saturday. (From 2h 16m on that iPlayer link.) We do recommend listening to all six-and-a-half minutes. It sets a very high standard from the off, but somehow maintains it the whole way through. Enjoy.

We’ve noted a few times recently that the increasingly bitter, angry and even violent tone of the “Better Together” campaign isn’t the sort of thing you’d normally expect from a movement confident and relaxed about its chances of victory.

But over the space of just the last few days – perhaps enraged by the positivity of the SNP conference – the defenders of the Union have been descending into madness even more precipitously than usual.

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We forget who, but someone we read this week – in the Herald, we think – referenced a line spoken by Jennifer Aniston’s character in an old episode of Friends (which we’ve managed to identify as S02E01, “The One With Ross’s New Girlfriend”):

“When I saw him get off that plane with her, I really thought I just hit rock bottom. But today, it’s like there’s rock bottom, then 50 feet of crap, then me.”

We were put in mind of it by something in this afternoon’s Guardian.

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So, to the elephant in the room, then. Certain elements of the Scottish press are busting a gut today in an attempt to fabricate a scandal around a man writing some honest opinions in a newspaper for money.

Judging by the tone of the coverage, it seems they have a case, in so far as that Scottish newspapers are plainly no place for honesty.

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For some reason which escapes our understanding, the operator of the misleadingly-named “Scottish Labour” Twitter account chose to tweet this message this afternoon.

We know the answer, but we’re jiggered if we get the point.

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An alert reader today pointed us towards internet traffic analysis site Alexa.com, and in particular its statistics for the Yes and No campaigns’ official websites. There was an interesting quirk (or at least one that might pass for interesting in the silly season).

Can you spot it?

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If we’d seen this 15 minutes earlier, we’d have made it the And Finally… story instead of the GTA V picture. To be honest, we’re still kinda rubbing our eyes and not quite believing it. Did we just get invaded before we were even a country?

There’s a rather odd opinion column by Des Clarke in the Daily Record today. Entitled “Let’s be proud Scots and get our own proper version of America’s Independence Day”, readers might reasonably assume it had something to do with, well, independence.

Instead, the 500-word piece talks about pretty much anything else. Des, a DJ for London-based radio network Capital FM, throws out an almost-complete bingo card of Scottish stereotypes – kilts, Jimmy hats, deep-frying, Buckfast, it’s all there – while bemoaning the lack of a Scottish national holiday like the one the Americans have every July 4th to celebrate winning their independence from the UK.

But impressively, he manages to make not a single reference, even obliquely, to the fact the Scotland is going to be actually voting on independence next year, which one might imagine would provide the perfect excuse for just such an annual shindig.

We’re not saying it’s sinister. It’s just a bit weird.

Looks like we’ve got another difference of opinion, Geoffrey.

“The late Brian Adam, whose untimely death has prompted the by-election, won with just under 56 per cent of the vote two years ago with nearly two votes to Labour’s one.

But a lot has changed since Adam’s glory night. Then, a popular and charismatic SNP, which had pragmatically negotiated four years of minority rule at Holyrood, was rewarded with an epic victory across Scotland. Now, facing pressure over its preparations for independence, and carrying the burden of a monopoly on power, it is a very different world.

Alex Salmond’s stratospheric popularity ratings of two summers ago have dipped back to earth. Labour is, once again, snapping at the SNP’s heels.”

That’s the Scotland On Sunday view (in an article which appears to be littered with several troublingly major factual errors, such as claiming the Aberdeen bypass is “still in the courts” when it isn’t, and asserting that numerous very real and operational institutions haven’t been built yet when they rather visibly have).

But the Sunday Herald is getting quite different vibes from its people on the ground.

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This week’s Scotland on Sunday is full of the usual outpourings of fear and madness (our absolute favourite is a standout piece of howling-at-the-moon insanity from frothing Tory loonbag Gerald Warner, magnificently entitled “Feminism driving holocaust of abortion”), but one in particular caught our eye.

Headed “Independent Scotland at risk from bank crash“, the Tom Peterkin effort (based, in fairness, on an imminent UK government document) kicks straight off with an opening line that’s a top-shelf example of hysterical sub-Daily-Mail scaremongering. But it’s the second line that makes it special.

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We should point out in advance that we’re using the word “voter” quite wrongly here. But a piece in today’s Daily Record has us beaten all ends up for wrongness.

The article’s headline, “Texas singer Sharleen Spiteri: I wouldn’t vote for Scottish Independence”, is entirely accurate – the 1980s pop star lives in London and won’t be voting in the referendum. Her reasoning, though, is a touch unexpected.

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