Wings Over Scotland

…of the Press & Journal.

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As the Unionist press and parties indulge in orgasmic paroxysms this week about how “The Vow” has allegedly been delivered and exceeded, it rings even stranger that absolutely nobody wants to claim the credit for authoring the historic document that saved the UK. Our investigations continue.

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A couple of things we’ve sent off this morning in relation to this.

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…you probably write for the Express.

Yesterday we posted a couple of tweets observing the fact that the Scottish media had conspicuously ignored the phenomenon that is The Wee Blue Book. (We’d have made more of the total blanking had we been even a little bit surprised.)

Despite having extensively reported almost every other document published about the referendum debate (such as Sir Tom Hunter’s almost-impenetrable digital-only effort), the press saw nothing at all newsworthy about a 72-page book that’s been downloaded over 400,000 times online and which a small team of complete amateurs had managed to fund, print and distribute more than 250,000 physical copies of in a matter of days, with demand still far outstripping supply.

But it turned out we were being a little unfair.

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Alert readers will doubtless have noticed that a post yesterday was disrupted by a series of strident and increasingly ill-tempered comments by a particular user, themed around their insistence that a central bank is a prerequisite of EU membership, and therefore Scotland wouldn’t be eligible if it was using Sterling as its currency OUTSIDE of a formal currency union with the rUK.

In fairness, that’s an assertion that quite a few people have made during the debate, and the commenter – eventually, having been repeatedly challenged for evidence to back up his claim – managed to provide a couple of examples, in the form of the New Statesman’s George Eaton and the Telegraph’s Andrew Lilico.

The problem, of course, was that those were just equally empty assertions which provided no evidence. So rather than argue the toss over interpretations of obtuse legalese, we thought we’d just go straight to the horse’s mouth, and we rang Graham Blyth, the Head of Office of the European Commission in Scotland.

Being such important people, we got straight through.

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And welcome. If you’ve come to our humble little site to see the nasty man at the head of the “highly controversial cyber organisation” described in this hilarious article, there’s a couple of things you should probably know. Because – and we apologise if this comes as a shock to you – the Daily Mail doesn’t always tell the truth.

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The story in yesterday’s Scotsman carrying outrageous and defamatory slurs against me has today vanished from its website. There’s nothing by way of an apology or correction in the paper’s usual page 2 corrections column, however, and there’s been no reply to either my email of yesterday morning or the letter our solicitor sent yesterday afternoon. Be assured, readers, that the matter won’t rest there.

But today things are even more interesting.

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Your defamatory lies really ought to stop.

In today’s edition, you allege in reference to me that:

“Mr Campbell – who recently registered Wings Over Scotland as an official participant in the independence campaign – has also used the site to call on nationalist campaigners to photograph their opponents so that they can be publicly identified.”

This, as I’m sure your journalists are perfectly well aware, is absolutely untrue.

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One of the long-term goals of Wings Over Scotland is to put itself out of a job. By teaching people how to read newspapers in such a way as to understand what they’re NOT telling you, and to be wise to methods they use to create completely false ideas while not actually saying anything untrue, one day we’ll hopefully reach a situation where there’s no need for us to exist and we can go on holiday or something.

There’s a nicely subtle example of the craft of malicious spin in today’s Scottish Daily Mail, but it also sharply illustrates another toxic aspect of the media’s coverage of the independence debate – the rise of the phantom.

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The image below depicts three of what have been at least four different versions of the Scotsman’s story about our latest Panelbase poll. (So far, that is – who knows what might happen in an hour’s time?)

They show a fascinating evolution of editorial line, wouldn’t you say?

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As someone who’s kept them as pets for over 20 years, I know a thing or two about rats. Intelligent and affectionate creatures, individuals nevertheless have very distinct personalities, and occasionally you’ll get a timid and/or grumpy one. Those take a lot of care, patience and attention to bring out of their shell, and until that point they may try to escape and hide in the tiniest, darkest, most inaccessible corner of the house.

When found, and with all escape routes blocked off, these tiny creatures become incredibly ferocious. They have very long, razor-sharp teeth and move with astonishing speed, and won’t hesitate to attack something hundreds of times their size. Any long-term rat owner will have a few small but permanent battle scars.

And so to today’s Scotsman.

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So far we’ve had no replies – not even automated form ones – from any of the members of Scottish Labour’s “Devolution Commission” we emailed these questions to. They’re fair and reasonable questions, asked politely on behalf of 200,000+ Wings readers and all Scottish voters, and there’s no conceivable excuse not to answer them. We’ll be keeping on at this until we get some. The email we sent is below.

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