Wings Over Scotland

Readers, have you ever noticed how the letters pages of Scottish newspapers are full every day of the same names, a clutch of a couple of dozen super-hardcore frothing ultra-Yoons tirelessly and reflexively raging against independence, the SNP and pretty much anything without a Union Jack on it?

Have you ever found yourself thinking it must be some sort of co-ordinated group that gets together, plans topics in advance then writes in backing each other up, to create an illusion of speaking for a wide cross-section of society, before dismissing that idea as a daft paranoid conspiracy and getting on with your day?

Because we thought that too, until an alert reader infiltrated it.

Our very favourite bit is “we must not advertise the existence of the group. It can be mentioned verbally, in safe environment, that some people share letters/encourage each other, but anything more risks editors discriminating, nationalists reacting, and this diverse group being portrayed as a monolithic campaign”.

Probably don’t put it in an email, then. But your secret’s safe with us, lads.

So this isn’t true, any more than it was when Labour first promised it 22 years ago.

But the sheer number of ways in which it’s a lie is quite the thing.

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We were having an idle browse on Google Play Books this morning for some bargain holiday reading when we happened upon a startling new cover for Chris Mullin’s 1982 classic A Very British Coup.

We found ourselves thinking “rise to what, exactly?”

And as it happened, we had some new Panelbase polling data on that.

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Scotland’s favourite Scottish movie is still Braveheart, folks.

But the devil, as always, is in the detail.

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Have a great one, readers.

The prissy, easily-upset and extravagantly-funded Lib Dem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton tweeted this this morning:

Now, we’re not sure “you’ve had the government you’ve voted for about half the time in a two-horse race” would be all that great a selling point in the first place, but shall we see if it’s actually true, readers?

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Our poll story yesterday was a pretty interesting piece of politics news considering it’s the Christmas dead season. We put an interesting new angle on the independence question, and posted all the poll data so that reporters had plenty to get their teeth into. And we released it at lunchtime so they had plenty of time to get it into today’s editions.

Remarkably, though, none of the Scottish media – with the honourable exception of The National, who made it their front page splash – thought that the best numbers for independence in many months merited even a dismissive passing mention. Scotland’s political hacks doggedly ignored it on social media. And then things got weird.

The tweet above appeared briefly – having been posted at 11.44am it was gone by no later than 12.10pm – on the Twitter account of the Herald. The story it linked to cannot be found through the paper’s website, though it’s still hidden away on the servers.

(Its sister paper the Evening Times carried the story, then outright deleted it.)

And the reason why provides a fascinating insight into how the press operates.

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Now don’t get us wrong, readers. We’re sure that gormless Tory MP Ross Thomson is not, repeat NOT, permanently binned off his tulips on methamphetamine. He just has an unfortunate habit of photographing that way.

So when an alert reader sent us a link this morning to an extraordinary interview in which the Brexiteer claimed to have “killed indyref 2” in 2017, we didn’t automatically dismiss it as the drug-addled rantings of an ego-crazed madman.

Instead, we thought we’d check for signs of life.

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A very Merry Christmas to our old pal Michelle – sorry, Lady – Mone.

We’re sure that’s some sort of giant cabbage in the picture or something.

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Readers, meet Eric Simpson.

He’s a fervent Tory, and the Secretary of Inverurie Community Council. He tweets as “ElginLoon59”, and as a busy pillar of the local community he’s got some pretty firm views on the sort of people who should and shouldn’t hold public office.

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Today, on the shortest day of the worst year in recent memory, the people of Catalonia will vote in an election under the control of a brutally repressive government which has unjustly dissolved their devolved parliament, imprisoned their democratically-elected leaders, viciously beaten hundreds of voters for no crime other than trying  to vote, and banned almost all types of expression of public support for Catalan independence, including outlawing colours of the rainbow.

All this has happened within the borders of civilised free Europe, and the other nations of that great continent have largely either turned a blind eye to Catalonia’s suffering, or actively sided with the Spanish regime. Many people fear that today’s election will be rigged, or that if pro-independence parties win the result will simply be ignored and the election re-run until the “right” result is arrived at.

The UK media has barely acknowledged the election is taking place, even though it appears that many of the most cherished and fundamental human rights and freedoms of the West are at stake in it. (Or perhaps precisely for that reason.)

For members of peaceful self-determination movements across the world, including in Scotland, the stakes could barely be higher. Madrid has demonstrated in the starkest possible terms that power devolved is power retained, and events in Barcelona today could be events in Edinburgh tomorrow.

(And if that seems overly melodramatic, ask yourself who would ever have imagined a 21st-century democracy sending in riot police, in full view of the eyes of the world, to literally drag blood-soaked elderly women out of polling stations by the hair?)

All we can do is watch and hope that justice prevails, and that the darkest hours do prove to be those that come before a bright new dawn.